JCL

Here it is done the right way

After doing the body for that NER railcar I had no excuse for not doing the GNR/LB&SCR one - especially as I'm in the GNR Society. I drew up the plans a while ago, but new information meant that I had to redo them. This model is longer than the other one, and so it'll need to be split into three parts. Luckily it's an easy split as the ends can be removed from the middle passenger section. Not only that, but there was a seam in the roof at the same place, so I should need to do much if everything marries up correctly. I did wonder if I could get away with printing it vertically. I knew really that I couldn't, but I tried anyway (for science ) and this was the result. To be fair, the non crushed side looks lovely and all of the details have come out perfectly. So the suction force created by having the roof on there has stripped the body from the supports, and then crushed that side. I'm going to do it again this evening when the resin has had a chance to warm up. On the warming up thing, the resin I use needs to be at about 25C to work correctly (there's also high temp resin that needs to be at 30C, but what I do it's not worth the extra hassle), so I use a greenhouse seedling heading pad to get everything to the right temperature. Generally when the inside of the cabinet hits 25C I give it an hour for the resin to warm up properly.

Here too Linny, I'm thinking of you over here. On the end angle-iron strapping, if you have some of that oiled board, you could use a bit of that with tabs at the top and bottom and a pair of slots in the end coupled with some of your white label for the other bit. I did that trick with the Barnum coach that needed an iron plate slightly proud of the solebars centred on the bogie. In this case it was a .6mm slot in 1.5mm mdf. Not a good photo, but you can see it below.

Hi Linny, I've just been catching up on your thread, you've definitely cornered the market here with the wagons, they're brilliant!

On the volume estimation, I've also found in the last few days that Blender has an add-on that just needs to be activated that also shows the model's volume. I'm going to have a look at the other check options on there. Out of interest, is anyone else using Blender, or are you using other software to build model files?

Here's the original at the front, the duff one at the back and the good one in the middle. I'm going to leave the duff one on the supports and just spray it and use it to practice lining, then I'll start on the middle one. I just have to find an equivalent for the NER lake in the Vallejo colours (because those are the ones I can get over here). The good one that I printed this evening. I had a good look at it and there's no warping whatsoever, so it's definitely the UV light that's causing it - I must be more careful about how long the models sit underneath it. Finally, a test for the website, here's the STL file for the NEW inspection coach without supports. Even if you don't have a printer, you can still download it and spin it around in an STL viewer. I don't know about Macs, but Windows 10 comes with one. NER-inspection-24 MT 5-rep.stl Well, I'm happy with how today's final model turned out. It's been a good way of both testing the printer and my knowledge of working with it. I've also been able to test some new ideas in Blender, and Mike's been able to show me how to do the rounded ends of the roof. And one tip that has made life easier, get a roll of grease proof paper and use it to stand everything on when cleaning a finished model. Although it's only a matter of degrees, I'm happier putting that stuff in the bin than plastic, also, it stays flatter better.

Looks good Mike. Looks square too, which is encouraging. Mine is 10% done so I’ll drag it out in the morning. On the model, I raised the partition walls a tad so a .5mm floor can be added.

Given this is about me learning a bit more about the printer, I thought I’d print the inspection car parallel to the plate instead of at an angle and see what happens. I had that duff print create a hole in the silicone one of my vats, so I thought, as long as I don’t attempt to print ove4 the hole, I’ll be ok. I wasn’t. I forgot that the printer uses a laser that is directly under the dodgy bit of the vat, so the beam wasn’t passing properly through the silicone. Anyway, this... caused this... So all in all, I made the wrong choice. Having said that, I do know that the model file is ok, so I will be able to upload it, and I can use the 90% of the model that is good to test paint colours and lining. Apart from the dodgy section in the middle, the other bits look unfinished because there is a lot of uncurled resin on it. Another print has been set off, so should be done by the time I get up in the morning. I’ll let you know how I get on.

I know this bloke...

Hi Mike, I've found that the Asura software I use has a function that allows me to create a cross section of the model so I can work out if any of the supports are too close to it. It works on a slider, so I can slide it up and down randomly to get the best view. I've created an animation showing this - it'll be a test of the new RMWeb. Click on it then give it a few seconds to start working, it waits until your computer has downloaded the picture fully before starting the animation. If it still doesnt work, click on it again.

I had time to print the roof off last night. At 40um it took 9 1/2 hours to complete. It’s a good job I can leave it running unattended! From the printer, the roof looked like this. Still covered in resin, I left it a few hours inside to printer cabinet to drain while I got on with my job. I then put it in front of the UV light to cure, and unfortunately I over did it and one corner curled up. The bad corner is below If you’re wondering, the two dots on the radiator are support nubs. I also need to keep an eye on supports as 2 merged with the model behind the right radiator. The crack below was caused by me. I’ve found that I need to chop into the supports further away from the roof to reduce the tension on it while they are being removed. That said, it’s proved that Mike’s roof file works a treat. I’ll upload them tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m wondering if I should do an experiment and print the whole thing in one go and not at an angle. My thought process is that the clerestory window openings would reduce the suction. Any views?

Good lord, that's brilliant!

Hi Bill - if you think that's bad, you'll be shocked to see the other photo I had from the Graces Guide (https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/File:Im1912EnV113-p489.jpg) . Luckily I had access to a diagram as well. Those straps would have to be styrene or something else as there's no point printing them. I'm pleased I didn't set out to sell them as kits. Cute little thing though.

I've been hard at it at work the last few days, but have made progress on the NER Inspection model. Mike Trice has been kind enough to do the clerestory roof after I'd tried and failed on a couple of methods, and then I completed the radiators. I've a test to do in the printer after a quick bit of beading rework on the sides to make them thinner, and a final check, if everything works out I'll do another upload to Thingiverse, and by the looks of it from this editor window, I might be able to upload it here as two separate files. Mike has kindly said I can also upload his contribution. Here are a couple of renders to give you an idea of where we're at. The roof in Asura with its supports added. It was being converted to gcode as I grabbed this image. File Types When I create my model, I use 3D modelling software that has its own native file type (Blender and .blend file type). Often, that file type is not compatible with other 3D modelling software. There are a few universal file types that are compatible with different software. So if I want to get my model from my 3D modelling software and into my printer software, I export my file as an STL file. This can then be imported into my printer software and I can do things like reorientate my model and create supports. Once this is done, I then export that file as gcode and save it onto a memory card, and that goes into the printer. The gcode file contains the printing instructions. The printer works in very thin layers called slices, and the gcode file defines all of these slices and tells the printer how to recreate each one. It sounds like a lot of work, but it's not really. Checking the Final File I attempted to print a model the other day and for the first time since I started doing this, the gcode file was corrupted. Instead of printing a bogie, it created a crazy looking spider. So with this latest model I wanted to quickly view the model in the gcode file before it was printed to make sure it was ok. After trawling the internet, I realised a piece of software I already had would be able to do the job called Cura by Ultimaker. It can pretty much do everything except the supports, and is what I used before moving onto Peopoly's own software. If anyone is interested in viewing the gcode version of their model, the software is free and can be downloaded from https://ultimaker.com/en/products/ultimaker-cura-software. I mentioned before that I am still pretty new to printing my own models. This is still an experiment to see how far my skills have come on, and to see what the printer can do. Some of the parts are very small, the lower surface must be flat, and the model takes up a lot of printer space, so it'll be interesting to see what it can and can't do. Prototype Photo I also found a really good photo of the inspection car on eBay which filled in a lot of blanks. https://www.ebay.ie/itm/392229942449?ViewItem=&item=392229942449

I've been building e-commerce sites with Woocommerce on Wordpress for years, and more recently with a page builder called Elementor, and I would tread carefully around people saying they could create a site for you in 2 hours - unless what they mean is they can install and configure a site in 2 hours. There's a whole lot more to building an online store than simply installing and configuring software. E-commerce is complicated, and often it's a whole new world to the business owner - especially a small business owner. By taking on someone to do their online store, a business owner is often not only looking for a technician, but someone who can hold their hand through the process. This should be a partnership. I always make sure that I understand the business before I install the first piece of software. There are lots of questions like, what will an online store mean to the business? What are the benefits the owner should expect? What are the pitfalls? How will the business owner keep it running efficiently? What happens if it goes wrong? What changes, if any, will they have to make to their business processes to make the business work with the website and vice versa? What sort of e-commerce should they use - Wordpress, Etsy, Amazon, Ebay, Shopify, etc? (I've even recommended people don't go with me because they would be better off on a different platform). Sometimes even simple things like 'What shall I do about setting up postage an packing?' needs to be nailed down - with an online store your customers could be anywhere in the world. Are you going to service all of these people, or block certain or all foreign countries? Taking all of that into account, I'll have spent more than 2 hours going through and understanding the business before I start creating the website. Here's the thing, a business owner with some technical expertise could spend 2 hours looking at a video and following the instructions and have a website. If you want a *successful* site, then they will have to do a lot more work to get up to speed and to understand and avoid the problems that may turn up along the way. There are a lot of failed and failing ecommerce sites out there because the owner didn't know what they were getting into before they started. I'm reworking an online store at the moment. They have a great product that is selling well everywhere it's seen, and they have it selling well in a major department store but they can't get sales on their website. The site isn't pretty, it makes it difficult to understand what they are selling, the products are hidden in menus, and it can sometimes take a minute before the home page loads because the person who wrote it didn't know what they were doing. Just as bad, the admin is so bad that they are spending extra time on the site that should be spent making the product. If you are after an online store, don't look at people showing demos unless they can also refer you to previous websites that they have created that have the look, feel and functionality that you are after, that owner loves and that is successfully bringing in business. Phil is using Wix for his website, which is a website builder for people that don't have a technical background. I helped a friend with a B&B with a Wix site out last autumn, and to be honest, I'll not do that again - it's not a great platform and caused me to spend hours on the phone with Wix and 3rd party services attempting to connect their B&B to booking.com. It's such a shame that the expert has messed up the non-shop pages so much. Wix comes with a lot of templates that could have been used for the non-shop pages that would have been so much better, and would have been responsive. Phil can still turn this around, but I think needs to go back to the IT person and have a long conversation with him/her that results in scrapping the pages done and redoing them properly from scratch. I hope it all works out for him.