by BARC 1 » Wed Dec 21, 2016 12:35 pm
True about the Shapeways inventory in General. There are a lot of things you can purchase for slot cars there to make building a car very simple. It appears as if 3D printing lends itself well to Slot cars and the lower volume production runs that could never be done with conventional plastic injection.
These offerings though I don't think should be considered scratchbuilt. They are Kits and are produced with the precision of CAD so in my mind are like purchasing a COX kit back in the 60's. You buy it and you put it together.
I not sure in this scale you could divide entries just yet. In time maybe, but in general I think Proxy racing needs to be wide open for a time and build up some general interest. Currently we have Kitbuilt, scratchbuilt, and modifed stock of all eras competing. When we start seeing 60+ entries at Proxies, then I think it is time to start classing them.
It can happen overnight as well. Lets just say Peter's Nomag event has 60 cars show up. Peter could then divide them based on era or chassis and report the times and finishes based on the class. Nothing really changes on the track, it is just the way it is reported and classed. You could end up with 4 winners. 1 for Scratch built, 1 for Kitbuilt, one for Stock and then an over all winner.
For my Proxy, Peter's mini with its HO box motor had a slight magnetic advantage over the rest. So when it came time to report on the result, I just had it compete in its own class( which it of course it won as it was the only one), and I had a winner of the rest, and then an over all winner, which the mini also won.
Cheers
Dan