Known by a few names – “fighting vehicle“, “armoured car” or simply “tank” – the conceptual creation of Leonardo da Vinci has inspired engineers and artists for generations, and now its reached the world of 3D printing.
Maker Man Yeung has recreated the design focusing not just on the famous conical exterior, but also the interior filled with weaponry, wheels and other details.
Using Blender, Yeung began the modelling process using the original sketch as well as some more modern sources of inspiration.
This process proved to be somewhat difficult as the separate pieces were made to be printed without supports. The design itself, Yeung tells us, was not the difficult part here, as the modelling was done in around four hours.
Printing took longer with this desktop toy taking just under ten hours to complete.
Once assembled using the provided instructions, the vehicle measures in at 8.5 X 8.5 X 4 centimetres. You can see how that scales up compared to some other objects in the gallery below.
As you can see the example print is an unpainted grey plastic, but we hope someone takes the files and makes their own using a filament which contains actual wood. That would work nicely for a design which was theoretically to be made mostly of wood.
If you want to give that a try, the files to do so are available for free on Thingiverse. There you can also find an assembly guide, which you’ll need as some pieces connect on their own and others require adhesive.
