Swedish Kranvagn

[tank_me]

I was surprised when Inkor announced the Kranvagn was going to be available to 3D print, but since I like weird tanks I decided to make it.

The Kranvagn only existed as blueprints so no real examples were made, but it has been reborn as a World of Tanks playable heavy tank.

There is some info about it here: https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Tank:S16_Kranvagn
Two hulls were built and both still exist at the Arsenalen tank museum but due to various issues in development the turrets were never built. After the program was cancelled the hull of the first vehicle was used to test the suspension for the Strv 103 and the second hull was rebuilt into the first prototype Bandkanon self propelled artillery.

And a conceptionalized pic of the completed tank:



Video of it will look like as it's built from Inkor's STLs:

Being a paper panzer the details are a little scarce on the model so it has printed super fast. Tank is printed from ASA, PETG, TPU, and two kinds of resin.


Parts fresh from the resin curing station.


Elevation arm and servo installed.




Recoil servo and hatches mounted.




Continued in post 2…

[tank_me]

Gearbox dry fit. I had to remove the rear brace as it didn't fit with the gearbox. The gearbox is an exact fit, no room on either side so I'd say the rear brace isn't needed.


Road wheels, suspension, exhaust covers, and front fenders installed. Road wheels were modified to accept bearings. Also started texturing the turret. I haven't permanently attached the turret halves yet as the servos need to be adjusted and a apple mount needs to be mounted in the loader's hatch. Can't really adjust the servos once the two parts are mated together and it's a bit of a pain to put them together and take them apart repeatedly.




Got the cast texture finished the turret, got all of the internals wired up/tested, added all the small details, and shot a coat of primer on it. Still needs to touch up work, but the project is progressing. The gun is 130mm so the flash LED and the IR LED both fit in the barrel. There is a battle unit mount in the gunner’s hatch.


More progress. Got the tracks all resin printed. Trying out some Sunlu Toughness resin. Seems to give the tracks pretty good tensile strength while still remaining flexible. I tried all kinds of different materials for the tracks and they were all really brittle. The tracks have some thin parts that always seemed to break. I guess we will see how they hold up.



After assembling them I've got some black Mr. Surfacer on them. The turret and road wheels have been base coated. The hull is just about ready for base coat also after filling some screw holes it will be good to go for camo.



Continued in post 3…

[tank_me]

I wasn’t completely sure how I was going to paint the Kran. The Kran was a 1950s project so it precedes the modern M90 splinter camo by like 30 years. Trying to find examples of 1950 era Swedish camo isn't easy. I have found some tanks from around that time that look like the modern NATO OD, black and brown hues. I decided to go with that with some light green added in for good measure.

And the camo going on the tank in stages.




Brown added:




Next the black:





Continued in post 4…

[tank_me]

Got the LED headlights and tail lights wired up this weekend. I used the flat nosed 5mm variety so they don't have that round end pointing out. The flat nosed LEDs look like they have lenses on them.





You can see how the oscillating turret can elevate and depress:




It's getting close to being finished. I need to do some airbrush touch ups at this point and some mild weathering.



I had it running under it's own power using a HL 7.1 system. As you can see, the on/off switch is under the driver's hatch. The gearbox is the plastic dual drive type, but the tank is pretty light so it seems to work well. It was cheap ($65.00 USD plus shipping) so I'm giving it a shot. I did have to shorten the drive shafts and adjust the flats on the shaft to fit the sprocket backspacing. There is a small Taigen speaker as there isn't much room inside the hull for a larger one. It's stuck up in the nose of the hull. Hoping to post a video of it running this week.



That's all for now...

[cleong]

Looks great and an interesting subject. Though from an IR battling standpoint some may argue that the oscillating turret gives you on-demand slope defence because you can drive around with your barrel elevated or depressed and the TBU will follow suit, whereas “normal” tanks have their TBU follow the level of the hull, regardless of the barrel elevation

[RichJohnson]

Yeah if that were in southern ca and wanted to battle we would have to find a way to have a standing target just above the slope and get a Lego dei mounted there so it was fair.
Interesting challenge for IR battle build.
but that aside, excellent build and nice model. Good work man!

[tank_me]

I've had the M1128 MGS out at the field which also basically has the same issue as the apple moves up and down, but it's apple is even further back on the "turret". It is a gun with no turret basically. On flat ground I've tried to elevate the gun to avoid hits to see if it made a difference, but the LegoDEI is sensitive enough to register hits even when the gun is elevated being fired on from the front. The MGS emitter is also tied to the elevation of the and set back pretty far where the coax MG is mounted on the real vehicle.

Our field currently doesn't have any major hills to go hull down on. The emitter is in the end of the barrel so while a moving apple may seem like an advantage, in practice it doesn't seem to have any or very little affect on hits unless I were to raise the barrel while hull down at the top of a hill. The movement of the apple being so close to the pivot point isn't as extreme as the MGS apple. It may increase the difficulty to hit it (I would say slightly with the experience of the MGS), it also means I have to bring the barrel to bear when firing. Hull down firing, it would actually be easier to hit as the apple is raised above where a normal turret would be. The barrel is also a disadvantage as it is LONG. Yeah, it is an interesting experiment. It's definitely something different. :)

[MrChef]

Excellent work. This tank is cool as hell. I'm blown away that these can be just 3D printed up like that.

[tank_me]

Excellent work. This tank is cool as hell. I'm blown away that these can be just 3D printed up like that.

Thanks. Oh...it takes a lot of work to make it look like that. There is quite a bit of sanding and filler primer. It didn't cost that much to print though...maybe $50 in filament as there were some failed prints and maybe $20 in resin. Costs involved after plastic dual current gearbox ($65), cost of the files ($25), electronics ($65), 28 bearings ($7 bought in bulk), track pins, servos ($5), battery ($25), paint/primer, and misc wiring/connectors/LEDs is probably all in a little less than $300. I already had the Heng Long 7.0 radio laying around from other tanks. For that price you can buy a Heng Long tank, but you can't by a Kranvagn for that price... :)

Of course the initial investment into my Bambu Labs X1C printer was $1600, the Anycubic Photon M3 resin printer was around $275, and the Anycubic wash/cure was $200. That being said the Bambu Lab printer has now over 6800 hours of printing on it so I've gotten my money's worth out of it. I've literally printed (27) 1/16th scale vehicles, a 1/10th scale Jagdtiger, and a 1/6th scale KV-1 with that printer.

There are a bunch of cheaper options out there for high speed printers now that weren't available when I bought my Bambu so people can get into the 3D printing hobby much cheaper than they ever could previously. I don't print tanks that are generally available. It's not worth the time in in finishing work as that's the part I hate the most.

[tank_me]

Well I beat the crap out of the Kranvagn today on the battlefield and it performed really well. I hit a building by accident and another user ended up on the same frequency as my tank. All of a sudden it shot forward and smacked right into an Abrams. Both incidents produced no damage. The tracks held up REALLY well. Some of the pins did start walking out after running the tank for about a half hour, but the tracks stayed in place without walking off. The Sunlu Toughness resin seems to have held up to the stresses of the battle. I will have to go back through and re CA the pins, but over all it battled great.

Added a tank number and some antennas.





Is a tank ever really done?

[Alphonso]

that is amazing and such an interesting subject. I have been a World of Tanks addict since Beta testing on Xbox and the Kranvagn is one of my favourites due to its great gun depression and sloped turret armour. How about an Udes 15/16 ?
Love the casting detail on turret and pike nose, the hoisting loops and every detail is spot on.

[tank_me]

that is amazing and such an interesting subject. I have been a World of Tanks addict since Beta testing on Xbox and the Kranvagn is one of my favourites due to its great gun depression and sloped turret armour. How about an Udes 15/16 ?
Love the casting detail on turret and pike nose, the hoisting loops and every detail is spot on.

Thanks. Still want to add a tow cable to the rear hull and do some subtle weathering to the tank.

Right now there isn't a 3D printable version of the Udes 15/16. Inkor, the designer, makes a lot of different vehicles. Some of them are fantasy tanks like the Kranvagn, but I don't thing the Udes has been suggested by anyone. With enough interest from the community, he will design obscure tanks.