3D Printed RCH Wagon

[IanT]

Adrian (from the G1 3D Circle) has just published his design for a 3D printed RCH wagon in Gauge 1 (1:32)

See here: http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/~adrian/GaugeOne3DCircle/AG1LE_RCHwagon.html

Why should that interest us? Well as mentioned in one of my 3D printer posts, encouraged by Ralph, I have been playing with OpenSCAD as a simple design tool. One of the attractions of SCAD is that it is relatively simple to copy 'designs' (they are in text format) and (if set up carefully) they are also scalable.

So in theory (I haven't managed it yet) - it should be fairly simply to translate Adrian's RCH wagon to G3 (1:22.6).

Ralph - I tried a very quick cut-n-paste but it probably needs a bit more care and attention than I've given it thus far but looking at the 'support' .scad file - I think it should be do'able...

Regards,

IanT

[John Candy]

That is very interesting.

Adrian does say that it took 52 hours in G1, so it may well take 72 (or more) in G3.
For a print taking that length of time, it would be worth buying a UPS to avoid the risk of a "mains blip" (we get them regularly here) wrecking hours of work.

Has anyone (?Ralph) printed anything taking several days?
Is there a risk of machine failure (e.g. blocked nozzle or motor overheating) with such lengthy prints?

I am still undecided as to whether to go with messy resin SLA/DLP systems or FDM.

Regards,
John.

[IanT]

Having thus far only printed a 'cube' - which took 1 hour and 50 minutes, I'm not really qualified to say John. But I think Ralph runs his machine for extended periods and sees to take this for granted.

Personally, I'm not planning to use 3DP for large objects, seeing it as complimentary to my modelling activities rather than being core to them. I can see where 3DP will be useful for small, detailed repetitive items that probably would be been white metal cast before and there are still pros & cons between the two - so w/m is not obsolete by any means. My use of 3DP will be mostly to make components in my workshop that would be hard to do otherwise (like the shop vac adaptors I've mentioned).

However, other folk will have other ideas and priorities - and I thought this was an interesting development that I think will become more and more part of the modelling scene.

Regards,

IanT
 

[Gavin_B]

I regularly run my printers for sometimes days at a time.  The cab of the 08 shunter is a 48 hour print as it stands.

Prints of 7 hours plus are not uncommon.

Gavin

[MikeWilliams]

Personally, I would have thought this common wagon should be suitable for high volume plastic injection moulding like these in Gauge 1 and supplied RTR:

http://www.cliffbarker.me.uk/Gauge1Wagons.html

But the research and artwork need to be FAR better than those and there is no excuse for it being other than perfect!  I know the tooling is expensive, but how many of these can have been sold in G1 - 500 .. 1000.  Surely we could sell 500 at c£100 RTR?

Mike

[Gavin_B]

I agree with Mike for a common wagon such as the RCH 3d printing is not the way forward for mass production.

It is however a great tool for either proving a design or for a limited production run.

Most cheap FDM printers would be too small as well to print that in one bit.

Gavin

[IanT]

I'm not that interested in printing an RCH wagon Mike - but some people might be.

More to the point is that some of the barriers between 'scales' might start to disappear with the availability of some of this tech. How many times do we hear that there is not as much choice/avaialbility in G3 as in the smaller scales?

Here is my next 3D print - a vacuum adaptor in SCAD - which is customisable because the design is 'parametric' - in other words you can change the design parameters (diameters, length etc)  and the design changes accordingly. But these concepts can be extended to other things - possibly like signal finials for instance? How nice to have access to a library of 'parts' that have been scaled to G3 and then perhaps altered to suit a particular prototype.





And I really would like to print some decent G3 figurines (e.g. horses!) if I could find suitable files (not likely in SCAD however).

Regards,

IanT
   

[cabbage]

 Iant,
The longest print was over three days, a high resolution kitchen for Barbie.... The easiet way to produce G3 sized prints from G1 sourced SCAD files is to compile to .STL  and then use the Scale function in CURA. Normally (X=100%), (Y=100%), (Z=100%). Use the nudge counters to set X,Y,Z to 135%. And a G1 sized SCAD prints  G3 object. Did I ever tell you I am lazy!?!?

Regards

Ralph

[IanT]

Mmmn - probably not planning to do a Hi-Res Barbie Kitchen either Ralph.

However, I now know how to strip the extruder head and clear blocked nozzles (which took a while to figure out). I also have a suitable design for my connector but can't get it to stick - possibly because the bed & nozzle are heating up quite a bit more than when I printed my cube. So I guess I need to look at Cura again...  I knew this couldn't be that simple...  :-(

Regards,

IanT

[Gavin_B]

for PLA I use 210 for first layer then 200 for the rest, bed is at 60.  I also graduate the cooling fan to start at  25% then slowly ramp up to 100% at layer 5.

Hope this helps

G

[IanT]

My Cura 'slice' setup used "generic" PLA at 200/60, so I was going to run it cooler Gavin (@ 185/45) - as that's what the 'pre-sliced' cube used . I'm still figuring out Cura basics but will try your suggestions once I work out how to do so.



Thanks.

IanT

[cabbage]

If it really refuses to stick, then place a layer of masking tape on the glass bed
Lightly smear Pritt over the area to be printed over.

First layer print at 50% frame rate then go bavk up to 100%.

Regards

Ralph

[sjrose]

I drew Mike Williams GER D17 open wagon in Fusion 3D and printed it in black PLA on my Flashforge Dreamer. It took approximately 12 hours and the detail has come out as good as Mike's model. The first time I printed it the channel sections on the floor printed poorly and tended to go stringy. I am still trying to find a solution to this problem. I am new to 3D printing but it does open up a large number of possibilities when coupled with a good 3D drawing program.

[MikeWilliams]

Any chance of a picture Stephen - close up of a corner maybe?

Mike