Small Scale Military Headquarters

I decided that I could move a bit faster if I had my own equipment. This Panzer I Ausf A is the first item I decided to do. Most of the parts came out good, some I'm in the process of rebuilding this afternoon.

I hope to start assembling it over the weekend.


First run at various parts. Lots of tweaks to be done.


Loads and loads of tracks! Over 230...

Very cool Grunt! What is that, a Makergear 2 printer?
This Panzer is looking Great.
I look forward to seeing the progress on this piece. Any chance of a Panzer III?

Very nice !!

That looks great!!

Thanks guys. Yes the tracks are printing on a Makergear M2. It's really quite good. Not as good as Shapeways, but pretty close if you print larger parts. Yes, I would love to do both a Panzer II and III. I believe the techniques I'm learning with the PI will help a lot with that. The running gear and the tracks are a beast to assemble the way they are done now. Some tweaking will iron that out.

The prototype is looking good. More parts to attach and sanding to do. The really small parts still need to be sent to Shapeways, like the lamps and maybe the MG's. I like my brass MG's though.

Turret rotates 360, that was cool to work out.

Really looking great!

Wow man, you guys messing with 3D printers, you always inspire me. That looks just incredible man.

Made some progress:
- Running gear and tracks, including track hang, all done
- Hatch now has working hinges
- Redesigned Mufflers and rubber hoses
- Muffler guard frames done
- Front mud flaps
- Hans was able to get bath in between posts
- Long bracket thing that I don't know what it does was added to the side
- Lamps created, not attached

Left to do:
- Rear mud flaps
- Rear toolbox
- Muffler guard mesh cover
- Sand, prep and paint
- Floppy black poofy hat for Hans (no clue how I'm going to create this, help!)

Very Nice Grunt!
The early Panzers have been missing from the 1:18 lineup far to long. Well done!

Looks great. Sterling work!

grunt1 wrote:I decided that I could move a bit faster if I had my own equipment. This Panzer I Ausf A is the first item I decided to do.

@ grunt1,

Weldone! Looks like a nice CAD and 3D printing work. If I may say, I would recommend to focus your attention on how round are the wheels (in case you are planning to reprint the wheels or keep it in mind for any future CAD projects). Wheels seem to have angle-steping which should be smoothed with sandpaper now, while it could be easily avoided if CAD designed properly to create a smoother digital wheel model. If it is just the picture which makes it look like this, please accept my appologies for misunderstanding.

normandy wrote:Any chance of a Panzer III? The early Panzers have been missing from the 1:18 lineup far to long.

@ normandy (and to whom it may concern),

As far as I know, the PzKpfw III SdKfz 141 you asked for, is already available as a 1/16 scale model, by Heng Long, Imex etc. To have a look on some 1/16 scale Pz III pictures, click:

• HERE,
• HERE and
• HERE or just Google it.

On the other hand, if you like to stick on 1/18 scale instead of 1/16, I could upload it on Shapeways and purchase it from there. I've already CAD designed the Panzer PzKpfw I SdKfz 101, the PzKpfw II and the PzKpfw III SdKfz 141 few years before, as custom work for a European company specialized on resin model kits production under 1/35 scale and I guess it would not be a big problem to re-scale it under 1/18 or 1/16, but I think that due the high cost of FUD plastic matterial (which is best for miniatures & models) the production cost would not be as low as buying the forementioned 1/16 kit (which I think is an RC one). Have a look some screenshots of the CAD model by clicking:

• HERE,
• HERE,
• HERE and
• HERE.

PS. Into my previous text, I only mentioned the links of pictures instead of placing the full images here, in order to not disturb grunt1's thread by adding not-so-much-related pictures.

Nick, Thank you for the information and links. For me the scale difference between 1:18 and 1:16
is to much, I have a Tamiya 1:16 King tiger and a Pickelhaube 1:18 KT.........the difference for me is
unacceptable . I'll stick with 1:18.

Grunt, I'm looking forward to seeing your finished Panzer I.

Thanks Normandy and Nick. Your models look great and would be very welcome in 1:18. Shapeways would probably be cost prohibitive as we know but it would be cool to know you could have one if you wanted.

For some of my models I license existing geometry and then adapt it to 3D printing by making it manifold, watertight, adding working mechanical parts, etc..

This is why the first set of wheels on the Panzewr I were more polygonal than would be ideal and you as you noted they are not as round as they could be. They've become rounder as the model has progressed which you can see in the photos. The first approach I used was to try and increase the resolution of the existing mesh. In theory it's easier to do that than rebuild each part. That helped, but was far from perfect. It made some impact that you can see in the difference between the first pictures and the later pictures. The back of the turret had the same problem.

I ended up rebuilding the parts. The new ones are not on the model yet. Once I figured out a quick way to do the curve and surface rebuilds, it turned out to be easier than my original "beef up the part resolution" method.

Knowledge is power, but it takes time and effort.

Thanks for the encouragement and constructive feedback, keep it coming!

Hey Grunt ,

Are the tracks click together ?

They are glued together, but could easily be click together. I don't think click would hold them together very well, at least not with the printer I have and at this scale. The next project will have an option for pins, but it will be a Shapeways print.

The tracks are made of sections of link of various sizes eg: 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x and 12x which you can see somewhat on the picture above. When assembled, the bottom and top are one long flat piece and I used whichever section lengths worked best to fill in the rest. The hanging parts are all 1x.

As for the wheels for those of you interested, this is the final rebuild process I ended up with that provides the smoothest curves.