So, I'm motorizing a logging crane car. I need to close off the open doorways on one or both sides with closed doors and and remove the rudimentary doors which Walthers unfortunately molded onto the cab.
I'm new to kitbashing so I'm not certain how to tackle this. I could try to grind flat the doors with a Dremel, but I think it may be difficult to get a perfectly flat side? Or should I cut the door out entirely and replace it the open wall with flat plastic?
An easier solution way would be to just block the open doorway with flat plastic and then paint the existing door to look better, but then the doorway(s) would open into where the engine is supposed to be, not the cab.
Thoughts?
I realized I forgot to include a picture of the door:
Reading other people's threads, I've seen references to using Bondo to fill in gaps, like if I grind too far with the Dremel. But the hardware carries several different varieties of Bondo. Any preference between the putty or the body filler?
That is actually the mold from the cox trains model from years ago. An simpler option might be to find a through the door photo of the guts of a similar prototype and mount that behind the opening. The. you don't have to do anything. Half of kitbashing is figuring out how not to do something, to get the effect you did something. If you want the door gone, cut close to the edge, to get the bulk out. The. File to the edge to finish so you get a much nicer straight edge. Easier to fit a new piece in. Less finish work too.
its not Bo do your thinking of and saw. It is modelers putty. Made different so it glues itself in. Walthers, micromark, and other places have it. Specifically for model work.
shane
A pessimist sees a dark tunnel
An optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel
A realist sees a frieght train
An engineer sees three idiots standing on the tracks stairing blankly in space
Hi speedybee,
Welcome to the world of kit bashing!
My suggestion would be to cut the existing doors out of the cab and fit them into the current door openings. You can fill the hole left by the molded on doors with 0.040" smooth styrene.
To cut the doors out cleanly, I'm going to suggest that you scribe them out as opposed to trying to cut them with a sharp blade or a saw. Scribing is very easy to do, especially since you already have a pattern to work with. What you need is a dull (yes, you read that right - dull!) #11 X-acto blade, preferably with the tip slightly broken off. Draw the back of the blade along the cut line holding the handle at about a 60 degree angle. If things work properly, you should get a small curl of styrene coming out of the scribe line. Repeat the process gently until you have established a cut line that is easy to follow and then you can start applying a bit more pressure.
The advantage to scribing is that it removes material instead of just pushing it to the side. When you cut with a sharp blade what you are actually doing is forming a 'V' in the styrene, and the deeper that 'V' gets, the harder it is to pull the blade because the blade is binding in the 'V'. If you are removing that material, the blade won't have as much tendency to bind. As a bonus, because the scribing doesn't create a 'V', finishing the opening is much easier. You will also be able to preserve the rail above the door by scribing between it and the door proper.
The crane body has some rather coarse rivet details which will be missing from the patch you put in. My suggestion would be to remove all of the molded on rivets and buy a sheet of more suitably sized rivet decals from Micro Mark:
https://i.imgur.com/58H7jxI.jpg?
While you are at it, you might want to buy some Tamiya modelling putty too:
https://www.micromark.com/Tamiya-Modeling-Putty-for-Plastic-Pkg-of-2
Cheers!!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
oops duplicate posting
speedybee So, I'm motorizing a logging crane car. I need to close off the open doorways on one or both sides with closed doors and and remove the rudimentary doors which Walthers unfortunately molded onto the cab. I'm new to kitbashing so I'm not certain how to tackle this. I could try to grind flat the doors with a Dremel, but I think it may be difficult to get a perfectly flat side? Or should I cut the door out entirely and replace it the open wall with flat plastic? An easier solution way would be to just block the open doorway with flat plastic and then paint the existing door to look better, but then the doorway(s) would open into where the engine is supposed to be, not the cab. Thoughts?
There are protruding details that perhaps you want to remove. A chisel blade in an Xacto knife holder (or the special chiseling tool that MicroMark sells) if used slowly and carefully would remove those protruding details, with fine grit abrasive sheets or paper smoothing it to flat finish.
It sounds like you seek to close model a closed door so that the innards of the cab are not visible. Tape a piece of bond paper to the side of the cab and run a pencil lightly over it -- that would give you a template of the exact size of the opening (putting the size of the cap on a copy machine would similarly give you that template but printer ink ain't free). New door from sheet styrene using that template. To keep it from falling into the opening, perhaps inside the cab a couple of sticks of styrene (maybe from old sprues to assembled kits?) across the door opening, giving something for the new flat door to be cemented to as it completely fills the opening.
Dremel tools and plastic often do not mix well as the speed of the tool causes melted plastic. The chisel blade or the chisel tool will have so many uses in other projects that they would be a good investment.
Dave Nelson
If you don't like the moulded-on doors, remove the body shell, then use a powered drill (with a suitable bit) to remove most of the door's material, then finish-up with a suitable knife and/or files.
You can then create new doors that better-suit your tastes....my choice would be some plain sheet styrene and a couple lengths of Evergreen channel stock (to use as door tracks), which would allow the doors to be either open or closed...I'd guess that the latter would be your choice, especially if you don't want the crane's motor to be visible.
(I have one of those small cranes, but the interior parts which represent the engine and gears has two identical castings, instead of left/right mating pairs. I won't be motorising mine, but will simply fabricate a suitable better half, along with some other details.
If I'm not mistaken, most of these small cranes usually came with a crank handle that could be inserted into a hole in the bodyshell, allowing the operator to raise or lower either the boom or the cable controlling the hook....not something that interests me.
Wayne
Excellent advice everyone, I'm glad I posted here before blundering in with a dremel. One point of clarification:
doctorwayne use a powered drill (with a suitable bit) to remove most of the door's material
Do you mean using a bit sideways, such that the bit's cutting edges are pressed flat against the surface, scraping away the door material?
Re: other points, yes the intention is a closed cab with the interior obscured by translucent windows. It's going to be stuffed full of things... A total of three motors (rotate the cab, raise/lower the cab, and raise/lower a hook that I'm using instead of the log claw), plus an arduino and a small assortment of electrical bits. The goal is full control of the crane via dcc. No insertable crank required. Needless to say, the interior will be full, though I'm mostly sure it'll all fit
Is there enough room to even do that? With gears , motors, and such. Or is half that going to have to be mounted below the layout? Is there a dcc chip capable of three motor control?
NVSRRIs there enough room to even do that? With gears , motors, and such.
Hi Shane,
I have full confidence that the OP can fit everything he needs to into the cab. There are plenty of tiny, powerful motors available. Hopefully it won't take him as long to figure out how to build the mechanisms as it has taken me to sort out my rotary snow plow!
Speedybee,
I'm pretty sure that doctorwayne simply meant that the drill bit should be used to drill a series of holes through the molded on doors so that the doors are easier to remove. Once most of the door material is removed, you can use a #11 blade and a file to square up the openings, and then fill them in with sheet styrene.
I still like my idea of scribing the molded on doors out. No need to build new doors. Please understand that I am not thumbing my nose at the other suggestions.
I really hope that you will document your progress with this project, including the problems and setbacks. I find these types of mechanical challenges to be extremely interesting! I'm sure others do too.
speedybee Do you mean using a bit sideways, such that the bit's cutting edges are pressed flat against the surface, scraping away the door material?
No, just the normal way of drilling holes, so that most of the material will be removed, leaving less for you to remove using a knife and/or file.A rotary cutting bit would work, too, but they're often difficult to control, especially in small areas.
Got it, thanks. I'd been picturing trying to use the side of a drill bit sort of like a wood planer, scraping away the raised section to leave a flat surface.
As far as fitting the stuff in goes, I temporarily glued in the two motors that raise and lower the boom and the hook
There's room for the arduino to tuck in along one side of the cab if I don't attach its usual strips of pins. Then the rest of the cab is available for a motor to rotate and for the voltage converter, which is very small (about the size of two stacked dimes). I may add a few external MOSFETs for supplying the motor power... the motors use such low current that frankly the arduino alone can probably power them, but if I use small transistors, they'll take up negligible space, so why not. That's all the electronics needed. The arduino alone is capable of decoding the dcc signal and outputting all the motor commands. It could also attach to a speaker and a SD card to produce engine sounds, though trying to fit those in too may be unrealistic.
I can't proceed with the motorizing part though until the slip ring I ordered arrives. It's from ebay, so it was super cheap, but will take a few weeks. That'll give me a six wired connection between the cab to the flatcar that can freely rotate. But until I have it in hand I don't know exactly how I'll be attaching it.
I did the temporary glue job just to test out powering those motors. I want to give them enough power to lift a decent amount- there's the boom lifting an arduino- but not enough power that they can break some part of the crane if misused.
speedybeeI want to give them enough power to lift a decent amount- there's the boom lifting an arduino- but not enough power that they can break some part of the crane if misused.
Keep in mind that the heavier the lift, the more weight is needed within the crane, to prevent it from tipping over.I'm guessing that the motors will take care of at least some of that, but you might want to add some weight to the underside of the wheeled portion of the crane.
speedybeeThere's room for the arduino to tuck in along one side of the cab if I don't attach its usual strips of pins. Then the rest of the cab is available for a motor to rotate and for the voltage converter, which is very small (about the size of two stacked dimes). I may add a few external MOSFETs for supplying the motor power...
Very interesting project!
It's been a while! But the slip ring arrived and I got around to working on this over the past couple days. The trickiest parts are done. I have to get another motor for the hook though, turns out the one I have isn't geared to work right.
Still, here it is, with rotation and the boom operating via DCC. I've left an amply sized spot in the front right corner for the hook motor, and the arduino is prepared to use it as soon as its installed
http://imgur.com/rkJfbBz.mp4
Then I've just got to add power pickup to the flatcar's trucks and glue the crane to it.
The cab doors are moved- you can see the cab in the background- but I won't know how good (or bad) it looks until I've finished closing up the front of the cab and painted it.
speedybee,
I am totally impressed!!!
I hope you took a lot of pictures while you were (are) building it. I would love to see how you built the mechanisms.
I didn't document other than that one video, but this crane is mostly ending up as a testing project. There's a number of improvements I want to make for my next crane: replacing the belt drive with a direct gear drive, adding sound, adding a keep-alive capacitor, and mounting the whole thing on a three axle locomotive truck to make it self propelled.
I'm going to scratch build the next one though because it'll need to be slightly larger to fit the extra stuff, and it turns out that I wanted to change basically everything about the Walthers logging crane anyways.
My door-patching job turned out looking worse than I'd hoped. I was using milliput epoxy putty to try to fill in the gaps and it kind of got everywhere. It's neat stuff but maybe not ideally suited to that task.
hon30critter speedybee, I am totally impressed!!! I hope you took a lot of pictures while you were (are) building it. I would love to see how you built the mechanisms. Cheers!! Dave
I'm totally impressed, too, as I don't ever recall seeing a remotely operated HO scale crane.