3D printing ?

Yes. Pretty cool. Theres 4 different quality material to choose from. I ordered the cheap one so i'll post pics when it arrives.

Please sir, I guess the next thing to kit making. What's the material it's made out of ? Maybe this will drive the prices lower , no that's wrong how about affordable ?

Here's the pic of multiple treads in the set.


I'm not sure of the materials but you can sure see the quality differences in the pics in that link thread

I'm too busy lately to do anything but here's some quick shots

That's filament deposition. There are other methods of 3d printing that give better than slide molded quality. The question is cost and availability, though Shapeways is getting very cheap for what it is, ESPECIALLY if you bring your own 3D model.

I'm working on getting my own printer, though it's slow going. Prices drop and I decide I'd rather have better fidelity, then I wait some more. Something like a RepRap will do those wheels and cost two or three hundred dollars, and the new Shapeoko should beat that handily.

(I worked extensively with some of this stuff, and I got to use it a lot-it's really the way forward as far as scale modeling goes to me.)

These were the cheap choice at $18 and the high quality is also available at $42 which is too much unless you plan to cast your own copies. Im impressed so far and this technology is getting cheaper.

It's the new scratch building of the future.

The wheels are at most 1mm smaller then the kit but could be the way the kits tires angle at top. No clean up except a little scraping on the inner tire then the hubs just snapped in. This 3D Shapeways technology has potential and getting almost to resin prices.