Comparing 1/35 aftermarket 3D printed tracks (2024)

Aftermarket track links are not cheap. Let’s get that out of the way first. Often as much as 50% the price of a kit! Whether you think they are good value and will enhance a build will be down to personal preference. Although kit manufacturers have made great strides in improving what they now offer in their kits, whether it be individual tracks, workable, or the link and length type, there is no denying that the workable type have a huge advantage over the conventional fixed or rubber band type.  The natural sag that a set of workable links exhibit is difficult to replicate. It can be done but it is not always straight forward. Whilst Friul metal tracks were once the go to aftermarket tracks, let us look at some recent additions to a rook of 3D printed tracks that have recently hit the market.

 

Catching up on projects I have just spent a weekend building purely aftermarket tracks, and whilst they are not all of the same type or even for the same AFV, it did give me an opportunity to see the differences in terms of both quality and ease of assembly.

 

I managed to get through two sets of Friuls (Pershing and a Tiger I), two sets of T-Rex (Panzer IV and Pz.I/Maultier truck), a set of Quicktrack (StuG III), a set of Panzerwerk Design tracks, and as a comparison a set of RFM's own kit tracks from their StuG III Ausf G.

 

Let’s start with the Friuls. I personally like these tracks and whilst they did stop trading recently, I understand a new buyer has been found and will start manufacturing them again soon. They have a reassuring heft and the natural tension sag they obviously exhibit gives them a very realistic appearance. Being made of metal they are strong and take well to lots of handling.  Whether painting or utilising a blackening solution to start the weathering process it still gives a very convincing appearance. Exposing bare metal areas on surfaces where either the ground or road wheels have burnished them is also a simple task. There are however a couple of downsides. Firstly, utilising only a single piece of wire instead of a pin will often leave the inner side of the tracks with the exposed end of the wire showing. Some sets, like my Pershing set do offer metal pin heads to cover the exposed wire. Secondly, both my sets needed almost all of the holes drilling out. A tediously repetitive task, but one that thankfully goes relatively quickly and without any great drama.  Whilst the Tiger I inner portion of the track has the exposed wire; the Pershing tracks did at least have that small metal shaped link pin end to hide it. These were incredibly tiny and difficult to apply but in addition every single piece of wire had to be cut to exactly the same length. Not too short as to prevent link to link connection, but also not too long as to allow the seperate end pin to locate in the link end hole.

 

Tiger I late type

 

M26 Pershing

 

T-Rex

I’ve built up around six 1/35 sets of these to date and once assembled they do look very realistic.  Although nowhere near as robust as metal tracks, due to the nature of the two-half pin connection design,  they also exhibit the same natural sag over road wheels that the Friuls do. Whilst the links all look incredibly well detailed and none of the pin holes in any of my sets required additional work, a fair percentage of the separate pin ends has been of poor quality. The first two sets I purchased built up effortlessly and although many of the pins looked like bananas, the resin was quite soft and pliable and very few were damaged upon insertion. The T-Rex design works by designing a taper onto the half pins. The pins in these first two boxings had visibly tapered pins so the friction fit inside each link was good and tight without the need for any adhesive. Both sets built up without any real incident apart ­­­­from the outer pin heads protruding a little too far on one. I also had very few breakages of both pins and links in both sets. If a pin did break inside the link, metal wire could be easily inserted to remove it.  Unfortunately, the second two sets could not have been more different. Both links and pins were very brittle and upon opening the box it was apparent that numerous pin ends had already been damaged. I realise that this could have occurred during transit, but it was interesting to note that these sets also suffered with quite a few links breaking when handled. However, the most frustrating part by far is that none of the pin ends appeared to have any significant taper. That meant a huge proportion simply fell out almost as quick as they were inserted. I eventually had to resort to brush painting the link ends of small completed runs with primer to keep the pins in place! I did eventually construct both sets (one with barely enough pins left) but I did consider contacting the retailer I purchased them from. The last issue is one I highlighted in my recent RFM StuG III Ausf G late blog. It was disappointing  to find  the links did not fit well over the sprockets! They were too narrow. Whether the kit sprocket was at fault I do not know,  but the Quicktrack links fitted well.

 

The two sets I built up over the weekend thankfully had the quality and robustness of my original sets. There were far fewer pin ends damaged upon opening the box. However, once again, the absence of any visible taper on the pins made assembly tiresome and frustrating.  I resorted again to brush painting the pin ends on each link. The Pz.I type Maultier set was, as you can imaging, extremely tiny, so that magnified the effort to assemble them considerably more.

T-Rex type 6B w/cleats. This set was only really usable by brush painting the pin ends on the links!

 

 

QuickTracks

I have purchased five sets of these to date and what I will say off the bat, is that they are far and above the quickest tracks to assemble. I think there might be something in the name😁 They do indeed simply snap together. If you take the manufacturers assembly advice and use the correct method and tool to assist you, a full run of tracks will take literally minutes to construct. Although I damaged just four links during assembly there were plenty more than enough included in the set to build two complete runs, and I had enough left over for additional spare track runs.  I will admit I did receive one set last year that would not stay straight when assembled. There was obviously a manufacturing quality control issue, but they accepted the issue was theirs and replaced them promptly, free of charge.  The replacement set had absolutely no issues. Whilst the detail is not quite as pin sharp as the T-Rex tracks, the ease of assembly more than compensates. The snap fit nature of each link does also mean that a natural sag over something like a Panzer return road wheel will not occur without a little bit of human manipulation. Once adjusted they do look just as good.

 

Quicktrack T-35018 (REV1) for Pz.IV late type

 

1/35 QuickTracks T-35024 Tracks for Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. J; Brummbar; JgdPz IV/L70 - Kgs 61/400/120 - 38cm (40 cm w/pin) Type 7

 

Panzerwerk Design 

This is the first set I have purchased and built and TBH I really don’t have a single negative comment to make. They adopt the two-half pin design with well detailed inner and outer exposed ends. The cotter pin on the outside of my set being particularly well detailed. The links are nicely rendered and just as with Quicktrack and T-Rex tracks the foundry stamps are present. Due to the similar design, they take about the same time to assemble as a T-Rex Studio set and exhibit the same natural sag once fitted over a set of road wheels. The biggest difference and a most welcomed feature that sets them apart are the inclusion of a couple of minute ridges on each pin. This means they fit into place with a reassuring click, and just as importantly, stay there. My set arrived with one link damaged (recoverable with CA glue) and zero damaged pins.  I also noted everyone of them was completely uniform in size and arrow straight. I do hope they continue to consistently produce a product of this quality as I am confident their range will expand as folks realise just how good they are.

 

Panzerwerk Design type 6B on Stug III Ausf G

 

 

RFM StuG kit #5086 tracks 

Whilst these are arguably among the best of recent mainstream 1/35 AFV kit inclusive tracks, they still have their drawbacks. Unlike the Dragon kit ‘magic links’ of old the links still remain on sprue gates, and these particular links have three attachments per link that require cleaning up. RFM have included a handy jig and designed them to be workable, but they still instruct you to glue the half pin ends to the link. Whilst in theory this will work, it is still far too easy to stick links together, so it is highly recommended to use a thicker glue to avoid capillary action allowing a thinner glue to flow where it is not needed! These RFM tracks are a touch bulky, and I'm not convinced full runs will stand up to a great deal of handling without a half link failing, but they do look decent and do on the whole, work as intended. 

 

 

 

The RFM kit tracks are good, very good but if I had to pick my favourite aftermarket set it would have to be Panzerwerk Design. You pay for quality and TBH I’m not entirely against that. They were not the most expensive, either were they the cheapest, but considering their overall quality and ease of assembly, in my opinion they were definitely the best value.
They were pleasurably free of issues to assemble, look excellent, with incredible detail, the pin design works reassuringly well, and they take well to handling. What’s not to like.

Dragon 6253 1/35 Tiger I Late production

With the 80th D-Day anniversary just around the corner and just the one decade on since I purchased this, I have finaly got round to popping the lid.

What can I say about this kit? Well after 19 years since its release it still looks to be the gold standard of Tiger I kits. Tiger guru David Byrden had a hand with technical advice with this one and his website https://tiger1.info/ is invaluable to anybody who likes to model these big cats. He even has a page dedicated to pointing out both errors and fixes for pretty much every Tiger 1 released to date https://tiger1.info/kits.html Scrolling down to this particular kit https://tiger1.info/models/products-page/DR6253 we still have a few small bugs to address. No big issues, but a few little anamolies that David points out and advises how to solve. Looking at all the current big box Takom builds on the tinterweb, I notice even these brand new releases still have there issues. Some of which were not present on this kit 19 years ago The one big bonus over this Dragon kit and one that the current crop of Tiger I late kits over the last decade have adopted, is the inclusion of moulded on zimmerit. Although some folks still prefer to make there own or use resin sets, I think the majority of modellers welcome this.

There have been a few re-releases of this kit since, the first omitting allmost all of the PE goodies, metal barrel and even replaced the magic links with rubber band tracks Further releases did eventually add moulded on zim but still excluded many of the original goodies. I notice the most recent re-release this year, does re-add the metal barrel, a few 3D printed items and a new figure, but its still not a patch on the original release IMO. These first boxings came with a huge host of additional multimedia parts. It’s not all doom and gloom if photo-etch is a turn off either, as there are styrene alternatives. So, let’s pop open the box and inspect what is reputed to be one of the very best of what this manufacturer produced back in the day.

It’s a comprehensive 3 in 1 package in which you can build three different Ausf E variants. A late, a late command vehicle and the final version. There are a full five frets of PE including track guards and extensions, preformed exhaust surrounds, engine grills, command tank aerials and multipart tool clamps to name just a few. There is an additional turned metal barrel and seven different brass ammunition shell types, two types of metal shackles and pins, metal tow cables and yes, there is even a pre-formed metal bucket   You get two plastic ammo crates and a figure resembling the famous tank ace Michael Wittmann. You also get a working torsion bar suspension. There are plenty of options depicting the differences between late and final versions including two turret roof types and final type patterned steel wheels. TBH the box is packed with almost every conceivable extra and was considered back when released, everything you could possibly need. Well, almost everything As already mentioned, unlike later releases with far less parts and rubber band tracks this kit does NOT have any moulded on zimmerit. Although the inclusion of anti magnetic paste ended in Sept 1944, production of the Tiger I ended in August, so all late and final builds would have received factory zimmerit. Why this kit didn’t come with any moulded on I couldn’t say. I don't possess any other Tiger I kits so I’m not qualified to say how successful their later moulded on zimmerit was. It was never a massive issue for me as aftermarket manufacturers released their own not long after the kits release. Although it is fairly tricky to track down these days, I’ve gone for a safe pair of hands with the ATAK specific set. This includes two resin mantlets, two pattern types for the turret (course and matching to the hull), with two equivale matching patterned escape hatches and resin vision ports. I also tracked down a set of Friul metal tracks back when I purchased the kit to add some track tension realism, not to mention a huge chunk of heft to the build.

 

 

Knowing very little about the production history of these big cats I’ve turned to the David Byrden website. As mentioned above, for this kit David adds a few pointers to solve a few instruction discrepancies, some recommendations to modify a few small parts,  and advice on how to add a few small additions. Apart from adding the zimmerit, its pretty much all thats required.

With the choice of three variants the first logical step is to choose a subject. I’ve always been fascinated with the Normandy campaign, so I am going to research a worthy candidate. The Tigers that were operating in Normandy fought exclusively, as far as I know, in the British and Canadian sectors around Caen where the German armour was concentrated. Three German schwere Panzer Abteilung fought in Normandy and a few Tigers may (or may not) have been present in the Panzer Lehr Division.

s.SS-Pz.Abt. 101 had 45 Tiger I and reached Normandy on June 12, travelling from Beauvais near Paris. Michael Wittmann and the 1st and 2nd Companies famously fought in the well-known battle of Villers-Bocage on June 13.

s.Pz.Abt. 503 was transferred to Normandy with 33 Tiger I and 12 Tiger II in early July.

s.SS-Pz.Abt. 102 was transferred to Normandy with 45 Tiger I in early July. They were engaged in the bitter fighting for Hill 112.

Paintings and markings in the kit are for no less than twenty-four Ss.Pz.Abt 101 gun tank vehicles and command vehicle 009, as well as three vehicles from SS.Pz.Abt 508 that fought in Italy

 

 

The next step was to decipher the infamous Dragon instructions. Credit to them they do clearly break down the various differences for each of the three variants at each stage, but I still double checked that these were correctly picked out and made additional notes from the David Byrden website. The instructions are ahem....extremely busy, but TBH, apart from a few dubious indicators of parts placement the instructions are general pretty good. Having three variant options on many of the steps makes it look far worse than it actually is. I simply highlighted the parts required wherever a variant choice appeared to keep me on track. I believe there are a few parts mis-labelled, but these are often on mirrored parts that are easy to spot.

The first steps build up the running gear. The lower hull tub is a one-piece affair to which you first add the front tow hook extensions, torsion bars, wheels and rear plate. To take advantage of the adjustable torsion bar engineering you simply guide them through the hull and fix them into the curved grooved slots (simulating the real movement range) in small fixings added to the opposite side. This system allows the torsion bar axle ends to then compress and rebound as they would do on the real vehicle. 

 

 

Although the instructions are not completely clear, the track pin return plates are to be positioned slightly differently if the smaller idler is used. It fixes angled down at the rear to operate effectively on the smaller idlers. Apparently even the German engineers took a while in figuring out and adopting this simple fix   David Byrden also points out that the smaller idler wheel was introduced about a month before the thicker roof, so the larger idler is unlikely to have been present on any vehicle represented by this kit. I would recommend leaving the idler axle unfixed until the tracks are added to get the perfect track tension. There are two sets of middle and outer wheels, with one set representing those fitted to the final version. Two outer sprocket types are offered. The only difference is that one has concave and one convex spokes.

Test fitting the inner and middle sets of road wheels.

 

 

Two lower hull rear plates are included with one having the different fixings used on the command variant. Before adding any of the components the ATAK Zimmerit was added to the back plate and any location holes it covered, opened up. I figured any battle damage was also best added to it at this stage. There is the option of one plastic or two types of metal tow shackles and pins. I understand the squarer shaped ones were fitted to the final version. David Byrne points out two small updates in step 5. Firstly, the exhaust muffler top guard is supported on pins (parts C3) and these are orientated incorrectly. These are easily repositioned using his guide image below. I drilled new holes for added strength but it would be just as easy to snip the location pips off the pins and reposition them.

 

 

Secondly, the adapter plate that is positioned between the two exhaust stacks sits on two small posts moulded to the rear hull plate. They are apperently 1mm too long so reducing their size allows the plate to sit as intended. The exhaust shields are offered in both plastic and pre-formed photo-etch. Whatever medium you choose the shields were actually mounted to small square spacers. This is not a detail this Dragon kit managed to add. Many new kits including the Takom big box kits do. Again, these are easy enough to scratchbuild out of plastic card if going for 100% accuracy. The jack brackets are also offered in both plastic and photo-etch.

I opted for the late/final gun tank rear plate option

I have read that Dragon deliberately moulded the hull with a slight warp in the hull tub as a design feature intended to allow for a snug fit with the hull roof and side plates. The rear plate is big enough and strong enough to force the hull sides into the proper alignment, but at the front it requires a little help to overcome the warp. Positioning a length of sprue or wood or brass etc, cut down to the necessary size, will brace the lower hull to allow the perfect fitment of the roof plate moulding. Images from David Bryden's website illustrate this below.

 

Skipping ahead of fitting the few interior engine components, I mulled over how best to approach adding the remaining hull zimmerit. The kit's separately moulded side armoured plates will first require fixing to the hull tub sides. Spacing is dictated by some very chunky holes in the hull tub moulding and so they fit precisely, butting up perfectly to the rear plate. Test fitting the zimmerit sheets against these side plates found that they also attach to the sides of the armoured front plate. This front plate is not added for a few more steps and is instructed to be attached to the top plate moulding. I didnt really want to add too many parts before having to handle the model getting the zimmerit down, but ideally I needed to add the armoured plate to the hull tub assembly. Checking over that fixing it to the hull tub would not disturb the build sequencing or impede any other parts placement, it was possible to add it to the hub as long as the glacis plate was fixed in place at the same time. Two glacis plates are offered. One with moulded on front track guards and one without, so you can add the PE ones if you wish.  As the front armoured plate, glacis and bow plate also require zimmerit, I could now attach it all at the same time. The side zimmerit sheets have a myriad of small square holes to open up to fit around moulded on track guard mounting studs and cable fixings. Once opened up the zimmerit fitted really well. Likewise, both front and rear sheets also mated up nicely. There is the inevitable small amount of tidy up to do and a smidgen of putty will be required to mate all four sheets as they meet at each corner but overall, I'm happy with the way it looks.

ATAK advise to sand down the back of the Zimmerit sheets to assist adhesion. I used Tamiya white top liquid cement for fixing all the Zimmerit. I applied it to small sections at a time and it gives plenty of time to adjust it into position.

The exhaust shields are offered in both plastic and PE. The PE parts are preformed and look really tasty. There really is no contest here as to which option was going to get used. If annealed first, some realistic damage can be made. These will not be fixed in place until later steps to allow for painting of the armoured covers and exhaust stacks.

 

The remaining rear plate zimmerit sheets added, and the PE shields test fitted to ensure no surprises come final fixing. I’m still in two minds as to whether to fit the rear mudguards. If left off, two shallow alignment grooves under the hinges will have to be filled. 3D convoy light and C-hook brackets will be added in later steps to avoid damage.

 

Top plate moulding dry fitted exposing the engine radiator, fans and ducts. There is a lot of nicely rendered detail here and it all fits extremely well. 

 

Steps 8 to 11 are busy, busy, busy with all manner off components added to the hull top plate moulding. Whilst I'm on a roll I'm going to skip these steps and get the remaining Zimmerit fixed onto the turret. 

 

Before any components were added to the one-piece turret shell the ATAK Zimmerit was added. Two pattern types are available. One matches the hull pattern and there is a larger spaced pattern. Check which option to choose if representing an actual vehicle. I intended to use the more common larger type, but I had a really blond moment and added the smaller type to one side without noticing until too late😖  Again, the ATAK Zimmerit sheets fit really precisely to the turret contours with every cut-out matching the kits details. The ATAK set also includes the two circular vision slits, but you do have to chisel/sand down the kit detail first for it to fit as it should.

 

 

The breech, mantlet and barrel assembly are to be constructed first. Dragon clearly points out the mantlet and muzzle brake options applicable to each variant. The ATAK Zimmerit kit includes two of these mantlet options in resin. The command variant option is the one not included but as this variant deleted the MG, it is easy enough to cover the MG hole on either of the resin options.  The ATAK parts are a perfect match to the plastic parts, so no extra work is required. You get both a plastic and turned metal barrel and these key in to either the earlier large or final smaller type muzzle brakes. 

 

Progress so far with the main turret parts dry fitted onto the main components of the hull. Two Turret roofs and three loaders hatches are provided, and we will look into that in the next update.