Civilian Opel Blitz tyres

35th scale civilian tyres

Original: With 70.000 4x2 Opel Blitz trucks, one of the main needs besides fuel is tyres. War is not about how many tanks you can field, it's about logistics. Fuel goes much faster trough your trucks if your trucks are on the bulky terrain tyres. Therefore: Many if not most Opel Blitzes where on civvy, normal transport profile, tyres.

Model: A standard household 3D printer (Ender 3) prints 14 half wheels that form 7 tyres.

Build: In 2013 I tried Sketchup to make a tyre to replace the standard military profile. The idea was to print them trough one of the 3d services. The tyre size and company logo are readable on it. A nice result but this way made a set of 7 cost some 25 -30 Euro. roughly the price of the available resin kits. March 2020 I was allowed to try a 3D printer. It takes some effort to master that proces, but the result is good enough.

April 20 2020

No civvy Blitz project at this exact moment, but I already assembled a standard chassis for explanation, so I repeated that for the civvy tyres. Both are recycled parts so the have too much room on their axles. If ever I use them for a truck, I'll set them straight. Making thing from scratch was already fun, but this is a whole new dimension to that!

March 8 2020

A 3d printer, an Ender3, was on our kitchentable for some tests. A new world opened to me. A lot of new things to learn and try. And after finding all kinds of nice things on Thingiverse, my old project came to mind. Being able to simply print it on a .12 mm thickness of layers left the lettering on the sides of, but it provided a tread! 14 halves to be printed, sanded and presto! 7 wheels weighing a few gramms, and the plastic filament on a spindle costing 20 euro a kilo. That's fun!

2018

Over the years I've been trying to make my own Blitz wheels. The idea was to print only the tyres and replace the rubber ones of the Italeri Blitz. Niels Henkemans helped a lot throughout my strugles with Sketchup and somewhere along the trip he cut my tyre in 2. That turned out to be a life saver. I had a couple of halves and some complete tyres and than that stranded on the price tag of having 7 tyres per truck printed at shapeways. It was a fun expirience and I had learned a lot.