where can i get corrugated tin in ho scale


Guys, been following the thread for a while. The problem I see with the machine that Ed found is that the lines are not made straight but rather at an angle in relation to the edges of the foil. Since the threads on a bolt are corkscrewed (obviously since that is their job). If you could lengthen the bolt and cause it to move to one side while you crank it, it should create straight lines. All one would have to do is weld a nut on each side of the housing. Then if you were to pull the sheet through and crank at the same time you should get a perfect looking tin sheet.

I am not good at explaining my thoughts so hope you could bare through it.
 
I've been designing a "Corrugated Sheet Tool" in Sketchup (this is just for fun. There is no way anyone would goto this much trouble unless you owned a bridgeport and lathe). Got sidetracked as I've been working on a c. 1902 Oil Tank .. but ..

There are two rollers .. male/female sides of the corrugation. In this concept drawing I used 'off the shelf' parts for the bushings, thrust washers and gears. I was trying to design something that used as little machine ship time as possible. The body could be made of wood or thick plexiglass. If I had access to a lathe and milling machine of course, I could massively reduce the bulk of the tool. I will look and see if I can find some gears in aluminum since there isn't any need to transfer torque/hp. Heck .. maybe even plastic gears.

In any case .. like I said, this is a "concept of design" .. or some-such. the upper roller and the three gears will be on an 'arm .. which hinges at the axis of the rear-most gear. That will allow the spacing between the rollers to be adjusted for different thickness materials. The other gears are necessary to make the two rollers turn toward each other.

(the Gray area is the corrugated die .. if you get closer you can see them. They are there .. and scale too! Sketchup is the 'bomb'!)

HOCSTV1A? .. heh .. HO Corrugated Sheet Tool Version 1 A :)

Corrugation_Tool.png


.. was thinking. For real. Two rollers .. one fixed .. one on a swinging arm so you can adjust the gap between the rollers and a crank. KISS .. would seem to say that one moving roller (via the crank arm) would pull the corrugation material through .. the lower roller would just turn freely.
 
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Ok guys, I've put a simple press design together in my head that should be pretty easy to and cheap to build out of wood and metal with no machineing required.

I'd start with a base of say a 1"x4" [3/4x3-3/4"] at least & 3" to 4" long for free standing stability. I'd use [2] 3/4"x1" strips to sandwich the same size uprights inbetween on the base for stability with a block cut to go inbetween to maintain the uprights being parrell
and maybe use two angle pieces on the outside of the uprights for rigidity.

Hope you able to follow along ok?

Now before assembling the uprights that will hold the threaded rod you'll need to drilll a hole big enough to not only allow the threaded rod to pass through but also a short section of round brass tubing for the cranking rod to pivot in on each side. What I would do is to drill the main hole for the rod to pass through both of them at the same time but then from the inside of each upright I would drill out the hole to the next size or two larger to allow for maybe 3/8" length the brass bushing tube to be inserted but don't drill all the way through the upright so the bushing can be held in place by the section of brass channel that will run verticlely above the main threaded rod and allow the upper section of threaded rod to pivot in it.
The only thing I didn't mention is that the U shaped channel would need to be held verticle by maybe a couple of L shaped sectioins on either side of it attached to the uprightrs or just a couple of small strips of wood nailed or screwed in place to hold it verticle.

Now for the press section that again can be made from another small piece of wood with a screw in the middle of each end that will ride up and down in the same channel as the upper rod.

In order to apply some down force on tentioning bar it would seem that a 1/4" pipe T with a short section of 1/4" pipe that would extend through the top plate on the uprights with a tensioning nut or collor below the top plate to adjust for downward force should be all that is required for adjusting downward force.

The main cranking threaded rod could even be bent into a handle on the outside of the one upright if the extra length was allowed for to begin with or a flat bar and a couiple of nuts to tighten it on to the main rod and even a bit of super glue to hold the handle in place should do fine. I'm sure you guys will figure that out.


Oh, the other important thing you would need to do on that portion of the main threaded rod that the upper thread rod would tend to mesh into is to round the threads over very slightly so they wouldn't tend to be too sharp where they mesh together, I would think, so as not to cut the foil or light metal?

Although in HO the corragation effect is so slight this step may be almost impossible to do, and maybe not necessary at all??

Anyway by simply removing a couple positioning nuts on the outside of the cranking rod it can be easily replaced as well as the upper tentioning rod. Just remember to use some short drywall screws to hold the tentioning cap onto the uprights so it can be removed easily.

As another thought you could have a couple set of threaded rods with different curveatures for different effets too possibly especially with the greater variety of whats abailable in later times.
 
Ed, I like your design and thinking but to be able to produce it is the problem as well as obtaining the hard rubber wheels and the corragation bands to go around them.

The paint tube roller does seem to be a simple design except for the fact the corrigations are probably way too large for HO? I'm not a 100% sure but don't think the tiny HO convalutions would do much as far as squeezing much paint out of the tubes.

Now if the rollers are abailabel in different mesh cuts there might be the answer?!
 
Here is version 2. Everything could be made from hardwood, plastic or aluminum easily with a bandsaw. The pieces are only 3/8". A drill press would be needed, drills and taps. There are a total of five brass bushings .. all available online. The cap screws are standard. The only outside work required would be the rollers. They could be made on any hobby lathe out of steel. The mounting tabs (front one shown) could be welded on (if aluminum) or a bracket used for other materials.

Corrugation_Tool_v2l.png


The arm holding the upper roller is on a swing arm which swivels on a 3/8" shaft. You can see it at the very rear. At the front is a simple slider to adjust gap between rollers.
 
wow you put some time into this now its my turn to design in my CAD software. cause now i am going competitive to see who has the best machine design
 
forget it i am quiting on auto cad for now i had to teach it to myself to begin with and i didnt have anything to work from other then the program iteself and a few cheesy tutorials which didnt help much. so everytime i build something there is a new twist to the game of how does this work. it just gets disbusting after awhile so i am gonna let my plan sit till tomorrow lol
 
Dude. Sketchup is great. It is free to download .. and is very easy to use. Not CAD ... is a 3D program that where you created objects real time then pull, compress, stretch, rotate etc. as you need. Heck .. the learning curve isn't that steep even. Check this link out .. and watch the video on the right. That is NO BS! It is that easy to use. The cool thing is there are a TON of tutorials on Youtube.
 
Wow - this tread has evolved well. I really like what you did with your design Ed. The only comment I have is the embossing wheels should be wider than the .75".

Maybe a design like a printing press would be cool where you could change the "plates" and each plate would have a design that may be a different size corrugation

I know I don't have the ability to build one here but I would like to add a comment anyone that tries the embossing rollers need to be made of something stronger than plastic. I made a jig out of plastic that had the same groves and styrene and when I would try to press the aluminum foil from the aluminum foil cooking pan it would wear out the plastic of the jig.
Dave
 
Dave,
I just chose that 3/4" width as corrugated sheets come in widths from 24" to 42". That 42" width is 15/32" in HO but 7/8" in O. Darn! Lost that extra 1/8" .. :)

The printing press thing would work. For something like this .. here is a YouTube video showing a Lever Press .. reduced in size of course! I imagine you could put together something using small dia pipe .. heck .. Nominal Pipe Size down to 1/8" (think of the threads on your table lamp ... the tubing that's about the dia of your little finger. That's 1/8" NPT).

The problem would be making the die ... like you said. Plastic wouldn't work .. but .. while typing this I was thinking. Tooling Epoxy is used to create prototype and production tooling. Master Bond has an epoxy called EP121CL. Master Bonds says the EP121CL is especially noteworthy for its mechanical properties of 12,100psi in tensile strength and 17,200psi in compressive strength.

I am going to make a WAG here that .. that would PROBABLY hold up in pressing aluminum. :)

Interesting. It would be very simple to make a negative female out of modeling clay. A piece of styrene could be carefully shaped ..then used as a scraper to make the negative mold. Then .. I think the die could then be cast in epoxy. The other side .. the opposite die could be cast from the first one for a perfect match.

Think I will look into this.
 
Well heck. Check this link out. From a machinist message board .. and they are talking about this same thing .. HA! The OP .. his REASON for his question? ..

Well, we are interested in making a pair of small dies (3" X 2") to make a model train part out of brass shimstock (0.015" thick, half hard). The parts are the pressed "Drednaught" ends on a railroad boxcar, only a lot smaller!
Click to expand...

Too funny!
 
Shutting down for the night .. but found this product from Decon. Plastic Steel Liquied (B) . ... the Intended Use: "Holding fixtures for intricate parts; filling and leveling equipment; repairing hard-to-reach areas where a flowable epoxy is needed; duplicating or tracing masters; short run dies and molds."

Here's a link to the PDF for the product ..
 
Seem you are really on to something here Ed and we are not alone. I'm sure if something like this was made it could be sold if you made more than one but cost would be an issue and than I'm not sure if a short run epoxy would stand up to the expectations someone purchasing this would expect.

Keep it going my friend.
Dave
 
I took a closer look at what corrugations scaled down would mean. In post #21 I said that .. " ... conventional" corrugated sheets would have very fine 'ribs' if you kept the dimensions when replicating in HO."

No kidding!!

Here are the dimensions for the 2 1/2" Rib panel by Mechanical Metal's, Inc.

Conventional_25_Rib.png


Ok. You nod your head wisely .. (like I did) ...

Now. Let's look at that in HO scale ..

Conventional_25_Rib-1.png


Oooookaaayyy. Geeze.

I would love to get some of the Corrugated roofing being sold for HO and measure it .. and do a 'reverse' scaling back to full size .. :/. I need to find an actual corrugated metal sheet and take some measurements .. but .. seems that the finest corrugations you can create would probably be out of scale.
 
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Been following this thread, and now I have to giggle, (not being mean or anything), at what some of you have come up with. This has been a "problem" that has been around since the hobby began, and over the years there have been some innovative devices designed and sold, none of which lasted for long on the market, because there wasn't enough modelers making enough "corrugated tin" to sustain the tool being marketed.

Best solution that I've found for a building or two, costs about $10 total. It consists of a single cut 12" bastard mill file, new of course, and an old fashioned block pencil eraser. Lay the aluminum foil over the file and press it into the grooves of the file with the block eraser. Cut foil to scale sized sheets and glue into place.
 
I would think you are right but when someone builds a steel mill or other large industrial area that require a large amount of aluminum siding this would be of interest to them.

Dave
 
Please, I'm not criticizing or anything. Corrugated tin came in standard sizes, 5x9' being the most common. It doesn't matter what is used to form the "tin", it still has to be cut apart into scale sizes. Long pieces can easily be damaged just in handling. Many of us have found the file and eraser method works well enough, and is actually quite fast. Even for steel mills. Prior to Walthers steel series, how do you think steel modelers got their "tin" for their buildings? The majority either made their own with the file and eraser system, or they used Campbell's or other manufacturers commercial product.
 
Earlier I posted that a common 2 1/2' rib corrugated panel in HO has might small corrugations. It measures right at 1/32" between the corrugations .. and the crown to the trough would be only 0.007! Thing is .. I was reading a thread on another board about the appearance of rivets on scaled aircraft. That properly scaled rivets just didn't "look right". We humans evidently 'expect' to see the rivets so .. 'out of scale' appear right. Figure that is the same with scale corrugated .. uhh .. corrugations. If in 'fine scale' might very well not appear as 'right'.

I am familiar with a single-cut bastard file .. one of the first things we did in Machinist school "back when" was to hand file a 4" piece of 1/4" steel so it was 'exact' .. perfectly square within 0.003" using nothing but a bastard file and a machinist square.

Curious, I looked up the cut of files. From Wikipedia : "The cut of the file refers to how fine its teeth are. They are defined as, from roughest to smoothest: rough, middle, bastard, second cut, smooth, and dead smooth."

The bastard sits about center of the range. I would now .. love to get hold of a dead smooth flat file to eyeball up close and personal! :)
 
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Ed,
I really think you are on a mission now. I love your energy in this and really hope to see you get some great results from this.
Dave
 
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