Hi everyone, and welcome to my deep dive into the Wiesels I made/am making! With the wiesel TOW Series being crowdfunded it looked like a perfect time to dive into the development of the series! The Wiesel 1A4The design dates back to early May when I was introduced to the Cyberbrick system. I had wanted to make RC tanks for a while. Before becoming an additive manufacturing specialist (3D print engineer) at a lighting company, I officially joined 3D printing on a hobby level to make custom parts for my Panzer IV Ausf F2 (which I modded to an H). I have wanted to make an RC tank of my own for years now (originally it was a BT5 though) but was scared of the complexity of programming RC vehicles. I have finished IT bootcamps in college for Python, C#, and C++, but honestly don’t remember much besides C++ for Arduino. So, the Cyberbrick kit seemed like the perfect time to design my own RC vehicle. Though also limiting (mainly by motor options), I chose the Wiesel as I had drawn anime for a Wiesel 1A4 Blackcops story in the past, and since then, it has probably become my favorite “tank” (I’m going to refer to it as a tank, though it’s technically a Waffenträger/AWC or sometimes referred to as a tankette).I immediately ran into my first difficulty with the hull, as the angles of the front plates are quite difficult to get right, which got me stuck quite early on. But I managed to continue after about a month with a scan of a Wiesel for reference. After this, the hull was mostly smooth sailing, with the only difficulty being figuring out how detailed I could get. I settled on 0.2mm after that, the printer doesn’t even consider it most of the time, so smaller details would be useless. I first printed the hull in one solid piece, but quickly after, I cut it up into two, with angles beneficial to printing the detail.  Switch to Mk20I also switched to the Mk20 as that would be easier to print than the 1A4 but kept all 1A4 designs on hand.After that, the biggest difficulty became the tracks. The tracks of the Wiesel are absolutely tiny at 1/16 scale. It took a while to get them printable, mainly due to bed adhesion of such small parts playing a huge role. But making the layer height 0.1 and reducing the print speed on the first layer gave very satisfying, strong tracks. Though I’m still continuing development, I’m currently at version 60 or something. https://youtu.be/v0rsa6F1uFIhttps://youtube.com/shorts/gpWT-79HZaQ?feature=share After this came the more dreaded part the turret. Mainly how to move it and how to do the belts. For turret rotation, I quite quickly settled on just directly connecting it to the 180 servo, as the real life Wiesel also doesn’t have a 360° rotatable turret. But gun elevation and depression became more difficult. The original concept had it moved with a nylon cord from the hull. The cord could be pulled in or expanded by a servo moving the cannon up and down. I quickly realized what a headache that was and switched to a boom and socket design. To my excitement, this worked very well, and after a few servo mounts, I had a design I was happy with. After this came the belt, which at first I wanted to use TPU for. I quickly scratched that idea though, as TPU is kind of annoying to work with in my opinion and looked quite toyish. So I split the belt into three and rigged them up with a nylon cord, giving it a wide range of motion, which was good enough to look realistic. After this, a small test was made, and it worked great. https://youtu.be/De9MlxCHkOAThen the biggest roadblock hit the Mk20’s gunner sight. With the ammo boxes covering it in all pictures, it was hard to get references for a realistic model. In the end, I contacted both Munster and Dresden, which allowed me to design a realistic sight after a week.I decided to add LEDs with two LED boards to give enough reach across the vehicle without having to solder. Originally, I had decided not to add LEDs to avoid making it too complex, but at this point, I was quite confident.Shortly after, I launched the Mk20 for everyone to enjoy. But after the release, I did notice some issues. Mainly, the gun wasn’t printed nicely due to how thin it was, and there were no antennas. The gun issue was solved by separating the gun and gun breach into separate objects, making the gun stand straight up instead of at an angle, and making very thin antennas to print even one with a German flag, as the Wiesel in Munster sometimes has at shows.  The Wiesel TOW (No wait the 1A4 Again)After this, I started on the TOW series, as it was also part of that same anime, so I wanted both.This was, of course, easier as now i had expierence form my previous project, but I wanted to upgrade a few things. First, stronger axles so it could hold screws even better. A functioning LED simulated firing option, which I plan to also add a little shake in the track to make the effect more clear, as Cyberbrick currently doesn’t have sound modules. I also wanted to upgrade how the battery was held and powered. Power I sadly had to let go after testing all Cyberbrick options and concluding the regular 400RPM Cyberbrick motor was really the most powerful one with a decent speed.  It did bug me a lot though that I had parts for the 1A4 designed but not released, so I switched gears after making the TOW hull to the 1A4 again. The only difficulty I ran into was the SATCOM disk sometimes failing, so it was made into a separate part. After this, I decided to push it even further, making all hatches functional. While it worked great, it was very brittle and tolerance depended on the printer, so I didn’t pursue it further after finishing a kit to upgrade the 1A4 with it. I filmed the 1A4 with her sister, the Mk20, at the National Museum Soesterberg with a Leopard 1A5, which was a very fun experience mainly with young and old being curious and having a chat about the vehicles.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQaXBxzNe2k After having a little side quest with WW2 German flatcars, I continued on the TOWs. The hulls were straightforward, only having to be cut a bit differently to allow all details to print better. I thickened the axles, added better battery stowage, and had to move the LED boards to allow LEDs to go into the TOW launcher. The fence in front of the launcher was a bit scary, but after having printed five tests with zero fails, it’s quite reliable! The launcher itself was more challenging, as the turret ring had gotten a lot thinner than the Mk20.I again opted for a nylon cord design and again came to the conclusion it was a headache, so I switched to the boom design. With the small space, changes were made to make it more compact, but in the end, I got an even more reliable solution than the Mk20 and 1A4 had! Besides that, the scope and launcher couldn’t be one part, as one hung outside of the turret with the turret wall in between, requiring me to split the scope in two to be glued back together later. Then the lower launcher would be installed with the LEDs, then the scope, and then the top, sandwiching the scope firmly in place. It quickly became clear you had to tighten it quite a bit to get a nice fit with the LEDs as well. The idea for the six piece design came from a Discord friend named Kurarashi, who later also joined me to make attachments for the Wiesels. Of course, the second problem was that we couldn’t drop in the turret like we did with the Mk20, so we split it in two the bottom electronics are installed first in the hull, and then the launcher with LEDs is dropped in and secured. https://youtube.com/shorts/EbZbtooh3JMAfter moving the LEDs back to ensure the cables could reach the LED board, the design was mostly finished, which leaves me with where I currently am in development. I’m slowly starting to print the 1A1 Wiesel TOW.  If you read this far, thank you for reading my development rant! I’m pretty sure I forgot some things in my recap, but honestly, I already filled like two pages, so xD

This project was created for the OUTIN competition. Unfortunately, it didn’t win any notable prizes. Still, it remains one of my most complex and refined projects on MakerWorld and serves well as an example of how I approach design—from the first concept to a fully realized 3D printed product. ANALYSISIn this case, I tackled the project as if OUTIN were my client. I analyzed the brand and its design language and thought about what kind of product could complement their existing portfolio. OUTIN’s portable coffee machine was the centerpiece. I quickly knew I wanted to design a compact table that would make preparing coffee easier while remaining highly portable. The key challenge was to offer a large usable surface that could still be packed down to a small size. The 25 x 25 cm footprint provided enough space not just for the coffee maker but for additional functionality. I began brainstorming what kind of features would make sense.I reached out to a number of camping enthusiasts to validate my ideas and collected valuable feedback during the early concept phase. CONCEPT STAGEOnce the core features and basic design were roughly visualized using a quick Photoshop render, the main challenge was fitting everything into the defined 25 x 25 x 10 cm volume. That constraint was by far the most difficult part of the project. I spent hours adjusting components in CAD to make everything fit. Throughout the design phase, new ideas kept emerging—some of which were feasible, others not. For instance, integrating the LED Kit 001 with a mini lampshade only came up halfway through the space claim process. PROTOTYPINGThe next step was full CAD development. While the table itself isn’t overly complex to model, it’s packed with technical details that required careful construction and consumed a lot of time. During this phase, I regularly created smaller sub-models to test individual mechanisms and features. Naturally, doing a full print for each test would have been inefficient, especially at this size. Still, I ended up doing a lot of test prints. For complex designs like this, countless small technical details must be tested—just aligning the power bank ports took me three iterations. H2D AS INSPIRATIONInspired by the H2D, I had the idea to combine 3D printing and laser cutting. I feel this hybrid approach is still underrepresented in Bambu Lab's featured projects. That’s exactly what makes the H2D so powerful—it supports multiple fabrication methods in one machine. Personally, I’d love to see more contests that combine these methods rather than treating 3D printing and laser cutting as separate categories. I don’t own an H2D myself, but I do have a standalone laser cutter. Maybe one day Bambu Lab will let me test one! FINAL PROTOTYPEBut back to the project: after completing countless part tests, the moment of truth arrived. I printed the two large main sections and hoped everything would fit.Everything came together as planned. The assembly went smoothly, though some minor tolerances and the latch mechanism needed small adjustments. Overall, I was very satisfied with the result.If this were a professional project, the next step would be preparing the product for mass production—typically injection molding or whatever process is required. That would involve significant additional CAD and 2D work and another round of prototyping.  SLICING For the MakerWorld upload, however, I kept the design as-is in terms of CAD. From here, the focus shifted to slicing. With products that depend on mechanical functionality and durability, slicing becomes a critical step. Print orientation, infill, speed, and many other parameters must be carefully chosen. That’s why I always recommend using the original print profile provided by the designer—it often reflects the thoughts that are put into this. Please don’t get me wrong—I think community print profiles can be very helpful. Unfortunately, in many cases, users don’t actually improve anything and sometimes even compromise the quality by trying to save print time or filament. ASSEMBLY MANUAL AND VIZUALISATIONSThe final steps before publishing a complex project on MakerWorld are creating the assembly guide and preparing high-quality images and visualizations. If done properly, both steps require considerable effort—but the time investment is worth it.In the assembly guide, I try to document every step clearly to make assembly as easy as possible.For visuals, I use both real photos and renderings. I believe both are essential. Real photos show what the printed product actually looks like—something a render can’t fully convey.They are a MUST for me. Renders, however, are useful for exploded views, detail shots, and scenes that are hard to capture with a camera. They’re also helpful when placing the product in a fitting environment. In this case, I imagined the table sitting in a mountain meadow to emphasize its outdoor and portable character. Since I don’t live in the mountains, rendering helped bring that vision to life.That was my little journey through this project. I focused more on the overall process rather than diving deep into the technical details—otherwise, this would’ve become a much longer article. If you're interested in a deep-dive into specific parts of the product, feel free to let me know in the comments. 👉Link to the camping table 👉 More of my work here Let me know if you enjoyed this kind of write-up. Is there anything else you’d like to learn about or you are interested in? How do you approach projects like this? I’ve received many questions about how I create my visualizations—would you be interested in an article on that?