100% 3D Printed Tank Tracks

FAQs

If you have any questions please send us an email at customerdelight@rigid.ink.

Got a question about rigid.ink? We’ve compiled the most common questions we get, and answered them here. If you still can’t see what you’re looking for, please don’t hesitate to ask us.

What does your 60-day guarantee actually mean?

We’re so confident you’ll love your rigid.ink we have a relaxed 60-day returns policy.

If after you’ve adjusted your printer settings (as advised) you’re not happy with the filament for whatever reason, you can send it back.

You could say our returns are about as hassle-free as a nice massage. Almost. Please just email us before you send it back though for instructions.

How fast is your shipping?

Our standard (and free shipping, over £65) is pretty quick. We use a variety of fast couriers depending on what you’ve ordered. We dispatch all orders same working day if ordered before 2:30pm (UK). This means a lot of orders do arrive the next working day.

UK orders only take 1-3 days in most cases. For orders to Europe around 3-5 working days, and orders to USA/rest of world around 4-10 working days. If you really need something guaranteed next-day delivery inside the UK you can opt for this at checkout.

I’m a little confused, should I buy your PLA or ABS?

Short answer: Usually if you’re not sure, you’ll probably just want to go with PLA. Our PLA is significantly stronger than other brands, very easy to print with (heated bed not required) and long lasting. If however you need something a little harder wearing, and your printer has a heated bed – you might want to go for the ABS.

What temperature should I print my rigid.ink?

This varies between materials, so please check the recommendations on the specific product page. Generally, due to the pure nature and high grade of our raw materials your extruder setting wants to be a little lower than normal. For example, our PLA extrudes best at around 180-185°C depending on what printer you’re using. Heated bed is not necessary for our PLA, but you can use one at below 45°C. Our ABS works well from between 230-250°C, with a heated bed of 90C-95°C (no higher!).

Please allow for the fact that some 3d printers currently on the market don’t actually have very accurate thermostat readings and so some degree of adjustment is nearly always needed to get the best results when trying a new brand of filament. Different printers print rigid.ink best at different settings, so don’t be afraid to experiment.

I don’t have a heated bed, is this a problem?

With PLA, no. All other materials (including Flex PLA) require a heated bed to avoid warping during those first few layers.

Do we need to use blue tape / hairspray?

Not often. You’ll find your rigid.ink sticks well to most build surfaces. If printing direct to glass, your best bet would be to use a good quality glue stick and a apply a thin even layer to your bed before printing. If this doesn’t work, try blue painters tape, Kapton tape or hairspray.

My 3D printer manufacture recommends only using their filament – can I use rigid.ink?

Short answer: Absolutely! As long as your printer does not have an E-PROM chip, rigid.ink will work with any 1.75, 2.85 and 3.0mm FDM and FFF 3D printer. You’ll know if your printer uses sneaky E-PROM chips because it magically knows how much filament you have left and if you’ve changed the cartridge.

You will find rigid.ink outperforms your printer manufacture’s “recommended” filament (we promise, or your money back) and costs a fraction of the price.

Will your spools fit my printer?

Most likely, as our 1KG spools are fairly normally sized. The exact dimensions are: 20cm total diameter, 7.5cm wide and 5.5cm inner hole diameter.

Need an adaptor to fit your spool holder? You can find the file, designed by one of our lovely customer’s here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1052160

I want to use rigid.ink in my 3D Pen – will it work?

Yes, but please take note to buy the right size for your 3D Pen. You will likely want to use PLA instead of ABS when using a pen. Also if you’re using your rigid.ink and it was near the end of a spool, it might be slightly more tightly coiled. If this is causing problems with your pen, simply heat up the filament a little to straighten it out enough to feed it freely into your pen.

I’m looking for 3.0mm filament, will your 2.85mm diameter fit?

Absolutely; we phased out the 3.0mm size in favour of the new 2.85mm filament. There is no difference when printing our 2.85mm filament through a 3.0mm printer – we just wanted to cater for those with 2.85mm printers also.

My filament printed, but then bubbled?

This is caused by the filament absorbing too much moisture. Contact us to see what we can do for you, also check out the storage instructions below and our article - How to keep your 3D printer filament dry & what to do if it's not

What’s the best way to handle and store rigid.ink?

3D printer filaments in general are sensitive to water absorption, especially PLA. To keep your rigid.ink fresh for longer, keep it sealed with the desiccant in the zip-lock bag provided. rigid.ink is best kept in a cool try area, away from direct sunlight.

Will you be stocking wood or metal filaments soon?

Not at the moment we're afraid, although we do offer silver and gold metallic effect filaments in both ABS and PLA.

How does your loyalty program work?

When you checkout and complete your order, you'll be given an option to create a customer account (once order is complete) - you'll also get a 250 point bonus for doing so. After enough points have accumulated, you can claim back rewards of up to £20 per order. One discount code per order.

You will receive 5 points for every £1 spent.

These vouchers will be emailed to you, and take the ex VAT price off. If you pay VAT, it will be represented as a round figure deduction (eg. £5 off the total) but if you're a EU business or RoW customer, the checkout will deduct the VAT element for you, your voucher will represent the ex VAT amount (e.g less 20%, or £4.17).

Working Tank Tracks!

Download your own 100% 3D Printed Tank Tracks

Sometimes it’s nice to really show off what 3D printers are capable of, and we think these 100% 3D printed tank tracks (no metal bearings or metal shafts) do just that.

In this article, I’m going to tell you how we designed and printed these open source tracks. (I’ll put the link to the downloadable files at the end of this article, feel free to download and modify at your leisure).

Apart from being really easy to print, these tank tracks display a range of 3D printing design considerations and are an education on making the most of the various filament materials available to you.

But wait, it gets better.

This entire project can be printed without any supports. With a well dialed in printer, you can expect to easily get fantastically finished tracks just like ours in the photo.

It’s worth noting that these tracks were originally designed as a demo to show off our range of rigid.ink 3D filaments, but with some slight modifications we don’t see why they could not be used for an actual model tank, or tracked robot design.

The materials we used were Translucent Green PETG for the tracks and “organic” adjustable suspension, black TPU for the track treads, acetone smoothed Silver ABS for the wheels and black Nylon for the bushings.

It was important these bushings were low friction, so Nylon’s low friction coefficient worked brilliantly.

You don’t need to use the same materials we used – you can print everything in PLA if you like. We just concluded that this mix of materials was the best for our intended purpose.

In the end, the tracks ran almost continuously for 3 days for the TCT show where we exhibited them. So it’s safe to say the design and material choices worked out great for the purpose intended.

Whether or not they’d withstand rolling over a landmine in the field is another question. Although we suggest you don’t try to find out.

First, I sketched up some extremely rudimentary drawings, to illustrate roughly what we were looking to achieve.

You'll see here what exactly I mean by "extremely rudimentary".

Then the design wiz Jason Suter got to work crafting my best masterpieces into the individual models to create the whole model. It's safe to say from my sketches, he did the majority of the work here.

To create a complex design with multiple moving components that need to be assembled after printing to not just print reliably, but also be assembled easily and work well enough for purpose takes a considerable level of design skill.

We’ll be doing a more thorough write up of how each component was designed at a later date, so watch this space. Explaining the design considerations and process of creating interlocking designs with just the right tolerances for 3D printing is beyond the scope of this article.

This whole concept is made from just 12 individual designs. You can see that it’s of a modular layout (any other way of saying this more simply?). You can easily increase the size and length of the tracks by simply printing more track and suspension components.

My printing recommendations for the tracks

Here are the quantities and the material we printed each component in:

PETG was chosen for most components due to its durability (strong but with a very slight flex) and very good layer adhesion. Especially appropriate for the bolts, where tightening them will force the layers to split with a weaker material.
Axle [Trans Black PETG] x 1
Axle Carrier [Trans Green PETG] x 2
Bolt [Opaque Black PETG] x 4
Bushing [Black Nylon] x 8
Rocker Wheel Inner [Silver ABS, acetone smoothed] x 2
Rocker Wheel Outer [Silver ABS, acetone smoothed] x 2
Roller Wheel [Silver ABS, acetone smoothed] x 1
Segment [Trans Green PETG] x 47
Sprocket [Silver ABS, acetone smoothed] x 1
Suspension Arm [Trans Black PETG] x 2
Suspension Mount [Trans Green PETG] x 2
Track Pad [Black TPU] x 47

I’d recommend printing the Bolts at 100% infill and slightly hotter for extra strength, it’s also worth having a few spares. If printed in PETG, The Suspension Arms should also be printed slightly hotter.

If you opt to print these in something flexible, you may wish to print in 100% infill for enough stiffness to support the tank/robot they’ll be under.

If you plan to print your tracks in the same materials as we used, it makes sense to spend a few minutes making the most of your print bed area printing duplicate items, or mixed objects of the same material.

How many segments can you arrange on the bed, without overcrowding, leading to a potentially higher failure rate?

The oversized 3D printer-friendly bolts fit together easily yet snugly.

The model has a reassuringly low amount of slackness to it.

Make sure you take care assembling the Roller Wheel and Sprocket onto the Axle, aligning them up and slotting the grooves home before tightening with the bolt. There are two Nylon bushings that go into each wheeled section.

Take care to assemble the Segments into each other, you need to place them into the corresponding grooves on each one by angling at 90° before it will slot in. After you’ve built the tracks, then add the clip-on grips.

You’ll notice the ratcheting on the Suspension Arms and Suspension Mounts for adjustment.

We needed to fine tune how tight the tracks were, so carefully used a heat gun to lightly add more bend to the Suspension Arms, which also allowed better suspension. Be careful if you opt to do something similar.

We used an RC car wheel 12mm adaptor to power the tracks from a cheap worm gear motor from eBay.

Make sure you choose an RPM that suits. Our first motor was a 100rpm output, which gave the tracks around a scale speed of 30 KPH.

This wasn’t stupidly fast, but a fast pace and soon burnt out the motor. The second motor, identical just with a higher torque, lower ratio output of 25rpm lasted indefinitely and didn’t get hot. You can of course use a simple motor driver to control speed.

There you have it. To download the files and have a go printing it yourself, click the links below.

Bolt STL
Roller Wheel STL
Sprocket STL
Bushing STL
Suspension Mount STL
Suspension Arms STL
Rocker Wheel Inner STL
Rocker Wheel Outer STL
Axle STL
Axle Carrier STL
Segment STL
Track Pad STL

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