The Panzerkampfwagen E-100, Part 3

As I'm writing this, the final tube sections for the barrel are printing. The sound of my machine whirring away is a bit distracting, but I hope to have a new dedicated workspace again soon and will no longer have to share a room with it. Running out of filament, but I should have enough to finish it off.

But back to the story.

By the end of August, I had gotten to the point where parts of the tank were ready to print. I started with the turret, and it became the first piece of the project to take physical form. The one year anniversary of this event is coming up in a few days on the 31st, in fact.

 

 

I made my first mistakes here; the most obvious being those layer lines on the turret cheek panel. This was remedied with a copious amount of sanding, but future versions will have the rangefinders printed as a separate piece so that it can be printed with the external side flat on print bed. (I'd like to have removable, interchangeable versions but we'll see how it pans out.)

The less obvious mistake is that the holes I modeled to attach the large Heng Long turret ring gear aren't really in the right places as my measurements were bad. This didn't matter in the long run since I ended up printing a separate turret ring piece to fit between the two, which allowed me to rectify this.

 Lacking the dimensions for loader's hatch, the roof remains unprinted for the time being. I still need to order a number of parts, including including the metal königstiger hatch made by Mato I intend to use. Also on the list is metal exhaust pipes and a cannon smoke & flash unit, as I don't plan on fitting a bb unit.