Hot Wheels Banked Curve

harrison_mcgregor

Hey guys, I'm new here, and I was wondering if anybody could shed some light on how to create a banked curve for my Hot Wheels. I sort of want it to be like the comment made by @martin_kopplow on this discussion but wider, so you could have 3-4 cars side by side and they could go round without incident:

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/24353/creating-a-banked-turn

Any help would be appreciated, thanks

harrison_mcgregor

MichaelPascoe

Hi @harrison_mcgregor, just go to @martin_kopplow's document and make a copy of it, then edit the profile sketch so that it is wider and has small track dividers for 3-4 cars.

If you are having trouble with this, then I suggest completing some of the Self-Paced Learning Pathways. They will walk you through the most efficient way to learn Onshape.

.

martin_kopplow

In my sample, the profile sketch is but a swept line. The 'dividers' - in my case these are only the 2 sides - come into existance by shelling the thickened sweep. It might be easier to create the inner dividers by sweeping 4 line segments or by offsetting the sides.

EvanReese

There was this example I made a while back for a waterslide, but the workflow could apply.

jnewth

I tried the simplest thing first, which was to copy from smarter people. I took @martin_kopplow 's approach and tried to do what @MichaelPascoe suggested and I couldnt get it to work. I tried changing the initial lofted profile to include the walls - no dice. I then tried to apply brain to it, and when that inevitably failed, I went back to looking at @martin_kopplow 's original design. His inner curve is a simple radius. Instead I made two bridging curves one for the inner and outer edges of the track that meet the tangent condition for the start and end helper parts. I also couldn't get the loft to work again, so switched to fill. I then created bridging curves that defined the start and end of the dividers walls. I then did simple sweeps for these, but crucially, needed to lock face for the sweep to the track (thank @GregBrown for that handy flag).

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/f6d86bc1d5b36edd9c3f5c80/w/be2f2f4e50d643060778e343/e/6cedd2ebf3e9e425755704aa

https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/TR9NOB4XR4OI/greenshot-2025-11-14-11-04-55.png

The resulting track isn't perfect. I created a cross-section and took some measurements. The walls are very nearly perpendicular but not exactly (89.8 deg or whatever). Same with the individual raceway widths (just sub 50mm instead of dead on).

But it works and looks cool. @GregBrown there might be something interesting in this problem re: loft from the start face to the end face, but I'm not enough of a surfacer to really figure it out, beyond, you know, forcing it in to rough shape with the good ol' facehammer.

martin_kopplow

The bank angle for a perfect curve must be proportional to the centrifugal force which again is related to speed / radius. Maybe that could be an important clue when defining the curve. ;0)

• While the radius is constant, the bank angle must be (near*) constant
• While the radius decreases, the bank angle must increase too.

That said, I believe a better hot weels curve should look somewhat like this:

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/dfb7b5d36af035244be37821/w/4fa47ca7fabcd9f9dc478bfd/e/9179c8014d9beddf1fcf67ca?renderMode=0&uiState=691b58adf1f138a762b218a8

This is but a quick knock-up with the curve being a 1/4 ellipse, lacking a better off-the-shelf-definition. Play around with the variables at the top of the tree to see what happens. Curve progression must be equal to or larger than 1. Given a little time, one could include theactual math into the sketches and variables and create a hot wheels curve generator. ;0)

*That is since speed decreases along the lenght of the track, but should be negectable in this case.