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A 5-ton for the kids

HDN

Well-known member
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Finger Lakes Region, NY
One of the kids really thinks my deuce is cool, so I wanted to make a toy version of a military 6x6 to play with that scales with the Melissa & Doug wooden trucks and cars they play with. I chose an M813 for the template since that's one of my dream 5-tons. I mean, it's a really, really big Jeep (specifically the ones built by Kaiser Jeep), and I love Jeeps!

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Using canvases made of pictures of various M813 trucks I found on the internet showing all sides of it, I traced the pictures to get its general shape. I kept detailing low, which is consistent with the Melissa & Doug vehicles, but I wanted to get the grill and hood right. The hood was the hardest for me to design, particularly the slopes at the front corners. Knowing what I know now about 3D modeling, I could've accomplished the same thing easier with Blender instead of Fusion 360.

The chassis and bed are separate, so I basically have an M809 chassis that I can attach different stuff to. I want to make a wrecker body next! I opted for super singles to keep parts count down, and I think they look good. The wheels are flippable so someone could actually flip the "hubs" if desired :p So really the wheels are all the same printed design, just flipped for the tandem axle.

An improvement I want to make to it is hollow out the body more - this is a huge chunk of plastic with 2 mm walls and about 7% infill. I'd also print the exhaust pipe as a separate piece as shortly after I gave it to my kids to play with it snapped at the layer lines :ROFLMAO: I expected that to happen, so it's run with a short straight pipe now! There is provision for a trailer hitch on the back. It can accommodate different hitches, so I can design one to pull Melissa & Doug trailers, or trailers of my own design.

I want to make another one to see how it looks vapor-smoothed...
 
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