Split Pitchcar Looping

Description

This was a project for a good friend. He asked for a print of some pitchcar looping found here, but I didn't like the idea of wasting time and material due to a lot of support (not even speaking of the problem how to remove support after print). So we discussed many variants and finally decided for a horizontal split approach. We used the base plate made by krusa27 and build the looping from scratch (I wonder now why we used the base with the guard rail - guess the version without didn't exist then). A slight drawback now is that the layers result in a rougher surface in the flat areas of the slope. I suggested to varnish and/or sand the runway, but my friend has assured me it works well without post treatment. We thought a lot about how to fix the two halfes firmly together. I first tried made three "balconies" similar to the actual design and tried to fill the space with a 2 cm brigde. Normally this can be printed, but cura did not recognize it as a bridge structure and so tried to fill it diagonally. This would not have worked, so a new approach was to include a kind of hinges which could be bolted horizontally using a toothstick (or something more stylish and less dentiological). This was my first print of the upper part. I then had to notice a design error: the hinges were placed on top instead at the outside of the looping's "arms", blocking the second half. Removing the support for the center of the bow I noticed an ugly surface in some areas. I then deciced to include my own support, and this in turn led to the idea to skip the hinges an use only the "guiding noses" and two rubber bands to hold the halves together. This is the design you see printed here. The lower part took about 15 hours to print, the upper 10 hours. I suppose you can print both parts without support. The only space where it might be needed is the cut for the rubber band (which for some dubious reasons lost in the mist of time I included in the upper part, too). The slopes or "arms" of the half looping are easily printable without support, and nearly did - cura just added some funny pillars without connection to the model for unknown reasons. You will notice that the upper part's side walls doesn't look as smooth as the lower ones. Funnily this comes from a new way to soften the side walls. One setting of the spiral form was set to a too small value. I saw it in Tinkercad but thought it would only show up here. As I noticed it in the print I found I liked the look and left it this way. There are some hours of work in this model. Theoretically I should now redo it to fix some errors (and reduce the number of components/steps). Perhaps I will do, but for now: it works good enough, it looks good enough, and another project is waiting. Have fun playing the game!

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