Chris Higgs

yeah, and the pilgrim trail from London to that other place is named The St Alban's trail. What gives?

Not understanding this discussion. Surely it says, "Knight &Co, Colliers" Not that there are that many pits in St Albans. Perhaps you meant that obscure Yorkshire village, St Alban's Chris

I don't think we can imagine all 'RCH 5-plank' wagons were of one design (although Peco would probably like us to think so). For example, the 4mm Parkside kit has wooden end stantchions and ironwork on the inside. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/133508923263 and the Cambrian kit for a china-clay version has end doors https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/323259066946 I can remember these running through Cheltenham behind a BR Western en-route between Cornwall and Staffordshire. Chris

There is no doubt the solebars also make any 3D printed body more robust. To be honest, the Association W-irons are a bit chunky for pre-group designs. I was very surprised at just how delicate LNWR ones were (particularly the early designs) in comparison, when I designed the LNWR wagon underframes. Chris

I have not concluded whether printing the solebars with the wagon or not is the best way. But the best part of 3D-printing and its ability to produce things one at a time is that you can provide both options and allow people to choose which they prefer. Chris

I did 0.5mm sides and ends on my LNWR and LYR open wagons, they seem to work fine and have not warped at all in the couple of years I have had the bodies. Chris

Yes, 2-361. Bulit as DC2 -both brake levers at the same end which kept them out of the way of the muck when they tipped the china clay out. Chris

If the software is free, but I have to purchase a new computer to run it, then it's not really free, is it? Gonna stick with TurboCAD, which is still as quick as a spring chicken on my machine. Chris

I'm sure Fusion 360 can do 2D-CAD fine. And it can store parts and use parameters, both of which could be handy. My main issue with it is that on my aged (but high quality) personal laptop it runs as slow as sin. It takes an age to start. Chris

I was looking (I don't know where or when) at a modern FB switch and it had a chamfer on the top edge. The don't have to be knife-edge at the bottom. Chris

Perhaps another thing to mention is that the thinner the material you use, the finer the half-etch detail you can produce as it will be eaten away less by undercut. Chris

I use 0.12mm as well. Smaller than that ad they tend not to come out reliably. Never tried to measure one, but I suspect they actually are not that thick when etched. Rivets is another area where you go as small as you dare. But if you want really thin plank gaps or rivets, then 3D-print them. Chris

I agree, stainless is for special circumstances where nickel silver is too soft - thin material or thin detail items. 4 thou stainless is more robust than 10 thou nickel-silver is. I'd tend to glue rather than solder it. Chris

TurboCAD doesn't. Instead if you click on an item you can edit its properties precisely in a set of edit boxes in an action bar. My day job for the last three years has been to design touch-screen UI software for machine tools, mills and lathes (large ones that typically fill a whole room). We have the same approach there. Action bars or indeed whole tabs with the parameters laid out. We even have a CAD module that is entirely touch operated, no keyboard or mouse. Chris

Yes, that's pretty much it. Or at least, let's say I complete the various component designs that way, then fill them in, typically in a 'filling-in' session. Laying them out onto e.g. a complete wagon chassis and adding the tabs and surround gets done next. And then finally laying out a set of designs onto a sheet to be etched. As Jim observed, that can be an awful lot of them in 2mm. Of course, that's the theory. It becomes iterative once you notice some mistake you made, or are struck by a better idea. Chris

OK, these are the layers I use, inspired by David. These three are used to draw the outline(edges) of the parts, they are never directly used on the etching artwork: Outline_Both Outline_Front Outline_Rear From these the filled parts are produced: Surface_Front Surface_Rear I draw the tabs, the framing and the text separately: Tabs Framing etch from front (the text) In addition, there is a layer where you can just doodle, draw things like distances, wheel sizes, motor positions etc: to check clearances. Construction and another for descriptions for instructions: Description Why so complicated? well it gives me flexibility. It really is easier for me to see the parts initially as outlines, rather than fills. And then to distinguish what is really parts of the model, rather than the surrounds. And I can use the same artwork to produce diagrams for instructions, for example here: http://2mm.org.uk/products/instruction_sheets/pdf4-742_drwg.pdf This is just produced with Surface_Front , Surface_Rear and Construction switched off (and the layers recoloured). Here is an example of why it's good to draw your stuff with separate components - you can lay them out to see whether they all fit (and explain the parts of valve gear) (that's layers outline_both, outline_front and description - I forgot to turn tabs off) Chris

That is a nice idea with the printer, but somehow I cannot imagine getting an A3 metal sheet in a printer and getting both sides printed in exact registration for the kind of etching that will produce anyway complicated. So I suspect the industry will be sticking with films for the forseeable future. Chris

You can use OpenSCAD for 2D etching stuff too, I don't but I think Alan Cox has. Chris

I tend to fear the latter view, having had similar experiences in another field with open-source software that stopped being so in a small way, but breaking a whole business model. We ended up implementing the whole feature ourselves. It only takes removal of one key feature from a free version to render it unusable for a certain set of customers. And given the paid price of Fusion360 is far from peanuts, that is a big issue. I use OpenSCAD for 3D work, which is another approach altogether, basicially a style of programming langauge. and as you can download all the C++ code that comprises the program, I am able to even add a features to it if I want! Chris

3D is a different matter, and probably should not be conflated with etching. I have not found the 3D functionality of classic CAD programs like AutoCAD and TurboCAD to be all that hot, and would definitely think about using programs that specialise in 3D, like Blender or Rhino (or others). As to the 3D printer/Proxxon mill/Watchmaker's lathe debate, I went for all three, albeit several years apart! None get anywhere near as much use as my 'full-sized' pillar drill and Chinese lathe though, as they are all way too small and puny to fix stuff around the house. Chris

I will probably surprise no one (including Jim) that my experiences with PEC and PPD are quite different than his. Like him I use a 'proper' CAD program, in my case TurboCAD, which to me has a user interface more akin to a standard Microsoft windows program than AutoCAD, which was around long before Windows and still shows the evidence of its command line interface origins, having said that they have added a lot of Windows functionality. However, if you fancy turning your amateur efforts into a possible future career in CAD, AutoCAD is the one to go for because it is what the pros use. Which is why it costs an arm and a leg. If you get a free one offered, snap it up. David Eveleigh introduced me to CAD design (he uses AutoCAD), and I still use the system of layers he taught me with a few tweaks of my own. It has served me well. I cannot get on very well with the more graphic design type packages, but it probably is down to your background and how you brain is wired. I break a single drawing e.g. a loco chassis into a lot of components which I can then position and/or repeat. I draw each item in its own file and then collate them onto the production sheets. But I then turn them into front and rear PDFs myself, which I then converted to eps files. I send these to the etcher so they have no interpretation of layers and the like to do. And I can grahically check the sheets before I ever send them, as they are already at the final stage. Nor are there issues with incompatible format of CAD files. Perhaps that is where our experiences differ. PEC have etched over 150 different designs for me over 15+ years, with a total of around 1500 sheets produced (and counting). There have of course been a few quality issues i that time, but not that many. The few sheets I sent to PPD in the same manner produced complaints that they were poor resolution, and things were drawn way to thin to etch successfully. Sent the same to PEC, they etched it fine. This is probably down to technical differences in the way the two etch (dip versus spraying), but anyway with PEC there is no need to account for any etching undercut ( at least on 10 thou material) which is a great blessing, I just draw the items at the size I want them. The few sheets I did do with PPD were of variable end quality, with a couple coming back with holes in half-etched areas. PEC use sheet material, whereas PPD use rolled, which I understand can cause some issues. The outlay with PEC for a single sheet is significantly higher, they will do artwork for A4 size, however they double it up to produce an A3 sheet. And their artwork costs quite a bit more. Against this each sheet costs about half. The crossover point I think is around 4 sheets, higher than that and PEC works out cheaper. Turnaround is not that quick, varies between 1 and 3 months at the extremes. That probably tells you how popular they are with their clients. I would concur with drawing something simple to start with. But if you plan to get someone else to put it on their sheet, find out how they draw, and do it the same. It is not plug and play to insert your design into someone else's sheet. Even when David E and I were using in essence the same drawing system, it took a bit of tweaking to put one of his designs onto a sheet of mine. Chris

Dapol did make a BY, although googling it you would struggle to prove it. Looks like it will be difficult to find one now. Chris

On some of my etched designs I made each cylinder fold into a U shape, which then by use of slots it slides onto the frame and so (at least in theory) does not need any additional fixing and can be slid out of the frames again when needed. In practice I suspect many would opt for an extra fixing using a bolt. Chris

The 7mm is intended for 10thou etched frames, and if you wish can easily be reduced in width using a file or even quicker a bench grinder! Don't forget a set of axle bearings, you'll need those with the thin etched frames. Chris

Looks like building workbenches is a hobby in itself. Chris