njee20

I seem to have a 'spare' half Avanti Pendolino. I enjoy printing decals. Wish me luck, I'm going in...

Over thinking it IMO. Are they often unattended? Presumably not… I introduced my son to my (N gauge) trains when he was 3. He's now 6 and has his own Unitrack layout in his room, but he uses all of my stock too, often with my ECoS. He’s not broken anything noteworthy in that time. I’ve broken significantly more! My 3 year old daughter gets involved too, and seems to understand it too.

HRAs are good to see. Another of my 3D prints rendered obsolete 🤣

Yep I’d be up for that. It’ll also show the different approaches if everyone shows how they orientate/support the model.

That's just epic pedantry. In March the clocks go 01.59.59 -> 03.00.00. In October they go 01.59.59 -> 01.00.00. So yes, ok if you prefer the clocks change at the millisecond after 01.59.59.999; I'll call that 2am...

ARX models (IIRC) often have them on eBay. Bit more than you specify, but they’re handmade. there was a 3D printed roof on Shapeways but the proportions weren’t great. I’ve done a 3D printed pantograph well which just needs you to cut a hole in the existing roof. Not perfect admittedly.

It’s at 2am.

Just went to see what the Caledonian Sleeper did, but doesn’t look like that runs on a Saturday night. The departures through Clapham Junction basically seem to ignore it. This train (https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/service/gb-nr:L24102/2023-10-29/detailed) leaves Waterloo at 01.50, but there’s no indication whether that’s the first 01.50, or after the clocks have gone back. There’s no gap in the services, at all.

The idea that there’s a ‘perfect’ angle makes sense if you’re printing cubes. The problem is that inevitably you’ll have other faces at totally different angles, and optimal angles can actually be entirely unhelpful. You’ve now got rectangular pixels too, so the idea of the optimal angle is different in each axis.

5 years to release a repaint on the 350/450, by which time the livery has become obsolescent, is pretty incredible.

Yep, I don’t design for different printers, I just accept that some things will come out better with finer resolution.

Yes, I agree, and I think most printer owners understand that. Let’s be honest there are few items that would genuinely only print on certain printers. Even comparing an OG Mars/Photon to a current model it’ll be crisper, of course, and maybe some detail won’t print on the older printers, but it’s not that bad. Hence my suggestion the OP simply has a photo of an item printed on a certain printer and says “printed on X printer”, leaving people to decide if they’re happy their printer will match that.

You’ve missed the myriad threads to date. The OP has a huge volume of designs, presently sold through Shapeways. He has no interest in actually printing anything (which is fine), so they’ve overwhelmingly untested, but of course within Shapeways stringent parameters this is a fairly safe bet. Now he wants to sell STLs, but essentially wants people to have an assurance that his entirely untested designs will always work. Hence he wants every printer to have a set of standards he can adhere to as an assurance that they’ll work. He has valued his library of STLs at £100k, and is attempting to realise this without learning anything about 3D printing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that, but it makes for frustrating threads.

People are listening, but they’re also telling you that your ideas are wrong/impractical. Are you still planning to distribute these STLs by CD…? To reiterate, to ensure I understand the ‘problem’, you want all printers to commit to a set of standards (wall thickness, wire diameter, unsupported distance), so that you could guarantee your designs would print on any printer? That would entirely kill innovation, because you’d simply have a lowest common denominator. Everything must print on an ancient printer, so why strive to make things better? or do you mean calibration prints? Because they exist in spades. XP2 validation test, AmeraLabs, TableFlip Foundry Cones of Calibration. Slicing software already makes an output printer specific, but there are simply too many variables to be able to include a binary “this will/won’t print”. I have seven different models of printer, and have sold thousands of printed parts. If you’d like to have a quick Zoom call to discuss what you really mean I’m totally happy to do that. As it is clearly there’s just frustration on both sides. You feel you’re not listened to, everyone else feels like they’re banging their head against a brick wall because you appear to have such a fundamental lack of understanding of what is actually entailed. Bit generous, the OP has designs which meet Shapeways’ design parameters, but he’s not actually tested them. In the absence of any desire to do so I can see why a global set of standards would be appealing, but of course it’s just wholly impractical.

I also think you’re trying to boil the ocean here. If you say “this has been printed on a *insert printer*” and have photos of that people will infer what they need to. Some may be prepared to try even if it looks like it may not work on their printer (eg you say it’s designed for/tested on resin and they have FDM). Because of your abject refusal to actually do that, you’re instead expecting every printer manufacturer to develop software to confirm whether your designs would work? Obviously that’s mental, and wholly unachievable. I’m afraid you seem not to understand the people you are trying to sell to, nor the market you are trying to enter.

You keep posting these threads. What is it that your to achieve? Are you still trying to justify why you think your designs are worth tens of thousands? Why are you trying to specify how an industry works, whilst at the same time saying you have no interest in actually understanding it? There are literally dozens of validation tests out there to help people optimise their printers. It’s idiocy to suggest that you could ever specify specific parameters that every printer must adhere to. The only conceivable thing you could do is specify if something is designed for FDM or resin, but until you actually print anything and learn about printing then your ‘guidance’ is completely useless. Given you won’t do this don’t expect an industry to accommodate you.

Given he mentions Hornby we can assume OO. The ones to avoid are the very old Hornby mk3s, which had 7 windows instead of 8. they just look wrong too, both coaches are 23m long IRL, so scale to just over 300mm. All the mk4s have been appropriate length. The early ones aren’t the best, but aren’t totally awful either. Lima did Merlin mk3s yes, I’m not sure they were ever redone under Hornby. I’ve a very vague recollection they didn’t do the full set, but I may be thinking of the Farish N gauge ones.

Definitely applies to N. The set track points are 9" radius, and I'd avoid them where possible.

Look forward to seeing your Cumbrian extension Dave, that 92 on the bullets leaning into the curve looks superb, and I’m sure you’ll do it justice!

That’s nothing new, Hamilton sewed up multiple championships with several races to go. It’s not like the championship battle has been the most interesting thing this year. Max hardly even gets shown on TV as he disappears off into the distance! the sprint race was quite ‘lively’, hoping that translates to action in the race. The amount of sand off line and lots of gravel traps appears to make for some rather brave overtakes!

Here you go: https://youtube.com/@3ddrawingformodelrailways?si=El6PIHW7jwgLRnwC Hard to find as it mentions neither CAD nor 3D printing!

That couldn't make less sense. If they mandated you had to use a specific Royal Mail service then maybe you'd vaguely sort of almost be onto something. But they don't. So it's absurd. They're very upfront the fees are on the final price, including postage. This is not of questionable legality. I've seen you say it in a few threads, that you don't like it doesn't make it 'questionable'.

Why is it of questionable legality to charge fees on postage? You may not like it, but it’s totally reasonable. EBay is still vastly cheaper than a traditional auction house.

I don’t believe there is any CAD software which won’t allow scaling. Any designer refusing to scale items is purely for the reasons you mentioned - parts either becoming too small and or unnecessarily coarse. edit: I would be supportive of someone refusing to scale something though - I would never just hit rescale on anything beyond a very basic scenic model, because I think the results are poor unless you’re talking European N to uk N or similar, ie negligible difference. A piece of rolling stock that makes a good N gauge model will not scale instantly to OO without work IMO.

4 for me. I’m not a huge fan of interior lighting (tail lights are nice though) and I’d have sooner saved a couple of quid on the price of a coach. DCC operation isn’t faultless - they still light up when track power is lost. So on powering the layout up or if you get a short you have to go and turn off all the errant tail lights. I’ve got 15 running behind a pair of 92s now. Just one to add. They’re not quick, but it’s on an oval of Unitrack small enough they’re about 90% of the way around, so a fair challenge with drag in the curves. I’ve removed the lighting pickups on all bar the last coach. I’m tempted to dismantle them and actually remove the weights from inside, but that is clearly harder to reverse should I decide to simply get rid of them instead! Overall I remain pretty disappointed I must say.