Hi,

my club asked me to start work on a car body to be used in one make series for next year.  They use the Plafit A132 chassis and again looking for as boddy it can bolt straight onto.  They wanted to use the Honda NSX and in SuperGT style.  So I went on to Thingiverse, found a suitable starting model and have spent some time in coverting it.

You can find the first step of conversion here in making a slot car friendly body for the road car.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7028284

And then after some efforts, the first attempt for the SuperGT style body.  This is not an exact version of a SuperGT car, more of in the style of SuperGT :)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7028288


There will probably be changes to this as testing is done and I can lay my hands on more reference material.  It's a start.

It was race night and I'm now in the fortunate position to be able to go to the club early as I'm officially an old age pensioner (66 UK) as of last week which means I have more free time.

Thanks to Nolakers tyre cleaning on a figure of 8 track for 10 hours, I put the wheels back on the truer to clean up for about an hour, then fit them to the car destined for a UK proxy (Targa Florio).

At the club track an hour early, tried the car I'd used for testing last week (NSR Porsche 917) with a set of known good Ultragrips and was unimpressed by the cars handling...time for a rethink.

Get another proxy car out, a Fly WSC 95 Joest Porsche with my 3D chassis/pod and tried the 'zero graining' tyres...that's more like it. Did a few laps then decided to try another proxy car which is a lovely runner, a Fly Porsche 908/3 with my 3D chassis and SlotIt SW pod...an immediate improvement, these tyres aren't as bad as I thought, lets keep going and I must have done about 100 laps with them and they were starting to polish with little tyre dust so decided on a proper test.

First photo is after about 100 laps on our polyurethane painted wood track.

   

Those are looking much better than they did after running the NSR Porsche 917.

I then did another 100 laps in 33 lap segments, cleaning with tape. This next photo is after 200 laps, fastest lap was 6.038 which is quick for a proxy car on our track.

          

Then I ran another 100 laps in 33 lap segments, fastest laps was 5.906 which is as good as this car has gone on treated original Ultragrips. The rubber cleaned off the tyres on the tape is 300 laps worth.

          

Then I ran 100 laps non stop...fastest lap didn't improve but regular 5.9's is excellent. Rubber cleaned off the tyres is shown on the tape.

          

Finally, I swapped the tyres round and ran another 100 laps. Initially lap times were down but gradually started dropping again and will be in the 5.9's

   

So I take it all back...thanks to Nolakers, I decided to revisit these and confident they will easily last a round of a proxy series without performance dropping off.

One other thing, the NSR Porsche 917 I had intended entering in the proxy is being replaced by this Fly 908/3 with Predator 22k.

...I've since rounded the outside corners which has made cornering a little smoother.

N.B. these tyres have not had any tyre treatment, only track time to polish them smooth.

   

Melton & District Model Club 60th Anniversary Show
2nd & 3rd of August 2025 10am - 4pm
Long Field Academy, Ambleside Way, Melton Mowbray LE13 0BN
what3words: ///fantastic.rooms.museum

After a break of 5 years, we are bringing back our general modelling show to celebrate the clubs 60th Anniversary, to be held for the first time at Long Field Academy in Melton Mowbray. There will be plenty of different aspects of scale modelling on show across the weekend, including RC Aircraft and Drones, with two full days of flight displays on the playing fields, Model Boating, Table Top Gaming, Meccano, Mimic Motorways and much more.

All the details will be on our website shortly, will the full list of activities and new exhibitors being confirmed at all the time; Melton and District Model Club
View galleries of our previous events here: Model Shows – Melton and District Model Club

To mark this special occasional, in the Slot Car side of the club, we have decided to run a 'Slot Rally' event for the first time since 2013, thanks to the space afforded to us by having a full size sports hall! So we are pleased to announce the;

“Pork Pie Slot Rally” 2025!
This will be an “Arrive and Drive” event, we will not be confirming entries beforehand and competitors can turn up and enter at any point during the two-day event. (But please note we will be stopping entries around an hour before close each day depending on timings we see on the day). However, if you would still like to pre-register, we may make a Google Form available at the beginning of July depending on interest.

Classes:
We are running the following three categories, with a limit of 3 total cars per competitor, with a maximum of two per class. Entries will be £4 per car or £10 if entering the maximum of 3.

• Production
  
  • Box Standard models* to our current “Rally Championship” specifications.
    
• “Slot Rally GB”
  • Any car to the current ‘Slot Rally GB’ technical regulations, but without any limits on the specific age ranges that are currently run.
    
• Open
  • Pretty much free choice of parts and components.
    

[*]The full "Technical" Regulations are available on the events own dedicated page on our website available here: Pork Pie Slot Rally – Melton and District Model Club

*In "Production" Class Cars must be designed and produced as dedicated rally models. Additions of a second driver or rally livery does not make a true rally model, for example any version of the Ninco Porsche 997s is NOT legal. Please confirm with us before arrival if you believe your car may not be eligible to avoid disappointment.

There will also be a “Club Car” Event/Trophy for the members of the public visiting the show or anyone here who doesn’t have prepared cars. However, entry to this event is strictly limited to competitors who are not intending to (or have not) entered any of the other three classes.

The full "Sporting" Regulations will be published on the website shortly.

Tracks:
For the first time ever, we will be running all 7 of our current Slot Rally Stages and portable tracks at one event. This includes our classic “Forest Stage” as used at “Slot Rally GB” from the first Slot Car Festival at Toyota in 2006 and our very latest “Jurassic Park” Stage, as featured in the latest issues of Slot Magazine Issue 67.

   


There are two further tracks in progress, however we cannot confirm if they will be ready in time for the show. However, we plan on running a total of 10 Stages across at least 7 tracks, but here is a sneak peak of one;

   

To make up for any shortfall, on our multi-lane tracks, each track may be run twice, with further runs on one of the other lanes, perhaps in a different direction! (These will not be allowed to be run in succession). Also on “Point to Point” (Single Lap) Tracks, multiple legs will be run to make up a single stage.


For more pictures of each of these tracks, please visit our Tracks gallery on our website here: Tracks – Melton and District Model Club

If you have any questions either post them in the thread here or send me a PM.

Hope to see you all in August!

   


http://mdmc.bmfa.org/slotcar

 3D Scanning       
  
      Revopoint 3d scanner system

From originally creating my own chassis’ using CAD for 3d printing, I wanted to move into creating bodyshells and realised, that although certain bodyshells are within my ability to create in CAD i.e. the CAN AM cars of the cheese dish variety, the 1950s cars like the Jaguars and Ferraris are not. These 1950-60s sports cars with compound curves in 3 planes, are a lot harder to replicate in CAD and very time consuming/frustrating to derive the curves correctly.

Hard to create
                    AS DBR4Z

Easier to create
                    Wolf

Thinking that a 3d scanner would shortcut this (if you have a shell to scan), I found however the level of capability v price point (£1000+) was out of reach five or so years ago. More recently there was a new range of scanners on the market, from Revopoint, Creality and others and the price point had tumbled (sub £500). After reading reviews and watching Youtube reviews I decided to take the plunge and bought a Revopoint Mini in an Amazon Black Friday sale.

The scanner comes as shown with the scanner, tripod and turntable, the software is downloaded from the Revopoint site and consists of the scanner software and a basic editor of completed scans. The editor software will output in multiple formats and has some useful features to weld meshes, trim, smooth, fill holes and resize the file.

The Revopoint scanner uses a laser rather than an infra red beam, and claimed accuracy is down to 0.05mm or 0.02mm for the newer models. Models are placed on the turntable and the scan takes @ 2-3minutes (turntable speed is adjustable), then repeated at a different angle to try and capture as much detail as possible.

So what models can the Revopoint Mini do…

Well it can scan bodyshells from 1/43 to 1/24 just, as cars longer than 150mm progressively leads to focus and then quality issues, or requires multiple scans and stitching or complex sectioning.

To illustrate,

                               die-cast Merc

This was a £2 1/32 scale die-cast from the local toy fair, stripped down and sprayed matt white.

                               Scanned image

Then,

                               Cleaned up in Studio then Blender.

after some CAD work we have a 1957 Mercedes racer.

                                   

And finally printed

   

Scalextric TR7 scan

   

And again after clean up and some CAD work we have a TR8 IMSA

                      IMSA TR8

The end result, below is the printed TR8 alongside an IMSA version of the Datsun 260 using the same technique.

                      Datsun & TR8 printed

Scanning can be less than perfect and hence the amount of work then involved to get a usable shell from these is a coin toss. Sometimes it is just better to bin the scan and start again as it can take hours using a mesh editor like Blender to clean up, re-mesh, thicken and correct mesh errors, such that it will drop into the CAD program to have new parts blended in i.e. arches or sections removed to modify the front/rear etc.

'Side scan sonar' F1 & Datsun i.e. less than desirable scans

   

   

To get good scan results requires patience, practice and research into techniques i.e. the best results I found were obtained by spraying the bodies matt white (Games workshop white primer spray works well) which was a lot cheaper and more consistent than the £30 can of special scanning spray I tried. Program scan settings, model preparation, ambient light, turntable speed, scan distance are all critical hence the practice and research to get viable results.

Secondly it is essential to have software for mesh editing and correction, such as Blender and Meshmixer to complement the scanner & CAD software plus the knowledge on how to use them to turn a scanned object into a shell.

Fundamentality what it doesn’t do, is create a bodyshell file that will go straight to print via the slicer software but it will with practice give you a working outline that can be turned with the right software and some hours of work into a viable shell.

Cheers
John

   

Our second slot rally club night of the year saw 22 drivers compete over four stages with a total of 57 cars. As the south coast was enjoying a bit of a heatwave, snow and ice were in short supply, limited to the deepest, darkest parts of Friston Forest. As usual, Jeremy had tweaked his Classic track layout and we had 3 entirely new stages - including a cut-down version of Jupp's Farm, a new twisty Ninco tarmac stage and a fast Scalextric Sport track...

   

One aim of set-up was to manage table and space to see if we can run six stages for our Slot Rally GB round in July. The plan is to run these four, plus the Ice Rink and a new stand-alone, single lane stage kindly donated by Johnny's Workshop. It looks like there's plenty of room, plus extra for pit tables. Three of the stages went together nicely - including the addition of Phil's HobbyClassic loops. The Boulevard proved problematic, but thanks to Mike's soldering skills it was up and running for the start of the event at 7pm.

The four groups would rotate through the four tracks during the evening. Group A starting on Friston Forest, Group B on Jupp's Farm II, Group C on The Boulevard and Group D on Northdown Farm...

   

The rally report will look at each stage in turn, starting with Friston Forest...

Another fun evening was had by all at Cupcake's.

Burgers, potato salad and coleslaw was on the menu. Excellent food for racing!

I must have been asleep at the wheel because I missed the prewar results screen shot. My humble apologies. Here's the order in how they finished.

   

The 70's GP class was up next. Very fast cars!

   
   

Classic Stock Car is an old favourite. 100-grams minimum weight. It seems were phasing out the BWA 14k motors for Jack Rabbits. It's going to be a mix up of results until everyone has a Jack Rabbit motor from Slot Car Central.

   
   

Slot.It DTM's (taxis) were up last. Nothing like taking tourists for the ride of their lives!

   
   

Thank you very kindly for looking.
Ken

I live in a small Norfolk village which has all the usual amenities. There is a village website with complete information about everything - Opening times of shop, post office, pub etc, how to book the village hall and so on. It contains links to all the relevant businesses and local clubs.

We also, needless to say, have a village Facebook group which seems mostly populated by idiots. Apart from the endless complaints about dog poo you can guarantee that someone will ask every single day - "when does the shop shut, is the Post Office open on Saturday, how do I book the village hall?" etc. etc. None of these people seem to know about Google and they think that Facebook is some kind of oracle. Even stranger is the fact that normally sensible people answer these cretins!

I thought I had seen it all but.......................
we also have a mainline railway station. It was shut during the Beeching era but eventually resurrected after a local campaign nearly 50 years ago. On May 5th there will be a small celebration about this as you can see from the following screenshot.

Please read the comment. Sometimes I wonder how the human race is still surviving! And yes, somebody did actually reply and tell her that it was at the railway station!

just a query 

bought this life-like chevy model kit the other day 

   

upon opening , the model looks quite small 
are life-like models truly 1/32 scale ?
or was this car originally smaller than i thought ?
the kit itself looks nice and is still sealed , so no complaints regarding the kit , its just the scale ?

   

does anyone know or are familiar with these kits ?

thanks in advance
Kev

Requires Scorpius Dongle, 12V Supply and Race Coordinator Software.

Optional is a colour LCD Light Gantry. Upload any image for start finish lighting or the default ones.

Use 2 for 4 lanes or 3 or 6 lanes etc.

No data cables. Easy quick install. No soldering required. All LEDs and Photo Sensors are plug and play.


Available late 2025. $99.00AUD each plus tax
Dongle $99.00AUD plus tax.

   

Latest MPD design incorporates 2 Infrared sensor channels, 2 photo sensor channels, 2 OLED 12C screen drivers.


   

Scorpius dongle.

A couple of weeks ago I recorded the computer screen for Targa Florio Rally settings which we tested on the last Saturday Scalextric Club Isle of Man meeting.

I've made a short video showing the important settings...