Installed motors, batteries and speed controllers to confirm placment and that they all fit ok.
Have to cut a new bracket to hold motors as they are sticking out the side to much so will be moving motors in 15mm each.
Confirmed placement for Batteries and drawn up bulkheads to reinforce bottom

Motors go in from outside as there is only about 5mm between them

They go in upside down so that the cables and the clutch can go through the access hole

Batteries in were they will stay and motors bolted in

There is going to be a bulkhead between the speed controller (black box) and the motors which the speed controller will attache to

Batteries sit just about right up to the turret, this is to try and bring the waight forward, There will most likely be a couple of smaller batteries in the front to power the computer, wireless etc

Finished most of the 4mm parts and desided to reinforce the front some more as it will have alot of tension from the tracks.
Have also cut the 10mm bracket for the turret to pivot on.
Weilded it all up and its coming up good, few more bits to make before i can skin the rest of it as I need to make sure i have access int the front and back areas of the hull.

Must thank AWS for the use of there waterjet in cutting this all out

Have also cut most of teh 4mm steel parts for the hull and the turret nest

4mm Mild Steel parts cut ready for assembly

Turret nest, this goes down into the hull under the turret and will have a piece of 3mm teflon as a skid plate

This is the swivel on the bottom of the nest, this allows data between the turret and hull and still allows 360 deg movement

This is the hull with a few of teh bulkheads in, there is still a 1mm skin to be cut and attached

Nest in the hull

Time to start weilding

Well I have managed to get the top cut out of 1mm steel and I have started weilding it together.

Motors and speed controller

These are the two drive motors that I am looking at using, I have tested them out and they are working well, they have heaps of power so they should not have any problem driving the tank, the other good thing is when you tell it to turn they rotate in opersit directions

This is the speed controller and also the battery box's in the background, I wont be using the box's, just the batteries

The plan

I have desided to make a scale model of an Abrams M1A2 Tank.

I want to make this a resonable size so I have got my self a 1:35 scale plastic kit set to scale it of.
I have drawn it up in my CAD software and have now scaled it up to by a ratio of 6.5 to 1 which means the main body will be just over 1.3 meters long.
I am looking at cutting it's main chassis out of 4mm Mild steel and then skin the rest of the tank with 1mm mild steel.
I will upload drawing sof the chassis etc once i finish it off in teh CAD software.

I have also obtained an old wheel chair which has the two motors that i Will use along with 2x 12v 40Ahr battery's that will all fit very nicely into the body of the tank.
It also has a joystick controller and speed controller which I will use in the testing phase but this will be replaced with a ATOM 280 Mini PC so that I can configure it for video feeds etc from the unit to my laptop which will be used to control it all.

I have taken some pictures of the motors etc as well and will upload these when i can.