Homage to Marx Toys "Cars of the Future" - All five cars finished 1/21

[CookAndrewB]

I've been drooling over those old retro-future Marx toys for years, and it has either been overly difficult to find them or find them for a reasonable price. Since I've been dabbling in 3d design, I decided that I would tackle a set of "not Marx" cars which (hopefully) capture the flavor of the originals without just being a blatant knockoff. So I have my first two designs done, and I'll be test printing them this weekend. I'm putting these here, vice future wars, as I am hoping that these will have some appeal for anyone looking for a Fallout type of aesthetic.

In case you aren't familiar with the originals:


A few goals that I had when setting out were:
1) Make them close to the toys themselves. That means that all the wheels are covered.
2) Design them so that they can be printed easily.
3) Scale them somewhere in the 28-32mm ballpark. In the end, I just landed on something that I could live with. They are digital files and I expect that everyone will scale them as they see fit.
4) Make them available to anyone who wants them. This will be forthcoming, but I would like to test print them first to make sure that everything looks right and nothing in the digital file needs to be tweaked. So that means something like 1-2 weeks between design, printing, painting, and then making them available.

Car 1 (I don't have any fancy names for these right now):



Car 1, with the wheels, sits 25mm tall, 84mm long, and 42mm wide. At 1:61 scale (roughly 30mm) this car would be 5' tall,  8.4' wide, and 16.8' long. A 1970 Caddilac El Dorado (pretty big car) is 18.4' long, 6.5' wide, and 4.4' tall. So, roughly that size was my baseline.


Cars will be designed to print in two pieces. The top, and a wheel unit that will sit in a slight recess in the bottom of the car. Or, they can just be hover cars. No need to add the wheels.


Super low-tech wheel solution. At some point, I'll circle back and add details to the bottom in case anyone wants to flip a car over. Can't very well do that with the old hollow toys! 


Car 2:




And the car with wheels added:
http://leadadventureforum.com/gallery/53/15049-031221170216.jpeg

Car 2 sits at 25.9mm tall (with wheel base), 90mm long, and 40mm wide.

I will add a van/bus, delivery truck, and compact car to this project in the next several weeks. Once all of that is done, I plan to also make some wrecked and Mad Max style (armor plates, turrets, guns) versions. Both of those will be easier to accomplish once the base units are finished.

[James Mahdeep Bond V]

Sign me up. You had me at "I've been drooling..."

[robh]

........Or, they can just be hover cars. No need to add the wheels........

YES!!!!
Absolutely.

[hubbabubba]

Excellent, I'd be interested in a few of those.

[KD47]

Yeah, this is what you're looking for if you're gonna model cars for a Fallout based minis game.   I'd make on-sided molds of these and do up several, as I'd hate to alter some good looking vintage toys.   If you find ones in bad shape though, grab 'em and go for it.

Whoops.....misunderstood.   You're modelling these.   So go for it... go to town with the rust and overall Falloutic look.

[Rabbitz]

Excellent stuff.  Definitely keen on these.

[CookAndrewB]

Glad to hear it. Should get the wheels and top glued up and primed tonight. The finished product and pictures will be posted later this week, and files for the first car will get posted by the weekend.

While it would be easy enough to print this and smack it around with a hammer, I'll work on getting a wrecked/damaged version up in the next several weeks. My top goal is to get another three cars designed before I start messing with them further.

[CookAndrewB]

I'll have pictures of prints and WIP painting up tomorrow. For today, I have a newly designed car. This one I loosely based off of the Fallout 1 Corvega.


My Reimagining:


This car came out to be 1mm shorter, 1mm narrower, and .5mm taller than Car #1. That all happened by happy accident as I wasn't trying to scale it that way. Clearly I like a certain set of dimensions.


And up on the wheels:


I just happened upon these cars while looking up FO1 Corvegas, and I think this will be the basis for my next vehicle.


Before the weekend, I think I'm going to scale car#2 down to 15mm size and print it on my resin printer for my 15mm gaming. It will make a great hovercar.

[CookAndrewB]

Still working on the paint, but the first car is coming along. The second car is just getting started.


I think this is the best comparison shot for size. I haven't printed the wheels for Car #2 (left).


A figure for scale:


Another angle:


I think I'm going to slice this and print one up on my resin printer. That will give me a second car (more terrain for the table) and allow me to upload a pre-supported version to Thingiverse.

This file is available now: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5160905

If you print it, I'd love to see the finished product!

[hubbabubba]

They're a nice design, but these visible print layers put me off. Is that your printer settings, the printer itself or the material?

[Dr Mathias]

Good project, I too have considered getting some of those cars over the years!

[CookAndrewB]

They're a nice design, but these visible print layers put me off. Is that your printer settings, the printer itself or the material?

Well, these were printed on an FDM printer, so "print lines" are standard for the printing method. A few things about that though...
1) There are ways to remove print lines from FDM prints. I don't care enough to take that extra step for FDM.
2) Printing these on a resin printer (my next step) will produce smoother prints but increase the price quite a bit. For the sake of checking out a design, I prefer to go with FDM printing because that car is comprised of pennies worth of material and not dollars worth. If it fails, or if I want to go back and change a shape or redesign something, I prefer not to have spent a lot on it.   
3) My pictures are a little rough-looking because this is a WIP piece. They never get perfect, but they get much better once they have a couple of extra layers of matte medium applied and the worst-looking bits (cream color) are only primed. So the paint coverage isn't complete and you can see some of the ridges better because the primer doesn't fill in any of the texture. Having worked on the car over the weekend I can say that it looks much better now, though the print lines are still visible if you look closely.
4) Yes, this may also have something to do with the print settings and design. Curves are notoriously tricky for FDM printers because a layer height may fall between where the print head can actually reach and so you get some "hunting" on the part of the printer to try and figure out what the Gcode is telling it to do and what the printer is capable of. This also happens on resin printers to a lesser degree.

[James Mahdeep Bond V]

Keeper.  Add wear, dirt, rust, lots more rust, oil streaks. Perfect. I will take attitude every day over shiney. I want all my vehicles to be imperfect, the way god meant them to be.

[Love_the_Lash]

You absolute bloody legend!

[hubbabubba]

Well, these were printed on an FDM printer, so ...

Ah, very well explained, thanks for that.