Custom 3D printed wheels and tyres

[Zerobricks]

After creating and 3D printing custom wheels for Spano GTA project, made a custom wheel which fits the back tyre (46335) of the harley davison:

Next step was to create a whole custom wheel and tyre. I decided to try make one 100 mm diameter, which would allow me build a 1:8 SUV.

For first version I decided to go with a 44 mm wide tyre with a 4 mm sidewall. Originally i wanted to make the wheel with pins included like Spano's one, but that ended up being too weak and incmopatible with planetary gear hubs.

I ended up with this version of the wheel, which I first tested digitally:

And some 20 hours of printing later, here's a finished wheel printed from Strongman PLA and tyre printed from TPU.

The brake disc is sandwiched bewteen hub and and is currently 68 mm large (8,5 studs) and allows you to place inside a massive brake caliper:

This was the first version of the print and I have some issues to resolve for the next version:

• Improve the fit of the tyre and wheel, currently it's too loose
• Decrease the wheel size by 8 mm and increase tyre's sidewall to 8 mm
• Decrease brake disc to 64 mm (exactly 8 mm)
• Change the tyre shape so the sidewalls are softer and that the tyre is a bit rounded so it's not completely flat
• Improve the brake disc print and make it symmetrical
• Improve printing process of the tyre to speed it up (using 0,8 mm nozzle instead of 0,4 to decrease print time from 10 to 3 hours)
• Add fuzzy texture to the wheel to increase traction (can be done in Cura slicer)

So far I'm really happy with how it ended up, but still needs some work before it's mature enough.

Meanwhile I can offer custom wheels for 81,6 mm supercar tyres if anyone is interested.

 

[2GodBDGlory]

Very cool! I hadn't thought about the possibilities of using flexible filaments to print tires, but with the right tuning that could hugely open up options for Lego, since tires seem to be the one thing that is never quite right for a model.

So far the only thing I've printed along those lines is some super-basic thin, black PLA parts that fit tightly over 68.8mm and 81.6mm tires to create a nice-looking and cheap drift tire.

[Lukes_Brick_Studio]

Wow, very cool project. The wheel and the tire, looks great and very accurate, you have a really good printer!

Does this TPU tire work well? I have a 3D Printer too, which can print TPU, but I actually didn´t thought that TPU tires have enough grip.

[Zerobricks]

The TPU I have is 98A, so it's rather hard, but I have another softer one which I'm demoisturizing right now.

The tyre is way too hard indeed, I'm currently printing a version with rounded profile with thinner walls and bigger sidewalls with 8 mm sidewalls, hope it will end up softer.

in worst scenario I can go back in using Harley's tyres and custom wheels and use these for drifting Nothing like seing a 1:8 6 kg heavy Lamborghini Urus drifting all 4 wheels

Edited January 29, 2022 by Zerobricks

[Lukes_Brick_Studio]

Okay, very cool to see you experimenting with that. I will follow this thread with a lot of interest.

I can´t wait to see the 6kg drifting Urus with 3D printed tires :), very cool project.   

[Zerobricks]

After many redesigns, fails and experimnets I managed to print out a softer version of the tyre and a bigger, stronger rim.

I present you the 107x44x8 mm wheel and tyre:

This tyre version is now a lot more flexible and has more traction than the first version (printed from softer TPU 85A material):

Externally it has same dimensions as the Xerion tyre:

I also printed a disc 68 mm to go along:

As you can see the wheel has 3 attachment holes (can be increased to 6) so it can be used with any hub - normal, portal, planetary, etc... And there's plenty of space to add complex multilink suspensions setups:

One more shot of the assembled wheel, tyre, massive disc and caliper:

What's next?

Well I'm confident enough to print 4 of the wheels, calipers and tyres (in black) to experiment further and start building a proper 1:8 SUV or such.

I'm also thinking of offering custom wheels and tyres if anyone would be interested for their projects.

[2GodBDGlory]

That's very interesting! How grippy is it compared to original Lego tires?

[Zerobricks]

They are definitely less grippy and harder due to the texture of the print, but I think I could make a slick version and use the feature called fuzzy skin to give it some texture, more info here:

https://all3dp.com/2/cura-fuzzy-skin-simply-explained/

EDIT, added a photo of the slick fuzzy tyre idea:

Edited January 31, 2022 by Zerobricks

[dr_spock]

Nice.  Which brand of TPU filament did you use? 

[Zerobricks]

I'm using a locally made ones by a company called Azurefilm both for rims and tires. The one used for rims (Strongman PLA) is incredibly strong and easy to print, I highly recommend it.

[Gray Gear]

Wow, this is seriously cool! I never thought someone would be able to 3D print tires!

My Nissan 180SX MOC will also feature 3D printed Wheels in 81x34, but to make the tires needed I had to cut and glue normal 1:8 Supercar tires 

[whitepen]

That last wheel is huge! 

[Aaronc1901]

Any chance I could buy a set of 3D printed tires from you? I'm working on a moc that needs 12.3 studs wide tires to fit Daytona SP3 size rims.  I understand this is a fairly large request that you don't normally do, and this would likely be factored into the total cost.

[aFrInaTi0n]

@Aaronc1901 there are ppl in fb groups doing this

[Zerobricks]

9 hours ago, Aaronc1901 said:

Any chance I could buy a set of 3D printed tires from you? I'm working on a moc that needs 12.3 studs wide tires to fit Daytona SP3 size rims.  I understand this is a fairly large request that you don't normally do, and this would likely be factored into the total cost.

We are talking about tyres? Those are a bit trickier to print, but sure, I can see what I can do. Please send me a private message. 

[Stijn]

This is a very nice idea

[SaperPL]

From my experience with TPU 95A, the TPU seems to not have really much more grip than PLA after the print and therefore I dropped the idea of printing tires after test on small scale. It does make sense if you want a neat static model as long as you can print tires neatly, but if you want an RC model, you might get disappointed in the effects. Unless you'll get special filament that is supposed to have grip maybe?

[2GodBDGlory]

6 hours ago, SaperPL said:

From my experience with TPU 95A, the TPU seems to not have really much more grip than PLA after the print and therefore I dropped the idea of printing tires after test on small scale. It does make sense if you want a neat static model as long as you can print tires neatly, but if you want an RC model, you might get disappointed in the effects. Unless you'll get special filament that is supposed to have grip maybe?

Yeah, my experience is the same. Nice and flexy, but not sticky at all. I imagine there are specialized sticky filaments that would work better, but they'd probably require better machines than my Ender 3 and old RepRap Prusa i3. At any rate I suppose you'd want a direct drive extruder at minimum!

[aFrInaTi0n]

Printed treads may be good for drifting then? ;)

[2GodBDGlory]

29 minutes ago, aFrInaTi0n said:

Printed treads may be good for drifting then? ;)

I'm sure they would be, yeah!

[Lemon]

4 hours ago, 2GodBDGlory said:

Yeah, my experience is the same. Nice and flexy, but not sticky at all. I imagine there are specialized sticky filaments that would work better, but they'd probably require better machines than my Ender 3 and old RepRap Prusa i3. At any rate I suppose you'd want a direct drive extruder at minimum!

I've printed Ninjaflex 85A with a stock Ender 3. The trick was to keep the extrusion consistent, so no retracts. It came out very nice, not significantly worse then DD, except you have to go very slow, I think I've printed it at 25 mm/s. 

Edited March 3, 2023 by Lemon

[SaperPL]

28 minutes ago, Lemon said:

you have to go very slow, I think I've printed it at 25 mm/s. 

That's sounds like the speed you can drive it before it starts slipping :D

[2GodBDGlory]

1 hour ago, Lemon said:

I've printed Ninjaflex 85A with a stock Ender 3. The trick was to keep the extrusion consistent, so no retracts. It came out very nice, not significantly worse then DD, except you have to go very slow, I think I've printed it at 25 mm/s. 

Yeah, my 95A worked fine, so I'd agree that you could make 85A work too with some care. Was that actually grippy, though?

[Aaronc1901]

@aFrInaTi0n Could you tell me who to look for? I see custom rims and people advertising them everywhere, but I don't see many custom tires and I haven't seen anyone advertise making them. I've asked a few custom rim guys if they could print tires, but no luck so far.

[aFrInaTi0n]

@Aaronc1901 There are some people doing custom rim 3D prints - for treads I don't know any person doing so - except Zerobricks within this thread here.. :)

For the rims, some name droppings - you may reach them via facebook

• Eugen Teledezki
• Stefan Königer ("Customparts 3D print" page)
• Andreas Summer

I can give exact fb profile links, but would like to do so in a pm, as I am not sure about linking here is acceptable