Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Tips and tricks about building a car. painting it a making it run smooth.
Ned
Posts: 368
Joined: Sun 13. Apr 2014 01:02
Location: Sedona, AZ USA

Re: Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Post by Ned »

I accidentally learned about magracing in April of last year when I was researching slot cars online while looking for a hobby, now that I’m retired. Many features of magracing appealed to me, especially the absence of a slot and electrical wires in the track because I wanted to locate my track permanently outside, unprotected from the weather. Two things that did not appeal to me were the lack of ready-to-run cars and the lack of finely detailed bodies.

Nevertheless, I placed an order with Wes for 2 cars and controller/transmitters plus some other parts. Looking back, I’m certain that if I had had the option to buy ready-to-run vac formed cars as depicted in the photos on Wes’s website or the unfinished body kits which I did in fact buy, I would have ordered at least one ready-to-run painted car, even if it cost $20 USD more. Now that I know that Wes’s system works very well, even in the case of an outdoor garden track, and knowing the difficulty involved finding, buying, and modifying highly detailed bodies to fit the mag chassis, I’d gladly pay and extra $35 USD for a ready-to-run car with a detailed body as in the photos below.

Because of my strong preference for detailed bodies, I ordered 2 slot car bodies 6 days ago on ebay. Received both yesterday.

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Paid $14 USD including shipping for the used Hornby 1998 silver Mercedes CLK LM which I won at auction. It’s in excellent condition. It weighs a heavy 40 gr.

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Paid asking price of $12 USD including shipping for new SCX 2002 white Audi R8. It weighs only 18 gr. :)

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By way of comparison, a standard painted vac formed mag racer body weighs 9g -12 gr.

The width of both models pictured above is extremely accurate and the same, which is true of the full scale race cars. The front track (tread) of a standard 1/32 mag racer is 2.0”, which is 64” at 1:1 scale. The rear track of the standard mag racer is slightly less that 2”, about 61” at 1:1, but can be easily increased 0.06” (about 2.0” at 1:1). The standard front and rear track of a mag racer chassis will fit these 2 slot car bodies fine without modification. Of course the standard 3.0” (96” at at 1:1) wheelbase will have to be increased and some parts of the frame may have to be cut away, especially in the case of the Audi.

I agree with Markus and Keld that ready-to-run cars are needed to grow the popularity of magracing. Ideally these cars would have painted and highly detailed bodies. I believe that finely detailed ready-to-run cars are more important than ready-to-run track. The track is easy and inexpensive to make, especially if kept indoors. Nearly anyone can do it. It takes a high degree of skill and specialized equipment to paint and decorate a plain injection molded body and none of those are currently available to fit, without modification, to a magracing chassis. Perhaps Wes should offer one customized ready-to-run car with a highly detailed body as pictured above. Maybe he could buy a dozen such slot car bodies from the manufacturer for $10 USD each, modify the chassis and body as needed, attach the body to the chassis and charge $40 USD more for the customized ready-to-run cars compared to the standard chassis and body kit. The cost of the customization is all labor and certainly $30 USD would not adequately compensate him or me for the time involved but it would be an inexpensive way to test the market for highly detailed ready-to-run cars. It also would make people aware of the customization possibilities of mag racing which is important to hobbyist who like to tinker and prefer realistic cars.

Finally, while Wes is correct in that “ Many thousands of [model railroading] enthusiasts spend hundreds of hours building their tracks”, I’ll bet none of them started out in the hobby building their first engine or rail car from a kit. We have to make it easy for people to get started. A ready-to-run car will do that and a beautiful, finely detailed car will entice them to try it. (Even more so if a beautiful woman comes with it.) :D
rex craemer
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Location: cologne

Re: Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Post by rex craemer »

hi ned, yes the weights are very different from brand to brand. carrera and revel are heavy, lightest of my bobys are the scaleautos bmw and sls, with 12 to 14 gramms. heavyest is 19 gramms. cut and sanddown the inside to loose weight, interieur is not needed.
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MagRacer
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Location: Denmark
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Re: Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Post by MagRacer »

Hi Wes,
What about going the 3D printing way? The quality today is really great and you dont need a stock.

I would focus on the chassis and then choose 10-20 bodies from other brands, like slot cars bodies and then make 2-5 chassis versions in 3D that can fit these the bodies. It would be a lot cheaper, than producing the bodies and then you don't have any copyright problems or high exepenses for moulding.

Why try to make bodies when there already are so many great bodies out there and maybe also make a deal with a company and buy a small stockof bodies. So it can be sold as kit, with body and chassis.

A 3D printed MAGracing chassis will cost around 12 Euro
I made this chassis for one of my cars.
https://www.shapeways.com/product/485S2 ... lbase-10cm

The website Shapeways makes it possible for everyone to have their own shop, so you can create a shop or order them home for your own shop. There are already many slotcars chassis for sale there. See link:

http://www.shapeways.com/product/5U3H8P ... d=55939235

It will cost some money to get the chassis designed in 3D, but the chassis is rather simple, so it will not be so much and when you have in 3D it will be easy to modify and change, improve and adjust to new bodies. An you can also make tune up parts like different guidearms and son.

Bodies can also be 3D printed, but so far I have not seen so many good examples and it is more complex to design a realistic looking body.

Just my thoughts :-)

Mikael
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MagRacer
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Re: Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Post by MagRacer »

By the way, I have created the chassis in Google SketchUp, a free program that is very easy to use. I can recommend this program to everyone who want to get started with 3D design.
rex craemer
Posts: 456
Joined: Thu 4. Dec 2014 09:53
Location: cologne

Re: Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Post by rex craemer »

hi all, more than the weight, the different performance of the akkus is important for the laptime. my gt 3 cars are between 67 gramms to 79 gramms, thats a great difference, and they drive equal times on my track. the more weight brings better grip in curves, and cost a little in accelration. end speed is the same. but i have seen that the akkus got heavy different performance. i made two groups of it. the low performance i use for the transmitter, and the good in the cars. with the same akku i drive a round with only 0,1 sec difference with all gt 3 cars ,the cars with two motors are much quicker. i tested it so, take a full akku, drive a few rounds , charged the akku , and take the next car. and trust me i tested a lot and not only one time. as i said , every car needs his own style to drive it, but they are all the same.
Ned
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Joined: Sun 13. Apr 2014 01:02
Location: Sedona, AZ USA

Re: Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Post by Ned »

MagRacer, you indicated that Google SketchUp is a free program that is very easy to use. Assuming one has no experience with CAD, about how many hours would it take to learn how to use it to create a mag car chassis and related chassis parts similar to this chassis? https://www.shapeways.com/product/485S2 ... lbase-10cm
martin
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Joined: Wed 30. Sep 2015 20:22

Re: Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Post by martin »

Ned, dead easy. I'm using sketch-up free for a lot of things too. Download it and start playing with some basic shapes.
It's all the same, you draw something in 2D in a 3D environment, and use the "push up/down" tool to change it into a 3D shape (in this case the base plate of the car)
Then anywhere on that 3D design you can make a new 2D drawing, and pull/push that into a 3D modification on the orginal (the posts for the wheels). Then draw circles on the posts, and push those in to have the holes. You can even make the hole in one post, and push that through into the other post. It becomes a cylinder, but erase what you don't need, and you're left with two aligned holes. Really simple and easy. I'd say a few hours max to understand how it works, and which basic tools to use. To me that chassis in basic shapes can be done in 15 minutes if you have all dimensions handy.

have fun,

oh, and a merry Xmas!

Martin

Ned wrote:MagRacer, you indicated that Google SketchUp is a free program that is very easy to use. Assuming one has no experience with CAD, about how many hours would it take to learn how to use it to create a mag car chassis and related chassis parts similar to this chassis? https://www.shapeways.com/product/485S2 ... lbase-10cm
SlotCarRental_com
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Joined: Sat 10. Aug 2013 08:39

Re: Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Post by SlotCarRental_com »

Sketchup is very easy, due to there being so few buttons to make it confusing.

If you have never drawn anything in 3D, you are not likely to produce anything useable, due to some not so obvious quirks with working with CAD.
Things have to be EXACT you cannot just draw a line close to another line and assume they are connected, if you zoom in you will see that they are not.
This is usually an issue for those use to drawing with pixel programs like paint or photo shop, they forget that you can zoom in to almost infinity in CAD.
When things are not connected, converting them into a 3D printer part becomes difficult.
Simple stuff, is easy to fix... but if you get complicated with angles and curves and round parts it can be a pain due to all the triangles that could be duplicated or missing.
So, someone new to drawing in CAD 2d or 3D may have to have someone else work over their model before it is useable.

Attempting to draw a 1x1x1 square that winds up 1.00001x.0009x1.00433 is poor use of a cad system, and is usually due to not following the snaps and end points.
It is also a bad idea to try and mix inches and mm in the same project, stick to one.. and try not to convert things, some cad systems don't like to do it right, Sketchup use to be one of them, but the latest versions have been working better.

Luckily Sketchup has a few features that make it easy to avoid some of the problems, but you got to get use to how it works.

If you draw a lien right on top of another line in Sketchup it does not draw a new line, it breaks or adds to the one that is there.
Sketchup has easy snap and ortho features, which helps you snap to line end points, and mid points, and keep things in line with the X Y Z axis... which should always be done when possible.

The biggest down side to (FREE) sketchup is a lack of actually being able to do Curves, it instead does a multi faceted line that looks like a curve when you zoom out, in some cases this is good enough, in others it is not.

Best thing to do is just download and install the thing, and start drawing flat shapes and extruding them... you will get the idea...

Some things I have done with sketchup: (I did not draw the trucks I downloaded those from sketchup library)

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Ned
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Joined: Sun 13. Apr 2014 01:02
Location: Sedona, AZ USA

Re: Magracing notes, Nov. 2015

Post by Ned »

Based on your recommendations, on Dec 24 I downloaded and installed SketchUp Make 2016, the latest free version of SketchUp. Glad I did. With the help of some of you in this thread, a lot of reading, experimentation, and trial & error, I was able to create a printable 3D model of a chassis, with 5 separate parts. I expect to receive the printed prototype on Jan. 18 from Shapeways. The chassis has an adjustable wheelbase, narrower frame, narrower front & rear track, as well as a lower profile to take up less space under the body.
I’m eager to see how all of the parts fit and work together. I expect this chassis to accommodate a lot of 1/32 slot car bodies currently available, with no modification to the chassis and little or none to the bodies.
Thanks to Mikael, Martin, and SlotCarRental for encouragement and help.
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