Introduction: 3D Printed Remote Control Thomas the Tank Engine

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About: I'm stephen, an electronic engineer (BEng) from the most northern town in Lincolnshire, Barton upon Humber.

This instructables details how I made a gauge one (45mm track) Thomas the tank engine from the TV series Thomas and friends. It's fully 3d printed and and uses a T10 motor, hbridge driver circuit and esp32 to drive it which allows it to be controlled via Bluetooth.

I filmed a lot of the steps so the video in this section explains my process well.


Supplies

3D printer

Esp32

H bridge driver

T10 motor

2s lipo battery

Wire

Paint

Cricut (non essential)

Step 1: Printing and Painting

I drew the model in fusion 360. The details are given in the above video.


I designed it specifically to be printed with the minimum support required to reduce the amount of PLA used. This involved for example printing the engine base in two halves and gluing them together.

Once the body and base was printed I primed them both using a grey primer and hand painted the finished colours.

Fortunately my wife has a Cricut choice I used to cut the decals for the number and lines on the body

Step 2: Base, Gearing and Control Electronics

The video above shows the design process I went through to get a working base.


The base is designed to be part of a modular system so I can reuse the same design for any 0-6-0 engine base. It is powered by a T10 motor which is driven by an esp32 controlled hbridge over Bluetooth.