I'm a big fan of the Mega Construx figures, especially the MOTU characters they're making. I'm not a fan of brick-builds, though. So I've decided to make some of my favorite vehicles and accessories in a non-brick format. First up, is the Attak Trak. This was the first MOTU vehicle I got and it burned through quite a few C-cell batteries racing across the house and front yard when I was a kid. This one won't be battery powered but I tried to make it as close to the original as I could. I don't have the original handy to take measurements and such from so I based it off pics I could find online. Because of this, the scale and some detail will not be exact but it's good enough for me.


Here it is with a Mega Construx character I had previously designed and printed out, so I knew it would at least be the right size for the figures, even if some of my specific parts were not the right size.


Here's a top-down view of it.


Here's a side view of it.

A couple more pics:


Here's a view of it from the front.


Here's a pic from the back.

Very cool

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Wow.

How long will it take to print?

Thanks, guys.
Not sure how long it will take to print yet. I'll do hollow with minimal internal support on the body, so probably 7 or 8 hours for it then 3 or 4 hours for the tracks, lasers, etc. I may be underestimating a bit on the body of it but that should be close.

Can we get some WIP shots along the way on this one? I'd love to see how the sausage is made.

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With or without all the profanity?

Hopefully this is what you mean by the WIP shots.

I loaded the model into MS' 3DBuilder -- actually a pretty good light duty program for doing some basic 3D design and model adjustment. I split the model into two files: the tracks and guns and then the main body:

I positioned the parts so that I knew they would fit on my print bed. I'm running these off on my smaller printer, which only has a bed size of about 4"x4", so I had to arrange them in a 100mm x 100mm square.


The body didn't need any adjustments in 3DBuilder. Since it's a single piece, I can drop it in Cura (the software that converts my 3D models into instructions for the 3D printer) and position it there. I'll show that in my next post.

Now that I have the parts separated out so I can print all the blue parts at once and then the red ones at ones, it's ready to start slicing. Slicing is the process of converting the 3D model into a series of commands, handling 1 layer at a time (thus the slicing) of building the model. Depending on the print quality you go for, this time will vary. One thing about Cura is that it will give you a predicted time for how long it thinks a print will take. This is a filthy lie. It always takes about 30% longer than it predicts.

Here are the tracks and guns positioned on the print bed mock-up in Cura, along with all the settings I can configure for the print job. These are the standard settings I use for the printer I'm using for this. The layer height is the one that controls the quality of the print the most. Adjusting to a smaller number means that the layers will be smaller and therefore less noticeable. This also increases the print time. I have it set at ~.13mm. When I have this printer really dialed in, I can go down to ~.04 but the print jobs take forever. I usually do ~.08, which gives a nice result. For test prints, I'll do ~.13 or ~.18 -- they give a good result without being too slow. Anything larger than that and the layers become too noticeable and make it hard to tell how some of the detail actually looks.


I turned the body about 45 degrees to get it to better fit on the print bed. It would have just fit turned straight on, but there's less of a chance of it messing up at the edges this way.


Hopefully tomorrow I will get to print at least the tracks and guns and possibly the body too. I'll take some pics of it printing and post, too.

Got a late start printing today and have a policy of not leaving the printers running after we've gone to bed, so it will probably be Saturday before I get the main body printed. I'm expecting it to take 5.5+ hours. I did print out the tracks (traks?), guns, and hubs to hold the tracks on. While I have the blue filament in, I'm going ahead and printing some smaller things I've been meaning to do for a while but didn't have the right filament loaded for and was too lazy to swap out just for one or two small prints. So here are some pics of the tracks printing and the finished product, pre-cleanup.

The print job starts, laying down the brim to help secure the print job to the bed. I always use a brim and you'll see why in a couple of pics.


The brim is finished and the parts are printing:


Uh-oh! A problem with printers like this is they are extremely susceptible to temperature fluctuations and drafts. This can cause prints to peel up, especially at the edges. You can see the brim has lifted:


It's not a perfect fix but I keep clamps and spare brick pieces around for just such an occurrence. I clip the brick over the edge of the brim and it helps hold it down some to minimize warping of the part:


A close-up of the brick/clamp support:


Close to done printing. There's some warpage to the track where the brim started lifting, with it losing maybe 20% of its height on that edge but I can live with it.


Last couple of layers being laid down:


Printing is complete!


Parts removed from the build plate. I removed the interior brim from the track on the far right to show what they look like when ready to install:


The bottom side of the print job (the side that was directly on the build plate). The guns will need some fill removed from the holes that peg them onto the main body:


I'm leaving all the parts on the brim for now so they're easier to keep track of. I'll post cleaned up pics of them when I'm ready to assemble. Watch for the final print and assembly this weekend!

And printed! According to the timer on my printer, it took right at 5.5 hours to print the body, so the whole thing was about 7.5 hours or so. I'm deciding if I want to do any finishing to it, smoothing it, etc. or leave it as it is, or slice it again at a higher resolution and reprint. I kind of like the rough look for the fantasy-tech look. I will make some stickers for it to give it the completed look once I decide if this is the one I'm going with. No pics of it during printing because I noticed it starting to pull up again, so I enclosed the printer in my heat box to stabilize it. Looks like it's about time to replace the build material on the platform.

Comparing it to pics online of the original toy, I see I didn't get it quite as close as I thought I had, especially not the back of it. However, I'm happy enough with it. If I get to feeling froggy, I might modify it some to be more toy like.







Compared to my Battle Cat -- BC was a rough print to test the model. I was going to reprint at higher resolution, then MC announced their BC is coming, so this one is just a stand-in until then.




Climbing over an obstacle:

that turned out great!

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It is amazing.

I envy your skills.

Oh wow. That’s cool. And I agree, for armor the rougher texture at this scale works better than a smoother surface. I suppose you could do the guns at a higher resolution, but overall that works fine as is.

So what’s next?

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Oh, man; that's great.

Do that big dumb dinosaur skeleton that carried dudes around next!

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