Fastest RC Snowcat! - Injection Molded Tracks Prototype #1

[Applause] big thanks to simplisafe for sponsoring this video more on them later ahoy there daniel and colin here hiking through the arctic say hi colin hello the cool thing about washington state is even though it's june we're still able to find snow we came up here to paradise ranger station at mount rainier and we got the prototype snow cat and we're gonna do a little testing [Music] so this prototype is working really well here's a look back at all the iterations that it took to get here before we dive into prototyping let's cover the scope of this project initially the goal was to make injection molded tracks that kickstarter backers would be able to purchase at cost in return for donating towards the mold then i design another 3d printed snow cat similar to my first one that people could use with the new and improved tracks since we exceeded the funding goal by over 400 percent i expanded the project to be a full snow cat kit that includes the chassis and drivetrain components kickstarter backers will be able to purchase it all at cost this kit will include all of the hardware and motors needed to build the vehicle but there are still a lot of 3d printed components that they will need to print themselves they will also still have the option to buy the tracks alone if they want so now let's rewind to mid-january when i had just tested some mjf printed prototype track links with a power drill they seemed to work pretty well so i green lighted the injection mold creation and got to work designing the snow cat chassis and drivetrain my goal was to fit the entire drivetrain in between the tracks so that it can drive upside down this way it's a much more versatile vehicle some people can use it as a multi-purpose robotics platform and others can 3d print a snow cap body that attaches to the top for a more scale model in order to fit the whole gearbox inside the tracks it needs to be very compact my first attempt was a two-stage belt drive reduction where the motor and middle stage were able to slide back and forth this would allow uniform belt tensioning by pulling the motor back with a spring ultimately it didn't work out because i couldn't fit in a big enough reduction ratio and the belts were kind of finicky it probably would have been pretty quiet though if it did work out next i tried a fully 3d printed gear box it was a three stage reduction and even the spur gears were 3d printed this worked fine on my first snow tank that used a smaller motor but the 4240 600 kv motors i'm using here for this version are just too powerful the spur gear would melt at high speeds and it was super noisy that's going to be a problem the gears welded themselves together at this time i was doing a lot of rpm testing to determine what gear ratio i would need simultaneously the mold company was hard at work these are copper positives that were used for electrode machining of the steel mold this is also referred to as edm machining at this point i still had quite a bit of prototyping to do so i got the nuke reality cr-10 smart 3d printer it's got some big improvements over my old cr-10 including a touchscreen auto bed leveling wi-fi connectivity dual z-axis lead screws and most importantly a car bumper inspired design i got it all assembled and started printing the next round of prototypes the third iteration of the drivetrain design is the latest it's a two-stage reduction with a machined gear set on the first stage and a 3d printed gear set on the second stage the total reduction ratio is 17.6 to 1. this design uses 15 millimeter aluminum tubes as the front and back axles i was able to prototype these on the lathe at freefly it uses 12 millimeter aluminum rods as the mid wheel axles the body shell will be vacuum formed out of polycarbonate or petg not sure which i'll use yet this will act as a durable frame and make it pretty easy to seal the vehicle so that it's water resistant all the internal 3d printed frame components are bolted together with m3 heat stake inserts these are pretty easy to install with just a normal soldering iron i'm planning on making a rubber seal that will go in between the two shell halves here's a little prototype section of it that i printed out of tpu in late april i got the first injection molded track samples in these were cool to see but they had a few issues with warping and hole alignment they also had bronze bushings with a smooth outer diameter that ended up being too difficult to fixture during the injection molding process in late may i got the second set of samples which had all these problems fixed for this batch i designed a new knurled bushing that is easier to mold in place and probably more robust overall these are t0 samples which means the mold has not yet been textured so they're not cosmetically representative of the final product each track link with hardware weighs 40 grams i got 104 pieces of this same batch just enough to build up one set of tracks to test on the prototype after assembling them i ran into another hole alignment issue which causes the full track to be slightly twisted the injection molding company is working to fix this now but it doesn't seem to affect functionality at all on the prototype after assembling the tracks i finally had everything i needed to assemble the very first working prototype the center roller wheels are printed with tpu which allows them to flex a little bit it kind of gives the vehicle a little bit of suspension an elaborate suspension system would be cool but it's pretty unnecessary for driving in soft snow which is what this vehicle is designed for and it would make the parts count go up significantly here are some clips of the very first test [Music] drive let your tank won't be able to drift spanish huh banji's been saying that he's gonna build a better tank than me and then i'm a bad tank builder i did say you're a bad tank builder i don't remember that first part though i haven't seen your tank yet banj mine's drifting donuts around the driveway bust it out come on oh no [Applause] i printed one of these wheels with a single line wall thickness just as a test print and then i ended up using it on the prototype so that's probably what failed yep that's the single line one see it's like not a very strong part i can crush it with my hands oh yeah so that's what failed false alarm thought the track broke but it didn't these things are super robust super diesel those things are bulletproof what do you think binge first impressions the new track jesus christ that's actually kind of heavy now we're gonna go get some shots with the free fly wave camera [Applause] [Music] we're transcoding the freefly wave footage here with this nice new application that was written by none other than the banji man himself nice job binge thanks pretty sick the first test drive exposed a few issues that needed to be fixed first one of the nylon gears stripped out i think this was primarily due to poor gear meshing and the poor gear meshing was caused by an oversized hole on the main gear that made it fit too loosely on the shaft to fix this on the prototype i filed out the center of one of the track bushings to use it as a spacer this held the gear more tightly on the shaft to fix potential gear meshing problems in the long run i gave the motor mount one millimeter of adjustability i also have steel prototype gears on order switching from nylon to steel on the 93 tooth gear would increase cost by 11 and 36 cents per vehicle think it's worth it i'm not sure yet but i'll keep on testing to see how long the nylon gears last the next issue was that the 3d printed drive gears and drive wheels were getting kind of loose on their shafts my original plan was to have screws go through holes in the 3d printed parts and thread into the tapped holes on the shafts i think this could potentially work if the alignment was right but ultimately it's not quite as robust as i was hoping for the next version we'll use a machined aluminum shaft hub that's prototyped in orange pla here that will clamp onto the shaft and then fit into the drive wheel and gear it will be held in place by mounting holes that go through the back even the pla prototype is probably durable enough for a test drive so i think the aluminum version would be super robust not only will this vehicle be great for exploring the snowy mountains but it can also be used as a security patrol rover to keep your home safe [Applause] turns out this use case was a bit too risky for my achilles tendons so i switched to simply safe instead simply safe is a new age home security system that is easy to use and super effective you just order it online or over the phone and it's delivered right to your home setup is super easy and takes under an hour just follow the simple step-by-step instructions they offer sensors to cover every window room and door plus lots of great extras like water sensors temperature sensors and hd cameras it's all really easy to use and you get around the clock protection for just 50 cents a day with no contracts their monitoring service will immediately be alerted if anything goes wrong and if a threat is detected they will call the police or fire department i've had this system installed in my home for months and i can tell you it definitely works visit simplysafe.comrc test flight to learn more now back to the video [Applause] i just put a 6 cell battery in it all the previous tests were done with a 4 cell battery so we're going to see how fast it'll go now and also i just got the new insta360 one x2 camera so i mounted that up and we're gonna see how it looks [Music] [Music] [Music] so so check this out i was actually just one injection molded track link short from being able to complete this prototype vehicle so this one link right here is mjf printed it's still nylon like the injection molded links but it doesn't have any glass fiber in it you can see just by looking at the top that it's a lot more beat up than the injection molded wings it's cool to be able to see how much more durable the injection molded plastic is now back to mount rainier for some more snow testing so the main purpose of today's test is to verify that these tracks work well in the snow a lot of the times with other track designs that i've tested there will be problems with snow getting jammed up in the tracks and then the tracks fall off but we came up here to make sure that everything runs smoothly and the snow gets pushed through the holes in the tracks where the gear teeth engage with them i think the snow consistency today is going to be a great test because it kind of is really warm and dense and it's sticky so it would like jam up tracks so it'll be a good like worst case scenario test to see if these work well or cat not driving in the snow the snow cat is driving in the snow kickstarter funded brand new tracks the old ones got too many cracks the snow cat is thriving in the snow new tracks are working very well their beefy macho strong robust as hell glass-filled nylon is injection molded and it's stronger than hulk hogan new tracks are working very well daniel wants you to know he is working tirelessly to make this product as robust as possible 3d printed gears were melting down drive belts could not get enough reduction nylon gears were stripping off daniel took a break in heel of town [Music] a vacuum formed chassis in the world in the mind of daniel it's still look when the designer's finalized production will be maximized and onward the snow cap project will learn it's a really steep hill ah er let's pause right there see how it can't go up the hill yep this performance is unacceptable i thought about this problem during the initial track design and included these little holes that we can melt steel spikes into this should help quite a bit in icy conditions this rod is too small but you get the idea back to the drive it looks like we've got quite a bit of snow building up in between the tracks um and it's super dense snow but it's not building up or the tracks engage with the drive wheels so that's all that really matters more like rock bouncing so this is why snow tracks are generally not the best for non-snowy conditions because you get stuff stuck in all these little slits like they just happened again look at that this stick is just like caught right in that slit gotta get it out of there there we go so now i'm on a walk and we'll talk to you about some additional things i spent a lot of time trying to get the gear ratio right and i'm pretty happy with how it turned out it would really complicate things mechanically if i were to offer different gear ratio versions so instead i thought it might be more practical to offer different motor kvs for people who wanted more torque or less speed or more speed or whatever this version that i was testing today was 600 kv and i have samples of 300 kv motors also so people could have that option that would give you just more torque and less speed another thing is during this video i showed it driving on not snow surfaces quite a bit but it is totally designed for soft snow there's no suspension on it and that's really the main reason why it doesn't do super well on bumpy surfaces these tracks are really designed for snow you saw the clip of how the vines or stems or whatever can kind of get caught in between the track links but it would totally be possible to trim the ends off the tracks and make them narrower and then they wouldn't get caught on things and it could be really good for off-road use on not snowy surfaces so that could be a project for the future we'll see not sure oh yeah body options so this kit is going to be like a base platform that people can take and do whatever they want with i think it would be really cool to design a snow cat body that would go on top of this vehicle and then it would be more like a scale snow cat um but i probably won't take the time to do that myself so i kind of want to like crowd source that part if you're potentially interested in designing bodies for this thing check the kickstarter wow look i found a book i found multiple books weird love lights and night photography low light and night photography what the heck that'd be a good coffee table book the heart of the dragon someone's driver's license what the hell happened here i feel like i'm gonna find a dead body in a sec so if you might be interested in designing a body for this vehicle follow along on the kickstarter page i'll periodically be posting updates and eventually i'll probably post the dimensions of the top vacuum formed chassis on there so that people have dimensions and they can build a body that will just bolt right on top that'll be fun and i think people will probably come up with some cool stuff like not just traditional snow cat designs but like all sorts of vehicles and weird things so i'll probably then choose my favorite few bodies and print them out to use in the final video as far as the timeline goes i'm assuming these kits will probably be ready for people to start purchasing and maybe like i want to say two to three months the prototyping process is pretty slow it takes a while to get samples back from the suppliers but the design is pretty mature and the most time consuming part of the process is over which is getting the injection molded tracks made so it shouldn't be too much longer now yeah it'll probably be like late summer when this thing launches which is just in time for a snow cat you know it's going to be nice and hot no snow anywhere in sight but hey that's kind of just the way it goes that's it for this video big thanks to all the kickstarter backers who donated money towards the mold cost and made all this possible that's all for now thanks for watching bye

Channel: rctestflight

Views: 231,642

Keywords: snowcat, rc, fpv, kickstarter, injection molded, tracks, track, remote control, creality, CR-10 Smart

Id: xE1j1BXLct4

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021