Re-stickable Household track holders?
Kids got a hot wheels kit for Christmas and I recently went a little... nutz on Amazon lol.
Problem is setting up the track and not having it move all over without making a mess of the house or damaging things. I saw the Command Adhesive kits, but they are pretty pricey and the command adhesive itself is crazy expensive to use for like a day.
Best I could come up with is AirStick which is based on "micro suction". So I've been playing with making wall mount holders.
I've used AirStick on other projects to secure phone/ipad docs non-permentatly. Helps as 3d prints usually aren't heavy enough to disengage the dock/charger from the phone/ipad without having to hold it with your hand. A patch of this stuff holds extermely well against sharp forces. It releases with prolonged pressure. Its not ideal for wall mount track as it will eventually release. So far after about 2 hours or so it falls off the walls. Longer if your wall isn't an ice box like my basement :P You can wipe them off to reinvigorate them, but the AirStick will eventually wear out I think. Rubbing alchol cleans them up even more, but do NOT put them on the wall right after :P Found that one out he hard way.
Anyone have any interest in these kinds of things? Or a better idea? I'll post the files for 3D printing to thingiverse when I get them setup the way I want. Just curious if there is a better idea out there.
Some vids of putting on and off the wall.
Discussion
Drill one into a corner high on the wall. Put a bookcase under it and a potted plant or something on top of the bookcase, blocking the hook. Now the building commissioner (I.e, the wife) won't see the hook, and the plant can be easily moved to put up your starting gate.
Modern problems require modern solutions. :p
Mattel made a line of wall mount tracks but not sure if they're still a thing. It's a great idea to get track off the ground and opens it up for some more fun track designs. You could probably do a laned road course pretty easily if you had some surves or at least a ball-joint holder that could tilt in the corner of a room. Might not be best for head-to-head competition but time trials for that sort of thing would be very interesting.
Wall mounting is one of those things that's been on my Hot Wheels to-do list forever. I have some 3D print models bookmarked for when I get around to it, but if you've found some you can vouch for, a link to Thingiverse files would be great.
I saw the Mattel ones, but me and the kids do more ad-hoc build and tear down in a single night. So I was more interested in the AirStick stuff as it only has to last about 2 hours. The holders in the pic where a quick design I did just to try it out.
That said the command adhesive would work on them with no issues.
I started designing a modular set, wall plate and then other stuff you can put on them, but I did it with a overly complicated connector that protrudes from the wall. Ran into some issues with tolerances between my two printers and once I had it in my hand I realized the connectors where totally gonna snag and rip off the wall, possibly taking paint dry wall with them lol. Think I'll redesign with just slots. Thinking I can add a bunch of different shapped arms and stuff you can just drop in.
When me and the kids really started playing with them I was suprised there isn't more stuff out there to attach the track to things. Like stair hand rails and carpet and stairs. Seems like some small pieces could give you alot of flexibility which is how we typically "play" with them :P
If I get something worked up I'll post.
- Right on...there's certainly a market, like you said. Sounds like you can put your printer to good work! — redlinederby
Pretty cool, my son has tracks all over the house and then the dogs end up trampling it, or one of us trips and kicks it out of the way. Ive toyed with the idea of putting tracks up along the walls of his room for some time now but never really got to the point of making it happen. If someone printed out a bunch of those wall mounts for orange tracks Ide buy a handful in a heartbeat. Ide likely end up just using the command strips tho as they would be mostly permanant.
Matt