Mel - those look great. Curious to see how they look when painted and installed!
- Kevin
Check out my shapeways creations! HOn3 and railroad items for 3D printing:
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/kevin-s-model-train-detail-parts
You can look up the material under Make A Product on the Shapeways site and see what the minimum sizes are and the general overall performance. In order for any design to be saleable it must meet the criteria Shapeways has established. Look at the Shapeways rendering closely as it comes directly from the print file.
Lee
Wow - those towers are cool!
Yes, FUD is really the only material for HO scale model railroad items. The others don't have quite the resolution for details. I suppose some of the other plastics may work for items that can be sanded, or possibly support strutures.
FUD does repordice details adequately. It's rather brittle, though, and is more like a resin casting.
Mike Budde who is on What's Neat, liked those cars. He is an extreme autorack modeler and every week he talks cars, not trains, unless they are autoracks. He sands those lines off, adds styrene trim, scotch tape windows they look nice. More work than I would care to do.
11 min into the video https://youtu.be/vidOB49jYYk
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Graffen m horton I order four HO vehicles through Jens Jahn, that get produced by shape ways. I was disappointed,too many lines in vehicles and no smooth surface, not worth $14 a piece. Too bad, he has lots of sixties vehicles. $14 a piece you say? That must've been printed in white strong and flexible.... That's a common problem with shapeways, when the designers allow printing in materials not at all suited for the model. An 1:87 model with lots of details and curves MUST be printed in FUD or FED. Otherwise it will look like crap. The drawback is price, as the detailed prints are often twice as expensive.
m horton I order four HO vehicles through Jens Jahn, that get produced by shape ways. I was disappointed,too many lines in vehicles and no smooth surface, not worth $14 a piece. Too bad, he has lots of sixties vehicles.
I order four HO vehicles through Jens Jahn, that get produced by shape ways. I was disappointed,too many lines in vehicles and no smooth surface, not worth $14 a piece. Too bad, he has lots of sixties vehicles.
$14 a piece you say?
That must've been printed in white strong and flexible....
That's a common problem with shapeways, when the designers allow printing in materials not at all suited for the model.
An 1:87 model with lots of details and curves MUST be printed in FUD or FED. Otherwise it will look like crap.
The drawback is price, as the detailed prints are often twice as expensive.
It's too bad he doesn't seem to offer them in FUD, as the renderings of his models look very nicely detailed (I want a Chrysler Cordoba and that shop is the only place I've found one so far). But with WSF he has to make those designs with solid material where the windows are, which also limits the realism.As with PLA prints from consumer-grade 3D printers, I believe you should be able to improve the texture with a coat of thinned epoxy and some sanding.
Swedish Custom painter and model maker. My Website:
My Railroad
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BigDaddy oldline1 Well, I'm an old guy and really don't understand the 3-d printing. How dos one get things drawn up to print? Your constraints are the same as mine, you have to learn CAD design. More than I want to bite off at my age. They also have a catalog of predesigned products.
oldline1 Well, I'm an old guy and really don't understand the 3-d printing. How dos one get things drawn up to print?
Your constraints are the same as mine, you have to learn CAD design. More than I want to bite off at my age. They also have a catalog of predesigned products.
I had browsed the Shapeways site and came across a PRR modeler that had produced various designs of catenary towers. I wanted to have a few to use as photo "props" and had looked at etched brass or scratchbuilt. There were several articles in the PRR Keystone Modeler. Both of those options were time consuming and expensive.
The Shapeways 3D towers were actually quite reasonable. The simplest one in my photo was about $14. The more complex lattice one about $70.
PRR_cat4 by Edmund, on Flickr
PRR_cat6 by Edmund, on Flickr
IMG_5577_fix by Edmund, on Flickr
I wanted to get some PRR style handrail stanchions so I asked this same designer if he would be willing to make some for me, which he did.
PRR_railing by Edmund, on Flickr
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/designdyne?li=pb
So if you find a designer that offers an item along the lines of what you would like to be made, send them a request and see if they would be willing to make it and that he or she can add to their offerings for sale.
That's how I did it and it worked out fine for me.
Regards, Ed
oldline1Well, I'm an old guy and really don't understand the 3-d printing. How dos one get things drawn up to print?
Well, I'm an old guy and really don't understand the 3-d printing. How dos one get things drawn up to print?
oldline1
Well, I just got an HOn3 hopper car I designed... and it came out nearly flawless in FUD. Very impressed. And it is one peice with 4 vertical walls...
Last year I ordered from Shapeways. An N Scale road rail barrier since no one makes them in my scale. I wrote to Rix about making one. He reply saying there was no need or thought. Like the HO version.
I received my rail barrier from shapeways and it looked nothing like the picture. I would need to do some modifications like cutting, shaving and add extra details. Making my own wooden posts. Since I didn't get posts or beams. It looked European but I don't know.
Amtrak America, 1971-Present.
I don't have a 3D printer and I haven't tried any 3D design since I learned 3D CAD with CadKey some 30 years ago, but I'm not sure how well you could expect rivet detail to work on a vertical wall, with the rivets extending in the X or Y direction. I am sure better results would be had by building the wall flat and have the rivet detail in the Z axis.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Good info. Thanks.
Yep, 4 vertical walls, and it was the vertical walls that had issues. But, in my case the walls were designed thicker to prevent warping. Warping was not the issue. The issue was with the rivet derail on the walls and the lower portion of one of the walls not printing completely.
I ordered parts for a HOn30 loco and all was fine. I had to do a bit of filling, but nothing major. But there were no rivet details and I would hesitate to order a larger item without that level of detail. Overall, I must say that I am very pleased with this new source of detail parts.
Simon
Were you printing something with four vertical walls by any chance? I've found that FUD doesn't 'like' being printed vertically. This is what I got when I tried to print a loco cab standing up:
The cab wall is warped, and almost paper-thin. There's no embossed detail. I found that I got better results by printing the four walls separately and lying flat, with mounting pegs to align them:
Since then, I've done a few other locomotive cabs using the 'flat pack' approach, and it's worked for me. I did 3D print some one-piece side tanks, but those had 2.5-3mm thick walls - which won't exactly work for a cab.
The Location: Forests of the Pacific Northwest, OregonThe Year: 1948The Scale: On30The Blog: http://bvlcorr.tumblr.com
Hi Kevin:
FWIW, as a purchaser of other peoples' designs, I have had good success with Shapeways. My only complaint is that sometimes the sizes aren't quite right. For example, I purchased some supposedly HO scale oxy-acetlene welding sets and the 'HO' stuff was way too small for normal industrial sized setups. They were closer to something a plummer might use.
I have never received any defective or improperly molded stuff.
In defense of Shapeways, when I pointed out the problem they gave me a full credit. I think that if they were to show the actual size by putting a measurement scale beside the object they could eliminate a lot of confusion.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Yes, there are shapeways forums and groups, but they are mostly populated by other designers and not by average customers. I thought it would be useful to ask here to get responses from people who arent designers and have purchased model railroad items through shapeways.
I think your concern is very reasonable. But I also think it should be taken to a "Yahoo" group that is more specific. Isn't there something like that? I know there are groups for NRC and Soundtraxx and Loksound and........
Ed
Thought I would post here knowing that many people have purchased model railroad items through Shapeways 3D printing services.
Has anyone expereienced extremly poor print quality problems with Frosted Detail plastic from Shapeways? I have designed a few things for HOn3 and most have printed okay. However, a customer bought one of my designs and it came out extremely poor, and the reprint after I complained on his behalf came out even worse - the item didn't even completely print - part of one side was completely missing as if the printer had run out of plastic or it had somehow melted away.
I am asking if this is a problem others have experienced. This was the first complant I have received from a customer, but considering his re-print was even worse I am extremely disheartened. Obviously, if I am getting results like this I will have to consider other printing services.
Kevin