Hi All!

Sorry, this may be a little bit obvious but I wanted to make sure... The Drive Wheel for the Dragon Abrams I am working on looks like this:



Looking online I have found the following photo of the drive sprocket:



I am assuming that dragon has the wrong shape around the mud clearing holes and I need to correct it, right? I just want to make sure that Dragon doesn't know something that I don't before I get into the work of fixing it up.

Thanks guys
Mike

Here's another you can look at. The back edge of each hole appears almost straight.



And one of the ones I sent to MENG several years ago:

Thanks Robert.

I updated the picture a little, I'm not sure if I was clear in my original post. I'm curious if these "cutouts" (red arrows) are really present on some tanks, or do I need to fill these in and re-contour the parts?



I assume I need to fix these as I can't really find an example of a drive sprocket anywhere that looks like this. Just looking for a consensus.

Thanks
Mike

I guess Pawel Krupowicz's article should help with your question...

https://vodnik.net/pages/M1A2comp/m1a2comp_02.htm

H.P.

To be continued arrggh..lol was into the article because I'm build a MENG M1A2 Tusk.

To me it looks like Dragon went with what would work in a regular 2-part mold (i.e. not slide-molded). They could have gone multi-part, but they didn't. Break out the putty!

Molding restrictions.
Set the outer part on a table, bolt ring downwards and then view it from straight above.
The lower mold (the table) comes up inside the holes and the upper mold (your view) comes down from above and meets the lower mold in the holes.
The lower mold slides out nicely since the inside of the hub is smooth, the upper mold needs these coutouts to avoid getting caught by the holes.

Look at the edges left behind around the holes by the edges where the molds meet.

This has nothing to do with slide molds, just plain simple two part molds which require suitable release angles. The holes would be undercuts and trap the mold.
Withe slide molds it would require one sliding pin for each hole (i.e 4 pins) and the hubs would need to be on their own little sprue for that.
Plasticard and some putty will solve this.

Short answer, yes, they need to filled in and reshaped. It is due to the mold design and not present on the actual drive sprockets.

You all pretty much confirmed what I thought. Thanks very much for the help!

Thanks
Mike