Is 3D printing over hyped ?

[rue_d_etropal]

it does really depend on what you want to make. For smaller scales, etched brass is better, and combining the best of each technology, new and old is way forward. Some have been tempted by 3D printing thinking it can do everything. My own designs take it to a limit I think practical, but even then it is not quite perfect, so need to think of models from a modeller's point of view, not a collector, which sadly is the way many in the hobby are going.

The other 2 new technologies being laser cutting/etching and silhouette cutting. It is interesting that people seem to accept some compromises with laser cut building kits, no-one seems to be saying that is over hyped. Silhouette cutting is getting a lot of interest for modellers for laminated coach sides, which are a lot better than 3D printed ones, and a composite kit using silhouette cut sides and 3D printed interior, possibly a laser cut frame for body, not dissimilar to model coach building ideas over 60 years ago.

 

There are model items which can only be produced(in one piece) by 3D printing. I use my own 3d printed spiral staircase to prove this point.

 

Concerning software, then I can say the CAD package I have suits me. It is not free, and I think this may be why some struggle. It is worth buying a package, mine came with 30 days free trial, and a tutorial package to learn the basics. Then it is a case of trying something and using a service like Shapeways means you can concentrate on the design and worry less about the actual 3D printing.

[Rabs]

It seems to me that modelling has always been about buying or making components, then assembling them. 3D printed models (until the technology improves) seem to involve buying a finished product that's not fit for purpose, then spending hours fixing it!

 

Hmm, actually sounds like a familiar problem to me.  White metal castings anyone?

[Quarryscapes]

Hmm, actually sounds like a familiar problem to me.  White metal castings anyone?

 

All comes down to design and manufacture - some very badly designed castings have appeared and then you equally get those that are just very badly made - There is nothing more annoying that castings where the moulds don't align properly! 

 

At least with 3D printing it's a lot easier to correct/improve a design in order to print better next time, and as I said before good design works with the properties of the print, rather than just ignoring them and putting up with sub par results. 

 

Going back to my bolster seen earlier - I mentioned it was a kit of bits with etched corner plates - and this is why: 

 

 

Same material, a wagon printed as a single piece - the print lines work well for wood grain, but they look awful as metal corner plates! Solution? in future add etched corner plates! (To be fair it does look a lot better painted up, but still you get the idea)

 

[rue_d_etropal]

I remember when one of the busiest stalls at one big local exhibition supplied bits to improve r2r models. People were happy to update models then. Now with such good r2r models , the modelling is getting less, people are expecting more and that includes 3D printed models. It is not fault of 3d printing, except maybe some over zealous marketing and selling departments, but those who don't want to have to build models. That is OK for those who just want to display and collect, but the hobby is more about modelling than collecting.

It has been interesting following the thread about the Great British Locomotive partwork magazine(finished but still talked about), where people are actually using the basic models to create proper running models. There are still plenty of real modellers out there.

 

There is also another problem with 3D printing, or how some perceive it, and that is the way photographs show up every little fault. From normal viewing, a properly painted and weathered model looks OK, except to those who seem to want to critisise what is and can be a great boon for the hobby. Also think about items other than locos, wagons and coaches.

[Joseph_Pestell]

Outside of our sphere, in medecine 3D printing is enabling the fabrication of superb artificial body parts. Difficult to over-hype that.

[Quarryscapes]

Outside of our sphere, in medecine 3D printing is enabling the fabrication of superb artificial body parts. Difficult to over-hype that.

 

True, but these are very much function over form and done in materials that are eye wateringly expensive on machines that are even more so by expert technicians and designers. Very little, if anything, produced and seen on this forum can compare I would reckon. 

[Kelly]

 

Outside of our sphere, in medecine 3D printing is enabling the fabrication of superb artificial body parts. Difficult to over-hype that.

They've also used 3D printing to fabricate buildings in earthquake hit areas from concrete.

[AndyID]

Definitely over-hyped in some respects, but that's not to say you can't do useful things with it.

 

 

Printed on a rather cheap economical printer in PLA. The check rails and wing rails are printed on this one. Obviously, the quality is not up to injection molding standards, but at normal viewing distance it looks just as good. It takes about 30 minutes to populate a turnout  model in CAD.

[AndyID]

All comes down to design and manufacture - some very badly designed castings have appeared and then you equally get those that are just very badly made - There is nothing more annoying that castings where the moulds don't align properly! 

 

At least with 3D printing it's a lot easier to correct/improve a design in order to print better next time, and as I said before good design works with the properties of the print, rather than just ignoring them and putting up with sub par results. 

 

Going back to my bolster seen earlier - I mentioned it was a kit of bits with etched corner plates - and this is why: 

 

DSXT2342-2.jpg

 

Same material, a wagon printed as a single piece - the print lines work well for wood grain, but they look awful as metal corner plates! Solution? in future add etched corner plates! (To be fair it does look a lot better painted up, but still you get the idea)

 

BFI-DSXT2362.jpg

 

Not to be picky or anything, but those printed corner plates look jolly good!

 

(Mind you, I always thought Peco's printed cardboard wagon sides were PDG too.)

[teetrix]

Most modelers think the quality of shapeways is the general 3D printing quality. But it's more at the lower end...

A Formlab or B9creator deliver an amazing smooth finish and costs around 3000-4000 GBP. That's between high end industrial printers and cheap DIY contraptions - affordable for cottage industry, small batch manufacturing and comitted (and a little wealthy) individual modelers. A laser cutter or a good CNC router will cost the same or more, not to mention costs for cutting injection moulds. Resin for a big 4mm or 7mm NG loco body costs approx. 50-60 GBP btw.

 

The black boiler fittings at this picture came from a small batch manufacturer, printed with a formlab and glass bead blasted:

 

 

I think, injection moulded parts would not look better...

 

Michael

[stadman]

Most modelers think the quality of shapeways is the general 3D printing quality. But it's more at the lower end...

A Formlab or B9creator deliver an amazing smooth finish and costs around 3000-4000 GBP. That's between high end industrial printers and cheap DIY contraptions - affordable for cottage industry, small batch manufacturing and comitted (and a little wealthy) individual modelers. A laser cutter or a good CNC router will cost the same or more, not to mention costs for cutting injection moulds. Resin for a big 4mm or 7mm NG loco body costs approx. 50-60 GBP btw.

 

The black boiler fittings at this picture came from a small batch manufacturer, printed with a formlab and glass bead blasted:

 

 

I think, injection moulded parts would not look better...

 

Michael

 

Not really relevant to the topic but a nice looking loco. What is it may I ask?

[teetrix]

It's an altered kit of a romanian Krauss in 1/45. More about it and my other 0scale projects here:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/106722-bedheimthuringia/

 

Michael

[Phil Parker]

Most modelers think the quality of shapeways is the general 3D printing quality. But it's more at the lower end...

A Formlab or B9creator deliver an amazing smooth finish and costs around 3000-4000 GBP. That's between high end industrial printers and cheap DIY contraptions - affordable for cottage industry, small batch manufacturing and comitted (and a little wealthy) individual modelers. A laser cutter or a good CNC router will cost the same or more, not to mention costs for cutting injection moulds. Resin for a big 4mm or 7mm NG loco body costs approx. 50-60 GBP btw.

 

The black boiler fittings at this picture came from a small batch manufacturer, printed with a formlab and glass bead blasted:

 

 

That's part of the problem. Modellers are tight-fisted and expect top quality at bargain basement prices. So, we have the cheapest Shapeways stuff touted as the solution to all your modelling problems when it isn't. Even at this level, models can't compete on price with injection moulded parts.

 

Spend a few quid and the results can be, as has been shown, much better but the mass market is more concerned with price. Luckily, there wall always be those more interested in quality to push standards.

[stadman]

It's an altered kit of a romanian Krauss in 1/45. More about it and my other 0scale projects here:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/106722-bedheimthuringia/

 

Michael

 

Michael,

Thanks for the info.

Done 2 trips to Romania. Lots of lovely narrow gauge steam, mostly Resita's for haulage but a MAV on one line.

Cheers.

Kev

www.exemrs.co.uk

[mastanec]

I'd say it really depends what do you expect from 3D printing, a ready model or a semi product to be used for further tuning and tinkering to eventually make master for casting. A ready product depends of it's application, some 3D printers/technologies allow to print moveable parts directly from the printer or parts that would be otherwise difficult for CNC to machine - interlocked parts. You can work with different budgets and get not so great results to impressive ones as mentioned by some people earlier.

Petri Sallinen a Finnish modeller, also frequenting this site has posted a thread where they got master parts printed on I think the B9 creator:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/96279-project-masters-for-resin-casting/

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/106896-using-fxd-as-the-master/

And I dare to say that his models offer extreme level of detail and precision.

Like with any other technology it will probably take some time to master it, when computers first started noone expected to have a telephone, fax, camera, mail, calendar .... (you name it) in their pocket.

 

@Kelly, the company Gordon Moore has founded is still successfully pursuing Moore's law even after 14nm, however I do not wish to go to any argument over it here as it's OT.

 

ATB

Marian

[MGR Hooper!]

"MY" HONEST OPINION...

 

No. People with too much confidence may feel that 3D printing will take over the world, but it won't. What can be mass produced quickly using traditional methods cannot be 3D printed at that speed and that low cost.

 

But I cannot say it's over-hyped just coz some people think it is.

 

3D printing allows me to make models that would otherwise not be a commercially viable product! 

[AndyID]

No. People with too much confidence may feel that 3D printing will take over the world, but it won't. What can be mass produced quickly using traditional methods cannot be 3D printed at that speed and that low cost.

 

 

A bold statement

 

There are many things that we take for granted today that would have been viewed as pure fantasy fifty years ago, or even twenty years ago in some cases.

 

The benefits of 3D printing are not limited to the elimination of tooling for mass production. There are great benefits in terms of shipping cost, shipping time, inventory reduction, implementing design changes, etc, so there are huge commercial benefits to the companies that can get it to work. I would not be surprised if in the next ten years a company like Amazon sets up "3D print shops" at many world-wide locations where you can pick up an item you ordered the previous day.

 

I don't believe 3D printing will eliminate mass production of course, but I think it's going to enable some major changes in manufacturing and distribution.

[Guest]

Re: the OP. For model railway use? Yes, absolutely.

[Phil Parker]

A bold statement

 

There are many things that we take for granted today that would have been viewed as pure fantasy fifty years ago, or even twenty years ago in some cases.

 

The benefits of 3D printing are not limited to the elimination of tooling for mass production. There are great benefits in terms of shipping cost, shipping time, inventory reduction, implementing design changes, etc, so there are huge commercial benefits to the companies that can get it to work. I would not be surprised if in the next ten years a company like Amazon sets up "3D print shops" at many world-wide locations where you can pick up an item you ordered the previous day.

 

I don't believe 3D printing will eliminate mass production of course, but I think it's going to enable some major changes in manufacturing and distribution.

 

What would be the point of an Amazon print shop offering something the next day? They already offer that level of service from a conventional warehouse using a courier. You can even get same day stuff from, well, high street shops. OK, it's mass produced but then who wants to be faced with a massive options list every single time they buy something?

 

Even local printing is available if you dig around. Enthusiasts are registering printers and offering a co-op service.

 

The problem is we tend to want things made of more than just ABS and that, for the vast majority of people including modellers, means the parts must be assembled. If you could print in multi materials including metal for electrical circuits, then you have a solution but I feel that is a very, very long way off.

 

Another problem, for us, is that many applications don't need the resolution we require and so the benefits of developing ever higher res printers lose out to the desire to comercialise what you have. Let's face it, if you develop a printer and start making money in the mass market, are you going to rush into the very much smaller model market for lower returns and customer who moan about mis-placed rivets?

 

Much of our technology comes from the jewelery world and that's one place where cost saving isn't so important. No one wants to hear they are being offered the world's cheapest engagement ring so the existing wax printing, casting and hand finishing is fine. Maybe you can increase the profit margin with smoother prints but it's (sadly) probably cheaper to use third world labour for the bargain basement end of the market, or finish locally and charge a premium for this.

[AndyID]

What would be the point of an Amazon print shop offering something the next day?

 

It would be a serious advantage to Amazon because it would eliminate inventory and shipping.

 

I'm not talking about next week either. The technology is still fairly immature and it's not really practical for what I'm describing. Do you think it will not have advanced in the next ten years?

[Suzie]

...The problem is we tend to want things made of more than just ABS and that, for the vast majority of people including modellers, means the parts must be assembled. If you could print in multi materials including metal for electrical circuits, then you have a solution but I feel that is a very, very long way off...

We are already there:-

 

http://www.pcb-pool.com/ppuk/info_pcbpool_3d_mid.html

 

Getting PCBs printed from CAD files has been around for a while, but now you can have whole PCB assemblies built from CAD files, and 3D MID takes it a step further and integrates the components and circuitry directly into a 3D product.

[AndyID]

The diamond crossing I posted above was something I made a few months ago. Since then I've made some changes to the models and the printing process. Here's a very recent test sample.

 

 

This was printed on a printer that costs about 200 GBPounds. Admittedly, if you examine it with a lot of magnification you will see that it's not as good as an injection molded part, but I'm sure a lot of modellers would find it quite acceptable. Not only that, I can crank out turnouts in all sorts of scales, gauges, curvatures, rail types, chair types etc. without investing in hard tooling, and I could print them in the UK even though I am not in the UK.

 

This is all quite practical now, so I don't believe it's hype.

[MGR Hooper!]

Looks very much identical to wooden sleepers.

 

The diamond crossing I posted above was something I made a few months ago. Since then I've made some changes to the models and the printing process. Here's a very recent test sample.

 

DSCN2741.JPG

 

This was printed on a printer that costs about 200 GBPounds. Admittedly, if you examine it with a lot of magnification you will see that it's not as good as an injection molded part, but I'm sure a lot of modellers would find it quite acceptable. Not only that, I can crank out turnouts in all sorts of scales, gauges, curvatures, rail types, chair types etc. without investing in hard tooling, and I could print them in the UK even though I am not in the UK.

 

This is all quite practical now, so I don't believe it's hype.

[Robin2]

This is all quite practical now, so I don't believe it's hype.

This is a good example of a practical application.

 

However it does depend on mastering the CAD system needed to produce the instructions for the 3D printer and that can be a very steep learning curve with endless scope for time wasting. And, by comparison with a loco body, the CAD design for sleepers is probably quite simple and repetitive.

 

...R

[AndyID]

This is a good example of a practical application.

 

However it does depend on mastering the CAD system needed to produce the instructions for the 3D printer and that can be a very steep learning curve with endless scope for time wasting. And, by comparison with a loco body, the CAD design for sleepers is probably quite simple and repetitive.

 

...R

 

Who said it has to be used to produce loco bodies? There are plenty of examples in this thread that demonstrate that 3D printing is a very useful tool for railway modellers.

 

I've seen the argument often about how difficult it is to set up your own printer, but it's really not very difficult once you grasp a few basic points. But be warned, there is a lot of complete baloney posted on the internet on the subject. (BTW, if anyone is having problems with their own printer, please PM me and I'll try to help.) And if you don't want to run your own printer, use a service like Shapeways instead.

 

The other frequent argument is "CAD is difficult". Well, as Woody Allen said, "it's like anything else". It does take a bit of effort to learn, but once you have the hang of it, you'll never make a drawing with pencil and paper ever again, so it's a great tool for any sort of modelling. But IMHO, free CAD software is a waste of time. Do what Simon Dawson does and buy an inexpensive CAD package.

 

If 3D printing is being used as an alternative to injection molding, the "CAD is difficult" argument doesn't make any sense. Any mass production method requires the generation of 3D CAD models.

 

So, is 3DP "over-hyped"? I think that's impossible to answer to that question objectively, but it certainly seems to be a useful tool that railway modellers can make good use of.

 

Here are a couple of shots of things I have printed to test the resolution/repeatability of my printer. They could probably be improved if I spent a bit more time on them.