Track materials
(5 seconds after publishing this I see 3dbotmaker mag track topic)noobs lol.....I'm a long time hot wheels collector and customizer. But was just finding the derby aspect of them. I was hooked immediately. But my noobie questions start around the track itself. I was watching 3dbotmaker on YouTube and the wide track and the wide bank turns, may be a question that sounds stupid biT I'm green. Are those 3d printed or custom in some way or made from some commercial track components out on the market. I plan on building a track that is in the fashion of a toy train miniature dioramas grass and the such like 3dbots mountains. So where do I start. I want a good solid track,so is there a seamless track available and how much should I expect to pay get started. I have done the pine wood derby's when I was in boy scouts. I have built a start gate and a down hill fragrance for that before it was in the 80's but i still remember how that worked so I'm sure the hw version is similar.
Discussion
do slanmans track parts fit onto the crash racers straight track?
Our track is entirely hand built. The main track is made from a product called Palight - essentially a very dense foam that is hard but flexible. I then painted it to look like a proper road and added all the diorama elements around it.
The first thing, before building any serious structures etc would be to get some sort of layout of what you want your track to look like - we used some orange track to begin with to get an idea of the fall required for cars to make the run etc. You can set it up with lots of temporary fixes - we had masking tape from the rafters holding a lot of the track, or boxes etc. DRC (youtube channel) use cardboard for their whole track and it runs great as well. Once you get something that works, you can work on making things more secure and permanent.
Most people seem to buy the Crash racers sets, if you want to use a pre-made track, of if you can find it then the old sizzlers fat track but the crash racers one seems to be the flavour of the month at the moment.
Erik Slan (Slanman Customs) and JLH Krafts both, on FB, offer some 3D printed items for tracks like corners, start gates, timers etc so check them out if you want to go that way.
There is also a thread on here about building tracks and dioramas so search that one out.