Quote:
Originally Posted by Millertime
Sounds very interesting! A few questions come to mind:
Will the seams/interlocking system be different than say a mini96? The dNaNo works well on the mini tiles but the seams need to be really smoothed out for the smaller cars.
Any estimated date for availability?
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I can't get into too much detail at the moment, until some documents come back from the USTPO office, but yes there is a difference in the new tracks modular linking system compared to the standard Mini-96. The joints for the smaller cars should not be an issue. We will have adapter pieces available to join current kits with the new tracks.
All our current track tiles are groomed at the factor to give it the porous or sponge texture that allows the dust to settle in the pores and helps the track obtain its grip. During this process, the tile height from section to section get very close to each other. Standard exercise mats do not go through this process, so due to temperatures and the materials the mats are made up of, you can get a big difference in thickness from tile to tile. You can see this in some of the home tracks that people have used exercise mats. There are usually large gaps between the links as well as a much larger height differences from tile to tile. Our grooming process helps bring the heights closer from tile to tile at the interlocking link. We also make the tiles out of the best material mixes, so this also helps keep the tiles from expanding or growing in height. Most exorcise mats are made from lower quality mixes which make them stiff and pron to shrinkage and expansion at higher rates than the RCP tiles.
Even with the grooming process and the high quality mixes we use, you will still find height differences in some of the tiles. Do to the temperature differences from our factory and other locations, there will always be a slight difference on selected tiles. When running my dNaNo on Mini-96 track layouts, I simply find the tile or tiles that are affecting the cars performance and put a piece of thick tape under the tile at the interlocking line where it joins up with a thicker tile. This brings the lower tile up to the height of the adjoining tile. This has worked very well on our tracks and the tracks I have built for Kyosho for trade show dNaNo demos.
Below is a picture of a custom track I did for the Mitsubishi Corporation. You can see how the tiles mesh together. It almost looks like one piece of mat. I fit a piece of tape on some of the tile interlocking sections that were off just a little.
We are working to make the new tracks available to Tinyrc as soon as possible.