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EnRoute Berg "Snow Tracer v3" build

v3dg

Newbie
Joined
Jan 31, 2015
Messages
5
Location
Montreal
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Well I live in Canada and we have this thing called snow here. For many years I have seen a bunch of videos of people playing with their trucks in the snow with tracks and I always thought it kind of looked stupid but really cool at the same time. I was bored one night and started looking at old RC parts I had and decided that my old unused Berg Tracer could be adapted to this project.


I would like to thank toplaton and Mh2241 for the work they put into designing this. I combined both of these Thingiverse projects to create my final build which can be found here and here.




After mounting my first rear wheel, I realized that the tracks were very tight. Also, some comments mentioned the tracks would break apart. I fixed this by editing the rollers and removing 1mm from the radius (so total diameter of 28mm vs 30mm). I then played around with both wheel sizes until I came up with the best combination. Turns out I had to change all 4 rollers on the rear, and 2 of the 3 rollers on the front. This combination provided a good amount of flex to the tracks to remove some tension and to help with motor fatigue. The tracks are now under much less stress and "hand turning" is effortless.

I also edited the gear. Maybe I have old crawlers but all my wheel hexes are 12mm by 5mm height. The gear in this project seems double the height for the hex. So I remixed the gear for 5mm hex and also made the hole for the wheel bolt larger to accommodate my 12mm wide ratchet socket.

I then applied my time and logic on the anti-rotation device which is definitely the biggest improvement I have done to this project.

Since this is a "comp build" it is more tricky because my rear shaft is all round. I started designing many prototypes of brackets but was not satisfied. Then one night after some alcohol consumption, I came with the idea of mounting a shock to the rear to absorb the "rotation" aspect. I then designed many models and played around with many mounting positions, spring type, length, height... After a few days I found the sweet spot, which turned out to be version 11. After a few hours of playing with this, I seriously cannot imagine this not being an absolute necessity for snow tracks. Having these wheels "hug" the snow while climbing or going down is a huge game changer. If only riding on flat surfaces, not really beneficial but still, this is a major improvement!! This really sets this build apart from all the other snow tracks you see...
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I also created some nice logos with double layer colors to add some "bling" to my build. I live in Quebec which is where Bombardier Recreational Products have invented the Ski-Doo so it was a no-brainer to use that logo. I ended up with the first logo they made which was from 1965ish. The CAT logo just looks cool and well, I do have caterpillar tracks so it does fit...
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I am overall very happy with this project and it was fun coming up with some small mods. It's always great to find something useful to print.



Just incase someone wants to print these tracks, I updated some Aliexpress links as OP's links are Russian and broken...

683ZZ 3x7x3mm bearings - 28 pieces
6703RS 17x23x4mm bearing - 8 pieces
M3 melted nuts 3.0x4.6x4.5 or 3.0х4.5х4.5 - 14 pieces
M3 narrow washers - 28 pieces

I did not buy the M3 screws from Ali as I already had a bunch at home.

Also worth noting that I completely printed everything in PLA and everything is fine. I can run my crawler at max speed (which is not really fast anyways) and nothing breaks. PLA is horrible with heat but it does really well in the cold.

Also worth mentioning that I have many more pictures, I just picked a few for here to show what I was talking about. They are all HERE.
 
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