# 3D Printed Track?



## TheRockinator (May 16, 2007)

Any of you 3D printers out there thought about making Track? Or Borders? Or track with Borders? You could make custom pieces, different straights to fill a gap in an otherwise perfect layout. Or custom curves, increasing/decreasing radius, squeeze tracks, custom AFX to MM to Lifelike To Tyco adapters. Whatever you can get a 3D printer to do. Cost prohibitive? I know you would have to add rails.....

Later The just pondering the uses of 3D Printing Rockinator


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## smalltime (Jun 3, 2006)

TheRockinator said:


> Any of you 3D printers out there thought about making Track? Or Borders? Or track with Borders? You could make custom pieces, different straights to fill a gap in an otherwise perfect layout. Or custom curves, increasing/decreasing radius, squeeze tracks, custom AFX to MM to Lifelike To Tyco adapters. Whatever you can get a 3D printer to do. Cost prohibitive? I know you would have to add rails.....
> 
> Later The just pondering the uses of 3D Printing Rockinator


Knowing only a little about the subject, I would think the biggest bottleneck would be the 3-d cad design for your parts.

I'm fairly good at 2d (autocad) and have designed/programmed many tracks, but the 3-d thingy is a whole 'nother animal, and fairly expensive.

It may be do-able for adapters, or short straights. But getting any bigger than, say 8"x 8" is going to enter into the profesional realm, and starts to gain real cost quickly.

I would think the place to be looking to utilize this new tool would be in the resin casting mold side of the hobby.


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## Rich Dumas (Sep 3, 2008)

Making track or borders with a 3D printer would be expensive and would take forever. If you just needed a few custom sections printing them might make sense. Right now 3D printing is mostly used for making prototypes, not production pieces. There are different types of 3D printers, the type that uses spools of plastic rod are most commonly sold for home use. The type that use plastic powder might be better for making track sections.


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## kriket (Feb 15, 2013)

Shapeways has 3d printed slot car chassis and bodies for sale so people are doing some slot car related stuff on 3d printers... Someday maybe tracks can be made too when advancements are made on these printers because the surface of the items is a little grainy feel to them...


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