3d prints


Revival

Revival

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My wife said I needed a Cricut craft cutter, a 3d printer, and a powerful computer for CAD design. I said....OK. there's so much to build on my pike and these tools will really help. She knows my railroad is not just a hobby but THE bucket list mission and the click is ticking. The Ccreality Ender3 is good 3d printer at a great price and I picked up an M5 Multitronic desktop (not really but a computer powerful enough to run Fusion360). While I have not yet learned to design my own things yet there is an HO scale section on the site Thingiverse which has free 3d designs. I have included a photo of my printer and all the railroad objects I have made: 2 tunnel portals, 4 signal boxes, 4 40ft sections of through girder bridge, and then by stretching that design and using it upside down, 4 sections of deck girder bridge, one of which I have spray painted flat black. The Gorre & Daphetid had YARDS of deck girder in the urban area. This 3d printing is actually a hobby in itself. A great thing is that they can print during the day while I'm at work under my wife's watchful eye. Boyd 1209191900_HDR.jpg1123191751b.jpg
 
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Those 3D printers can do amazing stuff.
I've been considering employing a 3D printer service to help me with the concrete caissons for a huge bridge project I'm working on for my empire. I visited a shop yesterday and while discussing my project, they showed me some of the examples of their work. One of those items was a Rook (castle) piece from a chess set. It was detailed with the merlons and embrasures along with the relief work of square stones of the walls. In addition what really took me back was the windows in the sides of the piece. The inside of the piece was hollow with the same stone relief work on the interior but it also had a spiral staircase in the center, complete with a hand railing from the floor to the ceiling. The handrail couldn't have been more than 1/64" in thickness. This was all done in translucent amber.
 
Way cool. But I am not going to get one until I KNOW I am actually going to begin using it. I have so many tools already sitting around that I got for future endeavors. Some have been sitting there waiting for me a decade or so. I just don't need one more idle thing taking up space.
 
D&J RailRoad said:
A friend of mine bought a 3D printer a couple years ago and offered to print the footers for my bridge. He fiddled with it for a few months but never produced anything with it. Now he recently offered it to me just to get it out of his basement.
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take it, don't be shy at all ... i don't use mine much, maybe 3 to 5 hours a week, but it adds up over a year or two ..
there is lots on thingiverse ....

ps .. mine was 160 canadian even, way back then, lol
 
I'll have one in the house myself in a couple of months. My son is collection points on a website that allows him to convert those points into Amazon gift cards. He's wanting to buy one after Christmas.
 
Darn Boyd, must be nice to have a wife so tuned into what you 'need'. Not to say mine isn't supportive of my hobbies but not so much me dropping that kind of money.
 
I got one way back when (2011 i think). the thing is obsolete now compared the one we have at work.20190528_222241 by Chuck Lee, on Flickr

I 3D printed the railings on it for my Station Platform. I also 3D printed all the vertical members on the platform on the printer. There are 28 supports. Each on is two pieces glued back to back. In between each vertical support are two roof supports for a total of 54. The roof itself is styrene sheet covered in 400 grit sandpaper strips to represent a tar paper roof. 20190716_200802 by Chuck Lee, on Flickr

The platform is also fully lit. It uses 28 LED's20190716_200609 by Chuck Lee, on Flickr
 
Iron Horseman said:
Way cool. But I am not going to get one until I KNOW I am actually going to begin using it. I have so many tools already sitting around that I got for future endeavors. Some have been sitting there waiting for me a decade or so. I just don't need one more idle thing taking up space.
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For the crowd around here, a laser cutter might be a better choice. You can cut the pieces you need to build your own kits.

Also, a bit of foot dragging isn't the worst thing in the world, resin printers have come down a lot in price and can provide much better detail. But, I've got the Ender 3, and there's a lot you can do, it just takes practice. I'm personally learning to use OpenSCAD.

Anyways, you can also send designs out for somebody else to print. The downside is that the revision cycle takes a long time and the cost can add up.
 
Renegade1c said:
I got one way back when (2011 i think). the thing is obsolete now compared the one we have at work.20190528_222241 by Chuck Lee, on Flickr

I 3D printed the railings on it for my Station Platform. I also 3D printed all the vertical members on the platform on the printer. There are 28 supports. Each on is two pieces glued back to back. In between each vertical support are two roof supports for a total of 54. The roof itself is styrene sheet covered in 400 grit sandpaper strips to represent a tar paper roof. 20190716_200802 by Chuck Lee, on Flickr

The platform is also fully lit. It uses 28 LED's20190716_200609 by Chuck Lee, on Flickr
Click to expand...
Boy that looks familiar..... Having gone through there every work day for almost 30 years.
 
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