Printing and building a 3DSets.com Landy

This is post #1 on this project, here's a list of them all.

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Introduction

I've had my Creality Ender 3 Pro for ~2.5 years now, and have printed a range of useful and interesting things. But I've not yet printed something big with it. Other people print helmets or swords from games and other fantasy worlds, but those have never resonated with me.

And then I stumbled upon this: Model 5: Landy 4x4 Wagon

And that struck a chord.

See, I own a 2001 Land Rover Defender TD5. It's our holiday vehicle, and it's given us many kilometers of joy and taken us to places most other cars wouldn't.

So when I saw the model RC one, I just knew I had to build one. I told the wife our almost 2 year old son will love it, but in reality it's going to be a couple of years before he can appreciate and play with it. Which means by then I'd have built him his own one 😉.

A short list of its most exciting features:

• 54 cm long, 24.5 cm wide (including mirrors), 22.5 cm high
• Model weighs roughly 3,5 kg (including battery)
• Permanent 4 wheel drive, all differentials are in the locked state
• Remote controlled steering and speed control
• Suspension with real springs and dampers for good off-road capabilities
• Reduction gearbox with 1:40 gear ratio for slow motion and high torque
• Doors, hood, and trunk can be manually opened

Sourcing parts

This is still an ongoing task, as it's not that easy to find everything you need for the model in South Africa. And shipping costs from Aliexpress/Amazon is too high to just conveniently order it all.

Filament

The build guide states you need ~3kg of PLA to print this model; 2kg for the chassis and gearbox/drivetrain, and 1kg for the body.

I've had great success with eSun's PLA+ filament in the past, it just prints without any issues.

But locally, the shop that supplies it is located in Durban. And it just so happens that Durban was not a very good place to be at the time I wanted to order.

So I started looking around for other options, and found a highly recommended locally manufactured filament: Funkiments. They unfortunately do not have a green I'd like for the body, but I ordered 2kg of black and 1kg of white PLA.

One snag, their Funkiments filament does not come on a spool. You need to either order 2 hardboard sides and print a core, or print a whole spool.

The hardboard sides were sold out, so I had to print the whole thing, which took more than 24 hours in printing time in total.

But I now have a spool, and could continue with printing the calibration part, which is Print 0 in the list of 39 prints for the model.

Bearings

28 x 6700ZZ bearings.

I went to a local bearing shop, and they charge R75 (~$6) for one bearing, which works out to R2100 ($150) in total. That's half the price of a Tamiya kit that includes almost everything you need to build an RC Landy...

So I bought just one bearing from them, to do calibration with, and will try and find the rest somewhere else.

I printed Print 0, the calibration block, on 100% scale, which was too tight. Then on 101% which was too loose. So then tried 100,5%, which resulted in a fit which was just right.

Third time's the charm, and looks like I have to print all the parts at 100,5% scale for a snug fit.

I managed to find 19 more at a reasonable price at a hobby shop, so need only 8 more.

Screws and nuts

I went to two bolts and nuts stores, and managed to find almost everything I need.

Only need the following now:

• 15 x M2x6
• 6 x M2x8
• 6 x M2x12
• 6 x M2x14

The rest

After a lot of basket compiling and reading about Aramex Global Shopper on forums, I decided to suck it up and go to a rather big hobby shop nearby.

They had almost everything I needed, albeit at a bit of a premium compared to the prices I was used to Aliexpress.

Radio and receiver

Still need to buy this, forgot about it at the hobby shop. Woops.

Tires

Crawler tires are expensive! And there's a lot of options, so I decided to wait until I have the rims printed, to do some fitting before buying.