Cat 340D Excavator build

[skeeter]

Great job with the excavator. The steam truck will be phenomenal when you get it finished!

[crueby]

Originally Posted by skeeter

Great job with the excavator. The steam truck will be phenomenal when you get it finished!

Thanks Skeeter! Between sessions of gluing/waiting for glue to dry/painting/waiting for paint to dry/repeat on the excavator cab, I've started generating the 2D drawings from the 3D CAD model of the Mann truck. LOTS of sheets, LOTS of dimensions to place. Once that model starts the build log will be over on the Model Engine Maker forum, where I've done most of my other steam models.


More to show soon on the excavator, as the cab comes together. I'd be playing with it in a pile of sand by now, but I am waiting on some electrical bits for the radio system. Turns out that having this many ESC's on one receiver is an issue - there is some interference and possibly ground looping between them. Found out this is a known issue with the Mtroniks ESC units, they have made an opto-isolator unit for them, which plugs inline with the radio lead, that goes from electrical wire/signal to an optical signal and back again, that both boosts and isolates the signals and eliminates the cross talk. What I was seeing was once I had at least four ESC's all plugged in there motors would start glitching, even if only one was turning at a time. Any three ESC's in any three channels, no problem at all. Tried different radios (different brands too), same thing. So, got a handful of those on order, but it may take a little while since they are coming from England to the US. Will continue on the cab for now...

Chris