I’ve been a scale track enthusiast as long as I have been into drift. (going on 10 years now) For years we toiled to find the strangest craft store items that we could re-purpose on our tracks to make them look realistic. I went as far as to produce a pretty well-viewed YouTube video series with a conglomeration of all the experience and knowledge I had gained in my journey to find the coolest track accessories. It included shared knowledge from other clubs and track builders all across the country. If you want to check that out you can watch it here! I wrote several articles for BigSquidRC.com as well which I will link here, but that isn’t the point of this post.
These methods are all well and good, but times have changed since then. We aren’t completely reliant on whether someone accidentally makes something that would look cool on a track, or if a boutique overseas manufacturer makes something for us. No folks today we are in the age of 3D printing and sky is the limit. We are now able to produce just about anything your mind can dream up, and it lends itself beautifully to the RC hobby segment.
Now there are plenty of free designs out there for the 3D printing hobbyist which is awesome, I would know because I am one of them. But not everyone has the will or the time to pursue what is in itself another hobby altogether. 3D printing can be extremely daunting to the novice, not to mention time-consuming. Some folks would rather just plunk down some cash on something someone else has designed and produced. For those folks, I present the DI Crash Barrier! (Drift Itch Crash Barrier….see what I did there?…anyway)
Like I said there are free designs out there for scale track barriers, but I find them all a bit lacking. So what is a guy to do? Well make your own of course. I teamed up with Jasper Hobbies to bring my design to life. Revision after revision
to make these as functional as possible while remaining affordable. The DI Crash Barrier is 3D printed from PLA plastic. While it’s not the most durable 3D print medium available it is the most cost effective. We went through several iterations of this design during development. I have been testing them at my local drift track for durability for the last couple of months, and after all of that, I feel I have a design that is worthy to be shared with the public.
One of the things I am most proud of with these barriers is the method used to link them together. Most designs you see do not have any method to link them, or if there is a way it’s very unreliable. The DI Crash Barrier uses the standard 4-inch zip tie to create a strong, cheap, and reliable link between the barriers.
To link them together you just slide one zip tie up through the loops as far as it will go. The tip of the zip tie will hold it together from the bottom, and to complete the link you simply attach another zip tie on the top. Clip both zip ties to the desired length and that is it!
In testing, we found that if a car hits them hard enough to break, it is usually the zip tie that will break before the barrier. That being said, while we designed these with durability in mind they are not indestructible. We suggest treating them as you would any other scale accessory on your track and be careful with them.
Right now I am printing in 3 colors, Red and White, Black and Yellow and Blue and White (my favorite). If you would like a set of these they are going for 15 dollars plus shipping for a set of 4, however I will lower the price as the quantity goes up.
A word about quality: Now if you scrutinize these models you will see layer lines. They are printed at a .2 layer height which is draft quality. That is because these take about 6 hours per barrier. I could print in higher quality, but that drives the cost up and these aren’t really meant to be a photo-realistic representation. These are meant to look good speeding by as your car makes its way around the track and that, they do.
I do not warranty these against damage (they are a crash barrier after all) but if you have a failure due to a defect in the print I will replace the broken barrier free of charge. Simply send me a picture and we can make a determination at that time if there a print quality issue. Okay enough of that depressing thought.
If you would like a set of these for your track drop me a line at driftitch @ gmail . com and we can get a set of them out to you.
Thats it for now gang, catch you on the next one!
-evol
