Greetings Tankers!

It’s been a minute since the Illinois update and we’re really cooking now! With such a wealth of information we were able to buckle down and get right to reverse-engineering the tank properly. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

With the new plans from the old turret, the plans for our tank become more refined, more accurate, more tanky. The below pictures are the “rough draft” of the parts measured from our trip to WARBARN.

You can see the work started on the ball turret. It’s in its initial stages, but you can see it’s coming along. Our plans are a two piece casting that slides together for ease of manufacturing. The sticky-out-bit is the cradle for the MG37(t), the coaxial gun that the Panzer 38(t) used, with the aperture for the sight being drilled in the ball. We have a contact who might be able to help us get one of those, too.

Beckett said of this particular part: “Before I started this assembly, I hadn’t considered that the ball turret, mantlet, and optics mount all had to be able to rotate on a single axis, resulting the three parts sitting not concentric. Took me a few hours to frustrate them all onto a single axis, while trying to balance the fact that they had to remain historically accurate. Eventually, I figured it out. One of the more interesting learning experiences I’ve had doing this project. Ive got it placed 15mm back and 235mm from the top of the turret armor plates. This is the kind of ‘artistic license’ that we take on occasion when a super-specific detail that either isn’t available or doesn’t line up.”

-Beckett, 3D designer guru guy extraordinaire This was one of those pieces that you HAD to be able to get your hands on to model. There’s not many good models or drawings available for an accessory part like this. Super happy to have details of it now.

Here is one half of the gun sight armor plate/pivot mount. You can see the grease channels (and zerks) in the picture. This was new information to us, we had imagined that it was all one piece but it was clearly manufactured in two pieces and fit together. I imagine some of these curves would have been a devil to try to engineer. Either way, the product when put all together looookss liiiiike THIS:

The cutaway shows the interior of the piece. Lenses and optics would be placed in these holes with sights to help determine range. This piece moves in tandem with the main gun, letting you get a good zero of where the cannon is pointed. No bearings, just grease allow it to move in its cradle.

So here we see the centerpiece of our turret, the mounting plate for the Big Gun. This plate guides and holds the main cannon in place. Here you see our model:

Some of the optics mounts are not modeled because we want the ability to place our own internal mechanisms that might be simpler, and without the details of those the flanges on the back can’t be engineered. You can see the grease channels clearly

And of course, ALL TOGETHER NOW!

Beautiful innit?

As you can see, with the proper measurements we can make something incredibly close to the original. Of course, with time these will be improved to be as close as possible given our measurement techniques. But here’s the fun bit: If you spot an error, go ahead and send us an email or message on facebook with the details of the error. We are few, but there are over a thousand pairs of eyes who can give us constructive feedback on this project.

So again, if you spot something wrong, go ahead and let us know, even if we already know about it, it’s nice to see other people seeing the same errors.

Rusty plate for kicks:

Thanks for joining us!

See you next time!

-T.ankmann