Current and Finished Projects > Land

1/35 Articulated tank

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Frank3k:
While building the Apocalypse tank I considered articulating it, but it just wasn't feasible with the location of the turret and the thickness of the plastic. Still, it sounded like a good idea.

I considered the Meng Toon tanks as a source for an articulated tank, but I wasn't sure of their size. In-box reviews of the (probably a type 99) Meng Kids New "Chinese Main Battle Tank" showed that it was pretty big.



I found a great build on Armorama showing that this kit can look pretty nice in the right hands.

During a sale at Sprue Bros, I got two of the tanks and sure enough, the tank is about 3/4 the length of the Tamiya M41. As seen in the Armorama link, it would have been easy to slap two of the tank hulls together, articulate them and modify one of the turrets.

Yeah, well, that's not what I did. I didn't like the (not very visible) simplified Russian/Chinese style road wheels, so I modified the tracks to accept 1/35 M1 Abrams wheels, provided by Jeff Fontaine (thanks, Jeff!). That was a pretty easy mod, but the tracks now looked like crap... so I cut off the track connectors from several runs of the Abrams tracks and made cutouts in the Meng tracks (very soft plastic, so easy to do) for the connectors.

For the articulation, I had a ball joint that I'd designed for an LED light (for my Donegal visor), so I modified the design and printed out a version to connect the two tanks. It worked well:



I extended one of the kit turrets and used one of the left over barrels from the Apocalypse tank and got this:





Ehhhh...

I thought an unmanned turret might look good, and I found this image in a Secret Projects Forum thread:



So I started cutting plastic while watching a marathon of old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Youtube. I also modified the turret connection to bring the turret up a bit:



Climbing the piles of junk on my desk:





This is where I am today. The M113 hatch is just a place holder :





 I have to figure out a crew layout - the tracks are pretty wide, so the crew will either need a tandem seating arrangement (driver, tank commander, gunner) in the front half or driver and tank commander side by side with the gunner behind them. Moving the gunner to the rear hull may also work.

apophenia:
Great approach for an articulated tank, Frank! And love you ball-and-socket joint  :D

Buzzbomb:
Thinking outside box  :D :D

Love the idea

LemonJello:
That is looking sharp!

Old Wombat:
Interesting. Looks to be a contender for a UGV/Autonymous AI Tank.

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