[Ayrton]

Hello everyone,

I started to be interested in the 3D medeling and the 3D printing around a year and a half ago. In my dad's place, I saw different 3D printed cars he bought and I was quite amazed by the quality of these bodies. Then I decided to learn how to model and print my own cars and I already created different ones.

I decided to begin my journey with TCR cars, for various reasons: these are cars we can't find in the slot car market (only Scalextric did some BTCCs, but no TCRs), these are modern cars so there are plenty of pictures to help me in the modeling phase and there are many different cars from many constructors (here is a list of the 26 homologated cars: CARS - TCR HUB)

There is a very important to me: to make sure that these bodies can run as well as possible. That's why I have decided to adapt my bodies to high performance chassis that are easily available on the market! For these TCRs, all bodies are adapted to the Slot.it Porsche 962 chassis. Wheelbase of this chassis is close to the TCR cars which is the most important thing to chose the right chassis. Also, as I want to see these cars as efficient as possible I take care about the body weight, without neglecting robustness.

Let me introduce you the 4 cars I already printed until today!

The Cupra Leon Competicion was the very first one I did. The paint was inspired by old WTCC (around 2005) Seat Leon and made by my dad:

Then, I built the Honda Civic FK8. Livery from TCR Asutralia:

The Alfa Romeo Giulietta Veloce (the favorite TCR model from my dad) was the 3rd one:

The latest body I printed is the Audi RS3 LMS (the newest version of it). Painting isn't finished yet, we have some issues with the decals:

Last but not least, some pictures of the 4 cars together:

I should take a break with the TCR cars, my new target is to print the 3 new WRC cars (Toyota Yaris, Hyundai i20 and Ford Puma). The Yaris is almost finished, I'll post something in a near future when it will be 100% over.

Thanks for the reading, feel free to ask me if you have any question!

 

[Ayrton]

Thanks a lot for your message LMP, I appreciate it!

The TCR category is not the most dreamy one I guess. Touring cars aren't as exciting as GT cars or single seaters. Also I'm not sure that WTCR is as attractive as WTCC or DTM were in the middle for the 2000's. Cars aren't as iconic as 90's BTCCs either, but the interesting thing with TCR class is the fact that you can see the same car in European championships, in Japan, USA, Australia and in the World Championship too.

About the chassis, I never expected the 962 chassis to work well with these bodies, but as surprising as it may be. The Slot.it chassis has a 84mm wheelbase which is a 2688mm (84x32) wheelbase in scale 1. The Audi has a 2665mm wheelbase, 2700mm for the Honda, but indeed the Alfa Romeo is shorter with a 2625mm wheelbase. I cheated a little bit on this one to have the same chassis than the other TCR cars 🤐

There are several reasons about why I didn't do my own 3D chassis. First of all, I'm really new to 3D modeling and printing as I started to learn the modeling a year ago and bought my printer in October 2021.My printer is a resin printer and doing resin chassis would not work well. I would need a FDM printer (to print plastic parts), and I wanted to focus on one technology only at the beggining. Also, my goal is to make these cars enjoyable to play with. With a slot.it, NSR, Sideways or Scaleauto chassis, I know it could work well (and I even was surprised of how well does it work!). Here are some pictures of the chassis and the bodies:

That being said, I know that I will invest in a FDM printer and learn to design chassis in a near future because one of my 2023 projects is to start to work on Hypercars/LMDH and there isn't any existing chassis in the slot car market with a wheelbase as large as Hypercars are.

These TCR are the very first cars I worked on, I hope to improve in the future!

 

[Ayrton]

Well indeed I didn't plan to share/sell my 3D files, but I might change my mind if people are interested in them.

The Alfa was indeed a bit of "slotification" as we really wanted to allow different cars to be really close in term of performances. This is also why I was careful about the body weight to don't have big differences between cars from a same category.

I take it as a bonus: the cars should have similar performance - similar to the Australian super V8.
You did a good job with the Alfa preserving the overall dimensions (much better job that Ford did with their V8 Mustang).

Who knows, maybe I'll work on the Supercars Gen3 soon, Ilove this championship (I was the French commentator of it between 2017 & 2019) 😄

About the windows, I indeed print a resin mould an then doing some vaccum forming with my oven. Result is quite good but could be improved with a better vaccum forming system.

 

[Ayrton]

I think that's the way forward for any 3d designer. Printers are only going to move toward ubiquity. Even if the technology itself changes, there will be a lot less money to be made (if that's even a goal) in the selling of prints, but there will always be a need for good models to print.

Hell no, making money is not a goal! I decided to start modeling and printing slot cars because I found that great and I've a lot of fun with that activity. Making them drivable was really a nice moment! I'll see to put some files soon, first of all I have to tidy up my folders.

Great job Ayrton!
I'm sure with the newest LMDH and Hypercars you will have many fans!

I hope to be able to work on them early 2023! WRC 2022 are the priority at the moment, then I need to buy a new printer to make my own Hypercars cassis and learn the FDM technology to make efficent chassis, and finally I'll be able to modelise these new cars!

Hi Ayrton,
Very impressive work.

I'd like to ask about the resin printing if I may?
Did you start your resin printing journey with these cars or was that something you already understood?
How long did it take to get to grips with the printing and once you've mastered it do you get perfect results every time?
Finally, what printer do you have?

Thanks a lot! I indeed started my printing journey with these cars. To be honest, I didn't struggle that much to make clean prints. Making clean prints was way easier to understand than learning Blender from scratch.
The very first Cupra I printed was a success (I had issue on the 3D model, but nothing linked to the printing aera). I had some diverse issues, but it was part of the learning and I found a very active an helpful community on Reddit for example. I bought an Elegoo Mars 2 which is a very popular brand with an active community so I've succeeded to solve every issues I faced!