Ruston LBT components

[Fen End Pit]

I've been thinking about making a Ruston LBT in 16mm scale. The body work will be in laser cut plastic but I have thought about making the engine block and other components by 3-D printing. Give access to a copy of Solidedge through my employer I have drawn up the engine, gearbox and buffer components. I tried to print out the buffers on and the engine on a Replicator 2 in Makespace this afternoon but had no luck. Trying to print this out in ABS is probably beyond the reach of the replicator. I'd love to try on a B9 Creator, perhaps I can persuade Makespace to buy one.

 

I guess my option now is to try Shapeways, unless anyone has any other options. Do you think WSF will do this, the base of the engine is about 30mm square and the buffer beam is 48mm x 8 mm x 20mm

 

 

 

thanks for any advice..

 

David

[Marbelup]

Hello David

 

I have access to a Makerbot Replicator 1 (dual head) and I think it would do a reasonable job of these parts. In what way did your test prints "fail"? There might be some issue re supports, especially for the engine, but they would not be insurmountable. Lately, I have been getting good results from filament which is a blend of PLA and PHA which warps a lot less than PLA on its own, or ABS.

 

My material of choice for quality prints is Prime Gray from i.Materialise. The surface is much smoother than WSF and it handles curved surfaces well if oriented optimally. (i.Materialise will allow the purchaser to request a desired orientation although they don't guarantee to print in the requested orientation, they do so most of the time.). The engine block would have some visible stepping as there is no orientation which would suit all the curved surfaces.

[Fen End Pit]

Thanks for that advice Richard

 

I had a couple of issues with the Makerbot, firstly one of the nozzles got blocked and I found that the head was happily doing nothing. I was having more luck using the unblocked head and then the base of the model decided to seperate from the bed (printing using ABS, bed said it was heated to ~110 degrees.

 

I'll probably have another go when I'm in our hackspace with some people who are more experienced with the makerbot around.

 

David

[Marbelup]

Hi David

 

Using a raft helps to secure the print to the bed, as does cleaning the bed with meths prior to each print.  If the standard raft is not enough, you can add extra dummy objects around the main object to expand the area of the raft.  I often use the 20 mm x 20 mm x 10 mm calibration shape supplied with Makerware (under File - Examples) for this, but scale it to 20-25% of original size, making several copies and moving them to near the edges of the printed object.