Hello fellow modelers!
I'm very excited to present one of my most ambitious projects yet—the Komatsu 830E haul truck. I’ve poured a lot of passion, effort, and time into it, and I hope you'll find it interesting!
As soon as I saw photos of this behemoth, I was determined to build it in scale. This led to a long and often frustrating process of trying to locate reliable documentation and blueprints. I managed to collect a lot of reference photos from both the quarry and the assembly shop, but complete engineering drawings were nowhere to be found. Just when I was about to give up, I stumbled upon a 3D model and a partial blueprint, which finally gave me the key to the massive dimensions of this giant.
Ultimately, I settled on 1:100 scale as the most suitable for the model.
I started the build in February 2022. I want to emphasize that all the parts are my own original design (developed from scratch). Almost all the elements are printed on colored (yellow), 160gsm paper, which allowed me to skip the extra step of painting the parts and retouching the edges—a real time-saver!
I'll start my presentation with the creation of the load-bearing frame (chassis).
I look forward to your comments! Here are the first photos: