Electric Car Model Wheels In The Making

The 1/6th scale electric car model project continues today with the making of some rather large wheels that are going together well and are time consuming to print. 

 This photo is of one of the front wheel rim assemblies that is just stacked up at this point to show you what it all looks like without the tire sections in place.  There is a small outer rim then the center five spoked hub and then a larger rear rim.  These three pieces took 3 1/2 hours to print on the Makerbot 3D printer.  

This photo shows about half of the components that I printed today.  The white disks with all of the holes are for the disk brakes that will be in the model. The black disk will be in all three wheel assemblies and are spacers to mount the brake calipers in the wheel assemblies.

This photo shows the before and after sanding detail of the center hubs for the wheels .  Once the wheels have been sanded smooth they look very much like a cast plastic part.  

After a short discussion with my brother this afternoon I started printing the tires for the wheel assemblies so that each half of the tire were a mirror image of one another. (there are two pieces for each tire) so that the tread would be correct with a "V" form running through it.  This was more correct than having both sides of the tire being exactly the same.  Just looks a lot better.  Thanks Denny!

This gives you a good idea of how large these tires/rim assembly really is.  The outer diameter of the tire is 3 3/4 inches.  With the parts being this large it is easy to get some real detail in the electric car model.  The lower photo shows the rim cavity that will be filled with the disk brake, caliper and center hub.  The center hub will mount to a full working suspension and front rack and pinion steering. These parts will also allow for mounting of the front fenders. The assemblies are tight enough when put together that no glue is needed to keep everything in place.  The two tire pieces actually hold the entire assembly together.  
  I finalized the design of the front suspension and the tweaked the rack and pinion also today on the computer model.  Hours at this point in just design is around 70 hours so it will be interesting to see how many hours I will have in this model once I have completed it.  

  The one nice thing about this model over the Semi and trailer assembly I did some time back is that there are fewer parts and they are larger.  It got pretty boring building some of the semi just because there were so many parts that were the same and had to be printed over and over again. (22 wheel assemblies!)  Once I get all the wheels printed I will start printing the front suspension and chassis parts.  Should be interesting and fun at the same time.  I am more than happy with the wheels so far as these assemblies alone are quite impressive with the detail that are in them.