Freem009 a modular system for British 009

[PaulRhB]

5 hours ago, Sharky said:

we may create our own thread

Go for it, it would be nice to watch it develop and post a link here. 👍
 

 

[hartleymartin]

On 21/01/2020 at 23:19, PaulRhB said:

9mm ply for the plates. The ends were designed to use dowels in the 8mm holes with a 6mm bolt in the centre. Once it got bigger than just me I decided expecting accuracy to that level was unrealistic so I changed to using the system we use on HO Freemo modules with a clamp. The 8mm holes now offer another fastening option as they allow some adjustment if you use 6mm bolts in them. So it’s either, clamps are quicker for group setups while the bolts are great at home where it will be up for weeks without tying up the clamps. 

 

At the moment, another FREMO standard is being developed by AMRA (Australian Model Railway Association) which is using M6 bolts in 10mm holes. I have built two such prototype modules for O scale standard gauge and can verify that this gives you quite a bit of freedom as the standard will still work with dimensions out by up to 2mm. We are using M6 wing bolts with mudguard washers.

 

You may find that drilling out the 8mm holes to 10mm will make things easier for alignment, especially if people are cutting out their own end plates from a paper template rather than buying a pre-made end plate.

[PaulRhB]

45 minutes ago, hartleymartin said:

 

At the moment, another FREMO standard is being developed by AMRA (Australian Model Railway Association) which is using M6 bolts in 10mm holes. I have built two such prototype modules for O scale standard gauge and can verify that this gives you quite a bit of freedom as the standard will still work with dimensions out by up to 2mm. We are using M6 wing bolts with mudguard washers.

 

You may find that drilling out the 8mm holes to 10mm will make things easier for alignment, especially if people are cutting out their own end plates from a paper template rather than buying a pre-made end plate.

The bolt holes are a relic of my original intention to use dowels when it was just me, I abandoned that precision when others asked for ends as I knew it required tolerances that would require a jig that increased the cost and complexity. To keep it simple and fun I reverted to a the standard that follows the well proven ‘RStower’ group idea for clamps and used the holes to add the bolt option. 
 

We haven’t had a problem with it so far and if someone’s is too far out we would revert to using a G clamp for alignment. That’s the advantage of having the modules being freestanding as they don’t rely on a large force at the joint to keep alignment 😀

 

As Will and the others here have proved generally the tolerance is sufficient, (and we do actually have a tub of 5mm bolts too but they’ve remained unused so far 😉 ).

[AlanRogers]

The Surrey & Sussex Black Sheep Frem0n30 group, which uses the standard rewritten by Kathy Millatt, has always used M8 bolts in 10mm holes, and that's proven sufficient so far. We have to hand but not yet had to resort to M6.