Don't fear the Reaper. Fear the driver.
Sponsored by Mentra, the ONLY open-source smartglasses! https://mentraglass.com/zackfreedman
Support future projects! https://patreon.com/zackfreedman
Show me YOUR projects! https://discord.gg/voidstarlab
This is my Death Racer, a radio-controlled combat car piloted by a little gladiator that actually turns the steering wheel! I love it. The goal: Knock off enemy heads. The battlefield: The Rocky Mountain RepRap Fest, 2026. The plan: Uh...
Thanks to @VisionMiner for sponsoring filament and loaning a 22 IDEX v4!
Check their channel to see how they managed to pull off these colossal PEKK-A prints. Vision Miner's most experienced technicians pulled out their best techniques, and the results are beyond impressive.
MEGA KUDOS to Sam Prentice for letting me use so much footage from his channel!
"3D Printed Battle Mayhem: PIRANHA Edition" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSEsRDYL3yo
"3D Printed Death Racers - ALL you need to know!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF4NyfIXB5g
"3D Printed Racers are Back to MRRF" - www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNKY9wtSPFI
"Death Race 2024: 3D Printing Gone Wild! Prusa Racer" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJk-OEiaWig
"I Went to the MRRF Robot Battle and Saw AMAZING Designs" - www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSG3_7f5rCI
"Inside the Minds of Makers - Midwest Reprap Fest MRRF 2023" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD3wNg2NeC4
"The Ultimate 3D Printed Deathracer Build for 2025" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndXDeMOtamQ
"What Happens When Robots Actually Fight Each Other?" - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvg1YnJ9Lm4
"Why You Should Fear Deathracer Kits for 3Dprintopia" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwOcvEnrSkk
"This is 3D Printopia and It's Absolutely Wild - Day 2" - www.youtube.com/watch?v=97zrXLmILiQ
"Day 1 at Errf 2023" by Zachary 3D Prints - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILvRADJOGRY
"RMRRF 2025: Epic Day 1 at the Rocky Mountain Reprap Festival!" by Zachary 3D Prints - www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcUzjToJ32s
"Very Cool Things I Have Seen at 3DPrintopia 2025 - Full Coverage" by Zachary 3D Prints - www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhCYokAsXu8
Credits:
"3D Printopia Death Racers 2025" by Projects in Dad's Garage - www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iJCkwujevg
"3D Printopia 2024" by 3DPrintSOS - www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH6Ro1vTaJ0
"Cool Thingas I Saw at 3DPrintopia!" by 3DPrintSOS - www.youtube.com/watch?v=vevwBCpGJz8
2026 Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival Promo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_RLDffSces
"Deadly Death Racer Match - MRRF 2024 - Chris's Basement" by Chris Riley - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE9mVEYZwJE
Hotmakes Episode 162 w/ Offset Maker Lab!!! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mds6s2WZJMk
"Death Racer ERRF Competition - 3D Printed Race Cars" by Inland Filament - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs7fj_SI324
"Would You Like a Business Card?" by OffSetRyan - www.youtube.com/shorts/lqUul-KGei0
ERRF/Printopia clip by Protopasta - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvVxyRSORRw
"SMRRF 2026: DEATH RACERS CHAOS" by 123-3D - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r81WeBfBPe4
"I Destroyed Every Vehicle I Raced at Mrrf 2023!" by The Edge of Tech - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErjshUe_aXo
Edgy Grim Reaper image by vlwnpoison
Stock footage from www.storyblocks.com
Interference SFX from Partners in Rhyme
Timetable:
00:00 Intro
2:04 What's a Death Racer?
7:31 The First-Person Paradox
13:57 How to Drive Sideways
19:23 Scythe Ops
23:41 It's All Coming Together
25:55 Lots of Thanks
This episode is sponsored by the MiiRror Live smart glasses. That's right, I cut a deal with a pair of glasses. They are just that smart. If something is worth doing, I say it's worth overdoing, and decapitating hordes of mega nerds with a radio-controlled doomsday device in front of a frenzied crowd at Colorado's largest printing convention is something I consider worth doing. This is Death Racers, the 3D printed destruction derby, half Mario Kart, half WrestleMania, and half Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Three halves, like a centaur. Gaggles of geeks customize, construct, and crash together homemade RC combat cars equipped with two key features: a weapon in the back, and a kill switch in the neck. You get socked in the kisser and your head goes flying, tripping the switch, cutting the power, and ending your run at claiming the grand prize. Absolutely nothing. Death Racers is the brainchild of fellow 3D printing YouTuber The Real Sam Prentice. Sam commissioned the original models, hard carried the event into relevance, and collected an existentially terrifying number of Funko Pops along the way. He actually flies to Merf's, Merf, and all the Earths to personally MC every bout. Hacking up the craziest car you can think of is half the battle. You might catch a raptor in a Jeep stalking Bob the Builder, watch the Joker's buzzsaw sink a pirate ship, even witness Joseph Purshov Pursh Research crushing a man's dreams beneath a swinging next extruder. And the next match is right around the corner in space and in time at the fourth Rocky Mountain Rep Rap Fest, awkwardly abbreviated to Ermerf. It's in my home state beautiful Colorado, not New York, that's where I used to live. Now I live in Colorado, and as 3D printing's de facto Coloradonian, I feel obligated to design and print the ultimate Death Racer combat car to kick all the asses invading our state. But that's just the bare minimum. We need a car that celebrates everything that got us here. The most iconic projects, the most pestilential puns, and the most insanely exotic filaments in Void Star Lab. I forgot to show my title card in the last few episodes. Listen, I can't make EDHD part of my brand if I always remember the brand. Ladies, gentlemen, and
What's a Death Racer?
cyborgs, this was not meant to be taken this seriously. Death Racers was envisioned as a lightweight, lighthearted clown fiesta, less a hardcore Battle Royale, and more a slapstick slap fight decided mostly by dumb luck. And originally, it didn't even involve modding. Everyone was supposed to print this specific RC car designed by Star Wars model maker Michael Badley. I believe it's actually called the Death Racer, so to avoid confusion, I'm going to call this gladiatorial themed car the Badliator. But even though the real Slim Sammy has only run Death Racers for like 3 years, the Death Racer is largely obsolete. Most contestants drive the Piranha, an alternative chassis designed by Ryan Reed, pseudonym Offset Maker Lab. It's not because of like a matter of taste or popularity, it's simply because Biku Tree Tech released an official kit with everything you need to build a Piranha except the filament. Zach from the future here with an important clarification. The Piranha actually began as the Badliator. Offset revised it so extensively the two now only have like a couple parts in common. Also, Ryan Reed is only the core member of Offset. It's less of a pseudonym and more of a loose collective. I have got to start doing my research before I shoot the episode. It's actually quite a beginner-friendly project. It might be a bulky 2 kilo print, but the wiring is straightforward, assembly is really easy, and it's clever core with body panels bolted on structure makes modding it a cinch. At $200 plus filament, the price prohibitive, but the skill requirements are not. This is a very accessible project. But no matter how many custom cosmetics I bolt onto a standard chassis, I just can't settle for a stock This is my Death Racer, there are many like it, but this one is mine. I also expect every single participant to dog pile me the millisecond Sam yells go. UrMUrth is the biggest 3D printing convention in Colorado, and I'm YouTuber in Colorado. I would say that for many racers, knocking me out personally would be more rewarding than actually winning. If I want to stay in the game for a double digit number of seconds, I'm going to need every competitive edge the rules permit. But I've concocted a gimmick so flavorful, so fun, and so functional. My death racer will look and work unlike anything that's ever hit the field. And I am wearing that gimmick at this very moment. This is the Optigon, my custom-built heads-up display that's teleprompting the very line I'm reading at this very moment. It should also be compatible with this first-person video transmitter. That means I can drive my death racer right from the pilot seat in first person using the scouter from Dragon Ball Z. This awesome first-person footage was shot by YouTuber 1233D, I'm going to smash, that is my philosophy, who actually stuffed a tiny action cam into his racer's head. Now, he couldn't drive through it. This is just a recording as he piloted off from the side. — We shall be victorious. — But this was the sanity check that convinced me to go all in. Not only does the idea of seeing this all in real life in real time sound incredibly fun, you got to remember I am years late to the party. My opponents have tons of experience, and their cars are more thoroughly tested. Hopefully, real-time FPV gives me the edge I need in precision, control, and situational awareness to even the odds. There's just one problem I have to solve first. One teensy little massive game-breaking problem so profoundly stupid, yet so fundamental, it's going to instantly deadlock the entire project. That problem is, what we'll return to after I plug the Mentra Live smart glasses that are shooting this very footage. This episode is sponsored by Mentra, a hotshot hardware startup straight out of Y Combinator, finally doing head-mounted wearables right. Open-source smart glasses anyone can write an app for. The Mentra Live smart glasses aren't a heads-up display like my Optigon, but I don't really think that's what most people need. Instead, you get three microphones, stereo speakers that somehow sound like headphones, and a high-quality Sony camera. It's the ultimate tool for talking, listening, documenting, and sharing. Hold your horses. It is very obvious when this camera is recording. The Mentra Live's entire left end piece is a bright white on air indicator that can't be turned off, and I know that for sure cuz the firmware source code is on GitHub, and I just read it. And the footage is pretty good. The real-time stabil ization makes it smoother than a handheld phone. Get the picture so crisp, you can still read the text. First-person video is literally closer to the action. Your viewers aren't watching you do something. They're seeing what they would see themselves if they themselves were doing it. That goes double for streaming, and the Mentra Live lets Twitch, YouTube, and really anyone on any service look through your eyes in real life in real time. Many people are skeptical of wearables, and honestly, it's justified. It's why Mentra open-sourced their entire OS. These glasses' firmware, operating system, phone app, even the cloud back end are right there on GitHub for you to inspect, compile, and host yourself. If you just want to write an app, that's pure JavaScript, and it's almost trivial. Just use ngrok to serve up a text file, and your custom features are now on your face. Mentra is so committed to open source, they support their competitors using their Mentra OS in their app. As a bonus, anything you build for the Mentra Live should run on compatible hardware. So, visit mentraglass. com /sackfriedman or click the link below to snoop through the SDK, check out the specs, and maybe even pick up a pair for yourself. Thanks to Mentra for sponsoring this episode and letting me shoot this build. — [snorts]
The First-Person Paradox
— The first-person perspective is basically the reason I'm building this thing at all. Steering a chunk of plastic from the sidelines it seems neat, not very exciting for me. What's driving me forward, har har, is the sheer immersion and raw intensity of personally barging into battle. The FPV might also give me a tactical advantage, but if that were my only reason, I wouldn't have spent 3 hours rearranging the dashboard so I could see myself turning the steering wheel. This is the best feature in the entire car. First-person is just cooler. I'm not watching from a good safe distance. I am looking each victim dead in the eyes as I dodge weapons aimed directly at my head. Speaking of weapons, that is the big problem I've been using to string you along. Designing a weapon I could wield in the first-person turned out to be massively more complex than I ever could have imagined. There are two types of weapons you can put on a death racer. The bludgeon is a servo-mounted billy club, and the spinner is a motorized Beyblade on a stick. Both of them jut directly out of the ass end of the car in the complete opposite direction from the action figure in the driver seat. I assumed this was just an aesthetic choice, right? Like nobody else's head has a camera in it, so it doesn't matter what direction the driver looks like he's looking. Other players can whip their entire car in circles to throw powerful strikes, or they can just drive backwards and, you know, crash into someone. But for our first-person to work, we need to see the weapon and the target at the same time. And when I dug in, I realized this might just be impossible. We can't relocate the weapon or reverse the driver, cuz according to the semi-official modding rulebook, the racer's head must remain accessible by a standard bludgeon. No structures above 160 mm are allowed forward of the head. Damn that rulebook. If it weren't for the rules, I'd be able to do whatever I want. So, our weapon has to be at head height to hit enemy heads, but our head also needs to be at head height because it is a head. We will get disqualified the instant our weapon approaches our field of view. Even if we lawyer the rules and shoot the angles, if it ends up actually working, we'll just crash into the following rule. Modifications may be disqualified if offering unfair competitive advantage. What the hell is that rule? That's the whole point of modding in the first place, you son of a delightful British woman. Almost forgot the next rule. Final authority rests with Sam Prentiss and designated officials. Have I mentioned yet how handsome the real Sam Prentiss is? Just barely more handsome than his designated officials. My first idea was to just ditch the whole weapon. Bolt a motorized plow on the front and go on a rampage in an authentic Colorado Killdozer. It's an integral part of state law and it's one of my top five favorite rampages. This would completely sacrifice any ability to flip another car's kill switch. However, we can just flip the whole car. A death racer can't really lift itself off the ground. So, we don't even need to worry about doing the thing the game is about doing. We just flip over the entire field and win by default. Except, nope. Someone already built a Killdozer death racer. And the last thing Alexander Chapel needs is more ammunition. My second idea was nothing. I was out of ideas. How can we possibly aim a strike if we get a red card the instant our weapon goes past our ear? Like, get a load of this. The guy in last year's Printopia, his head and weapon are facing the same direction and he's kicking ass left and right with Sam Prentiss standing right there. Wait, what? Or designated officials. This wacky racer has tank treads, an omni wheel, and a spinning saw blade shaped like a snowflake. And in the cockpit, staring directly at his own weapon, sits the Caped Crusader's frostiest foe, Doctor Victor Freeze. Not the Schwarzenegger one, the animated series one. Uh, it's not better, it's just different. Also, isn't it kind of weird that Doctor Freeze's villain name is Mr. Freeze? Because bad guys can hold PhDs. Real life, it happens all the time. But, how is the defrocked doc's cryogenic cranium allowed to face the wrong direction? Did the frigid fiend slowly lower Sam Prentiss and designated officials into a Dewar of liquid nitrogen until they gave the special snowflake special permission? I jumped onto the real Sam Prentiss's designated official Discord to learn how I too could pull a Reiker, and I don't mean grow a beard. I grew my beard in the first season. Before the king of the castle had a chance to reply, I received my answer from a most unexpected source. The guy who made the car, the Freeze Mobile, which is actually called the Rewind, was designed and driven by Offset, the very same guy who made the piranha. He revealed exactly how he cleared his rotation situation with Sam Prentiss and designated officials. It's not actually backwards. Yes, the refrigerated renegade's face, arms, and knees are pointing towards the weapon. But, if we slice it in half and compare the cross-sections, you can see that the kill switch still trips when the head moves towards the weapon. There's nothing on the non-weapon side that could block a bludgeon. The front of the car is behind the driver. In other words, Offset's creation looks like a backwards death racer driven by a backwards driver, but it's really a regular death racer with a regular driver that's just shaped to look like it's backwards. This was so clever, [snorts] I desperately wanted to steal it, but I couldn't. Offset didn't release the Rewind's files. But he gave me the files anyways. It turns out when you ask for help, people sometimes help you. How was I supposed to know? As a matter of policy, I try to avoid remixing closed-source projects because then I can't release the files for free. I like to share everything I make. So, instead of releasing the files for this project, I am going to give them back to Offset. Then he can decide whether to sell, share, or sit on them. No, I'm not going to charge him royalties. I have patrons. I really wish I could have just printed a Rewind, stuffed the camera in the helmet, and called it a day. But here's what my first-person view would actually see. — [sighs] — We found a way to point the camera at the weapon, but in between the camera and the weapon is the weapon support pillar the weapon is attached to. Offset may have put an iron sight on Mr. Freeze's weapon, but the chilling villain was definitely not meant to actually look through it. We didn't solve the problem, we replaced the problem with another problem. To clear sight line, we have to move the whole weapon out of the way support pillar and all. If we have to hack a chassis this extensively, I would rather go back to the drawing board and start with the best chassis. As clever as the driver is, the rest of the rewind is nothing
How to Drive Sideways
but smoke and mirrors. Mr. Freeze's half-tracked omni wheel skidoo might cut an exotic silhouette, but only the twin treads are actually motorized. The omni wheel spins freely, it just props up the bulbous bodonk. The rewind drives exactly like the piranha and the badliator, which is to say like a tank. Run both treads in the same direction to go forwards or backwards, run them in opposite directions to spin in place, you run one faster than the other to take a wide turn. Tank drives kind of suck. They can barely drive in a straight line, they have to slow down to change direction, and even at the best of times they are way too clunky to get any value from our first-person situational awareness. But not every death racer is a track tread tank. One version has wheels and its wheels have wheels. This is the Ares, the second most popular death racer chassis, and take a guess who designed it. That's right, my man Offset. I rolled high in charisma, mooched the files for his 44-wheeled Roman-themed masterpiece, and went to work ruthlessly butchering his beautiful boy. Before I dive into the many things I carved off, bolted on, and twisted into hideous mockeries of their former selves, let's talk about the part I didn't change. The Ares' big feature, apart from the Roman brush top helmet, is how it swaps the traditional twin treads for four mecanum wheels. Beloved by high school robotics teams, automated warehouses, and that certain species of nerd who thinks Idiocracy is a documentary because nobody uses the Dvorak keyboard. The Mecanum drive is the perfect platform for the first-person Road Warrior. This is an all-wheel drive with four independent motors, but instead of tires or treads, each rim is ringed by 10 football-shaped rollers at wonky angles. Together, they You know what? I'll just show you. Like with tank steering, you can run all four wheels in the same direction to go forwards or backwards, or you can run each side's wheels in opposite directions to spin in place. But, if you spin the front wheels in one direction and the rear wheels in the other direction, holy it's driving sideways. Mecanum wheels make cars that strafe. You can even mix these maneuvers together to move in seemingly impossible ways. You are not watching Joseph. Stop calling me Joseph Prusa Prusa Research Prusa Research Tokyo drifting around corners. This car is neither skidding nor sliding. It's driving, strafing, and turning simultaneously. A Mecanum drive can even change the direction it's facing without changing the direction it's traveling. And bear in mind, the head is only exposed from one direction. So, if the Ares gives you 50% more degrees of freedom, why the hell doesn't everyone drive it? It's partially because Biqu doesn't make a kit for it, and it's partially because it needs like twice the amount of motors and electronics. But, it's mostly because driving side to side is really obnoxious when you're standing on the sidelines. Forward, backward, left, and right are relative to the car, not the joystick. But, if you're driving from the driver's seat, a Mecanum car controls exactly like a first-person shooter. I might have zero experience with RC combat, but I have sunk a terrifying amount of my rapidly dwindling lifespan into console FPSs. With my FPV headset, my Mecanum chassis, I'll be able to weave through the fray striking like guided missile and running rings around my clumsier competition while everyone claps, hopefully. This video is going to drop shortly before the Rocky Mountain Race Ramp Fest, so obviously I don't know how well this is actually going to work. This could be the prelude to the most brutal ass-kicking fiesta ever to grace the mountain time zone or a high-pressure septic tank of dramatic irony. Like and subscribe to find out. So, I opened the Ares model, I imported the entire Rewind model, and I painstakingly transplanted the reverse driver, his seat, and his little steering wheel onto the Ares Meccanum chassis. I now had a driver that looked like it was facing backwards, but making the car look like it was driving backwards was much harder. The real challenge is the backside of our death racer, which you'll remember is really the front side, and it looks like a car hood because it's a car hood. I had to make the front side of a Roman-themed sports car look like the ass end of a combat vehicle, and I can count the number of similarly artistic sculptural projects I've finished on zero fingers. Instead of trying new things and developing new skills, I just sheared off the entire hood and bolted on a Gridfinity base plate. Hey, this death racer is supposed to represent my whole channel. It would kind of be weirder if it didn't have a Gridfinity. Plus, the mental image of swerving through an active war zone dumping bins of maker chips at every turn amuses me so. Hopefully, it also amuses the real Sam Prentice and designated officials cuz you're not supposed to have projectile weapons, but look, if they're fuddy-duddy party poopers, I can just glue everything down. I then took support pillar that was in my way, and I didn't move it to the side, but I did shrink it down. The driver dudes in Offset's death racers have floppy flaccid noodle arms that are attached to a steering wheel, which is attached to a servo, which is spliced into a control signal. So, when the car turns, the driver turns the steering wheel. This feature is mandatory, so I integrated the dashboard into the stub of the weapon pillar to get it back up into frame. So, I had solved the driver dilemma, cleared her field of view, and narrowly avoided having to do art. My meshes might have been messes, the lights flickered whenever I hit compute all, and if the timeline were any filthier, it would have been named in the Epstein files. Yet, I was no closer
Scythe Ops
to figuring out exactly what weapon I'd be wielding in the first place, and I was now buried in contradictory constraints. We need to guide the weapon onto our target, but the weapon is going to block the target. Spinning objects look really weird through a fast camera, so a spinning or weapon could make our footage unwatchable. A bludgeon on a servo would let us get it out of the way, but we need to be able to get enough force to knock off heads, but we can't build up momentum to slash opponents because we'd have to spin the car and it would barf from motion sickness. We are limited to thrusting, but the stock bludgeon is too thin to predictably poke a tiny little head, especially now that it's 4 in off center. I could make a new bludgeon with a wider cross section, the better to poke you with. I just have to keep in mind uh I will look like a copycat if it's shaped like a baseball bat, a lightsaber, Morty from Rick and Morty, a battle axe, two battle axes, two battle axes that merge into one bigger battle axe, and honestly, I'll get called out for stealing if I do anything anyone else has ever done, even if there's no way I could have possibly known about it. I tried to find comprehensive footage of every one of the 16 belts I know about, but I just couldn't, and I just don't think this project is worth picking that fight. The weapon needs to be so weird no one could have possibly thought of it, but not too weird or I might get disqualified by Sam Prentice and the designated officials. Most importantly, and possibly impossibly, the weapon has to be thematically linked to a modular magnetic storage system, ideally using obnoxious wordplay. So, I tried a new approach. What if I pick the theme first, then I selected a weapon that fits? Suddenly, I had it. Three words that threaded every needle, checked every box, and didn't just hand me the perfect weapon. They solved a stack of problems I didn't even know I had. My Death Racer will be called the Grid Reaper. Weapon of choice, a gigantic swinging scythe. A scythe solves all my problems. It can easily reach from the side-mounted pillar to the center of the camera. It gives me a broad striking surface to ram with, and I can swing it out of the way to do a drive-by, tuck it in to reduce my profile, or even just drive up behind someone, hook it around their head, and hit reverse to reap them. Yes, it is kind of weird that we're attacking with the unsharpened side of the blade, but the Grid Reaper watched Rurouni Kenshin. It's canon if I say it is. The scythe is a lot broader than any other bludgeon I've ever seen, but I don't have any reason to think that's against the rules. The modding guidelines specify maximum length and reach, but say nothing about width. But out of an abundance of caution, given Sam Parentis and designated officials could simply declare I'm getting an unfair advantage, I made the scythe blade exactly 245 mm wide. This means it has less striking surface than the bludgeon on a spinning car, which is up to 260 mm long, not including the car itself. It's also narrower than the blade on the Killdozer, which was apparently legal even though it went edge to edge on a car that's at least 255 mm wide, and was on the wrong side of the car, and it sure seemed to lift high enough to block a bludgeon. That's right, I'm narking out the Killdozer. If I'm illegal, he's illegal. We share a Colorado destiny. That's what you get for preemptively ripping off the thing I was going to rip off. I scour the rulebook again and again, back to front, and I cannot find any justification for declaring the scythe illegal or unsportsmanlike. That said, I am going to obey whatever Sam Parentis and designated officials say. Their word is law, and they are almost as just as they are dashing. But the Grid Reaper provides more than just a weapon. He comes with a costume. And in Season 2 of the Sounds, this actually solves two more problems with our FPV. First, the puts a bumper around the first person video camera's fragile lens, and the robe shields its delicate antennas from enemy attacks. As a bonus bonus, the Grim Reaper's color scheme is black. This means I can print parts in exotic materials from all over the Every Filament series that are only sold in black. And so I began the ritual to summon the Grim Reaper and bind him to the mortal plane. I grabbed the freshly printed prototype parts and built up my first full Death Racer in an awkwardly long run-on sentence I wrote specifically to allow viewers to see the time lapse I took of the prototype assembly process and hopefully feel justifiably superior to those who merely listen in the background. People who watch Zach Freedman while pooping, and people who listen to Zach Freedman while playing Warframe. The two genders. I
It's All Coming Together
ended up modding almost every part. For instance, crashing head-on kept knocking my head off. So I bolted on some bouncy bumpers. The huge scythe was swinging too slowly, so I propped the arm up on a thrust bearing and reprinted the blade in an ultra-light foaming filament. I had to find new motor drivers, stabilize the camera, and cram in three battery eliminator circuits. The whole core needed rework. The huge structural parts are sharp and blocky, and while that's fine for printing PLA, fancy filaments love to warp. I had to manually round off every sharp corner and model in webs and mousers just to get the prints to finish. I even had to find a special self-centering controller and mod my heads-up display so the Colorado sun wouldn't drown out ah the entire screen. I spent my whole last episode preaching how every part of a project needs to be test printed. Even though a single revision of this thing took nearly a kilo of plastic, I practice what I preach. After a few more rounds of printing, testing, reprinting, and retesting, I was feeling pretty good about the design. So I jumped right into cranking out full strength parts. This Death Racer represents the channel with every single filament. So the plan is to print every single part in the best possible filament. Did I succeed? Well, the Grim Reaper, the Death Racer I'm going to drive at the 2026 Rocky Mountain Rep Rap Fest, contains somewhere around a thousand dollars of aerospace grade ultra performance polymers provided by Vision Miner and printed on their ridiculous 22 IDEX V4. Sorry for the surprise shill, but like they did give me a thousand bucks of filament and loan me a ten thousand dollar printer. And some of these parts were printed in their factory because there's no possible way I could ever finish a PECA print this large, but we will save all of that for the next episode where we are going to slam the door on this build and finally unleash it into a Rocky Mountain Battle Royale. Will we emerge as hometown heroes or will we lose our heads three and a half seconds after the first build dings? The thrilling conclusion is but a subscription and notification bell away. Just head down towards the like button and uh turn left at the comment section. I might have used that joke before, but what are the odds that somebody watched all the way to the end of two of my videos? I can't wait to see you and your awesome projects at the fourth hour merch. Each video we thank three random
Lots of Thanks
Lab Scientist supporters and this time we tip the metaphorical fedora, the meta fedora, to MRKMAN, William McGann, and DBT. Our collaborators are so irrationally generous, I decided not to do an Easter egg this time and instead inscribe their names on the Grid Reaper death racer itself. This means if you want to show up on our car, uh you have until the next video to become a collaborator. Thank you Schleppy the Swagster, Noodles, SXP, Kishan Heart, Sherry, Microwave, Scott Reenie, Zachary Volpes, the Benevolent Misanthrope, and Daddy Zero. You're daddy number one in my book. I'd also like to thank Offset Maker Lab for hooking me up with his phenomenal models, Vision Miner for the ultra polymers and ultra printer to ultra use them on, and of course our sponsor Mantra Lab for keeping our lights on. I'd also like to thank the folks who shot and shared all the death racer footage I've been using throughout this episode. Thank you, The Edge of Tech, Projects and Dad's Garage, 1233D, Zachary 3D Prints, no relation, 3D Print SOS, Inland filament, Proto-Pasta filament, and especially the real Sam Prentiss, and designated officials. And now the moment you've been waiting for, assuming you're a Lab Assistant supporter and you're waiting for me to read your silly name. The part where we read our Lab Assistant silly names. Some of them need abbreviating so the algorithm hates me less. Thanks for your patience. Thank you, Daniel M, MSN Chem, possum, Deal B, Zack H, Nova Ren, Lydia K, trans rights, Renekai P, Leo Peyton, Spire, Tier Fullheart, Martin T, Reinthused, Robert B, Craft Computing, Reynold H, Roger the Great Star Theater, Brunwolf Sholty, Crooks 6A6F, Clayton E, Crash Doom, Cherith the Disco Goblin King, name shortened further. Thank you. Shartolos, Bill Moore, Blamo, Cameron M, Vi Watch, Arid Steers, Nuclear, Jean-Baptiste, Gareth Lowen, T Kites, Jiggle My Puffs, Cliff Henning, a mnemonic for the word modem, Sarah Clancy, Norman Jaffey, Al Finger, The Cruel, Igor Box, Quality Doggo, Robert Cox, Cole Dawn Elmore, water heaters leak yours not disassembled, Lars Miss Prime, Zack John Zobrist, Chris Floofykitsune, Skroto Sagan, 603, Iron Reign, Evanosaurus, Jack Moran, VK, SKL, Aquilia and I say trans rights are human rights, Bill Schooler, Amanishi, make fascists afraid again, Paul Gibbs, Dan Ryan, Hassan Mohammad, Agent Max, Doctor Lucifer, Three Raccoons, Big Bird Tommy, Burnduck Three, My Last Meal, The Cune, Reagan, Kevin D, Mr. Melvinheimer, Melvin, he make me say funny things, Reynold B, Grid Fight CC, Bob Dobbs, Ad Hoc Law Eric, The Orbital Cookie Cat, Give It A Looky Cat, Dez B, Alex Perrin, Right To Repair, This Printer Fights Fascism, CCH, Shane Frederick, Pup Geekwar, Zap Anti-Tuxin, Florian Rai Rob, Wuhan, The Merman, Moonkin, Afrexis, Adam The Useless, Slippy, Joseph R, I Don't Know What I'm Doing, Mike Kelly, Marcy Level, Code Tech Didn't Tell Me To Do This, Kristen Freeman, Carrot Cameron, Khufu Sodo, Max Luck, Haley Curman, and Danny Devoid of Life. Thanks for supporting Devoid Star Lab. I'll see your head on the floor in the summer of 2026, in the future.