Gradall XL5100 V 1/14 Scale 3D Printed

[Krewmember]

The fenders have been printed, filled, sanded, then painted. They turned out pretty good. Still need to print and install the tail and turn lens, LEDs too.

Originally Posted by Blender

Absolutely eye-catching machine. Thanks for showcasing this. Are you willing to detail the functional improvements made to this newest version?

Main and telescope boom have been reinforced with metal rods at the joints between sections. Due to size the booms have to be printed in sections, the joints between sections create weak points. The sections are printed with hollow ends and metal rods are epoxied in, after some testing the layers of the print will split before the joints break.

The bucket motor is a little weak, all I can fit in the telescope boom is a N20 type motor. Upgraded it to a N30 for hopefully more torque. May have to try a hydraulic cylinder. Will see.. The bucket motor mounting case split on me. Redesigned a fix hopefully.

I added ball bearings to the boom lift link to decrease slop.

The telescope boom is moved by a lead screw. The wires for the bucket motor wraped up in it. I redesigned it to have a internal wire track. Will see how it works.

The main boom was pulling out of the cradle bearings. A simple lockring was designed to prevent this.

The bucket can be changed just like the real machine. The bucket was hard to change due to poor clearance. A quick redesign of the bucket adapter fixed this.

The Swing motor has slop between the ring gear and the pinion. I decreased ring gear teeth by one to fix this (This is kind of a hack fix) to fix this properly I need the swing motor mounting holes to be slotted to allow for backlash adjustment. But I'm lazy at times


That is all I can think of at the moment. Probably forgot a few things.

Originally Posted by frizzen

Awesome looking first gradall! Any other pics of it?

Looks like a killer start on the new machine

Yeah, building a second, more complicated machine instead of taking the first one apart for paint seems pretty reasonable. Everybody needs a friend.

I will probably end up rebuilding XL5200 at some point with updated parts. And painted of course.




-Shawn-