Blefuscu

I meant a spare window, as I had already varnished everything I'd printed. That said - I discovered thus morning that the varnish is not bonding very well to the resin. It's fairly easy to peel it off! So, I've stripped back a set of windows and I'm going to see how far I can improve the finish mechanically before I consider what to do next. I'm down to 2500 with wet paper and they look like sea glass. (The ones on the left of the picture have 3 layers of varnish)

Lots of good advice here. I would add that if you are farming that out to professional SLS printing then they should support and clean the model, and as long as it meets their design criteria it should be fine. I used to use https://jlcpcb.com/ for my prints before I had a printer.

I have to say I do like the old fashioned way... but I think the printed ones would come up lovely with a wash and a drybrush. In either case I had not seen OpenSCAD before. That's really exciting and I can't wait to have a play with it at some point. I generally do everything in Blender and would probably have tried this with a displacement map and a picture of some coal. Not random as such, but maybe you can rotate/scale/translate the image for each bed of coal. A common use of displacement maps for modelling textures which you may well have seen is those cylindrical texture rollers. I saw a neat tutorial for making 'skull bases' for Warhammer miniatures this way. (Not that I am advocating you fill your trucks with skulls, but the principal is the same as a sort of hybrid digital/modelling approach.)

I do have a bit of Pledge around, if I had a spare one I'd give it a quick dip... but I've been using Vallejo polturethane acrylic gloss with their airbrush thinner. I did do a few with Createx UVLS clear but it didn't seem as effective on the first pass. I did wonder abotu using the resin itself. It's very low visocity (for a UV resin at least). Would save me the trouble of washing it!

That's kind of how I prime my printed models. I think a lot of the car people are using enamels/laquers but I use acrylics and the paints/varnishes don't always respond as well to sanding in my experience. Theoritically, I would sand/polish the resin itself... but, as I mentioned, that sounds like an awful job. I can see the inside of those curved window pieces being a total nightmare and would probably end up pinging them across the room. When I tried a RERF print the flat blocks printed with really good clarity, so I suspect most, if not all, of the diffusion is on the surface. When the varnish is wet they do look tantalizingly clear... for a while. Clarity aside, I like how the printed windows can be mounted flush to the window frame - or close enough - so I'm weighting up how long it would take me to cut and fit acetate that accurately.

Because the roof section is thicker than the walls I suspected it had more pull when shrinking. It turn, perhaps this was the reason for the walls bowing out. The lateral pins I placed between the edges of the walls were to try and mitigate this. I don't know if it really helped much but it didn't hurt to try. I wasn't very scientific, as I also had to change resins at that point (from standard to ABS-like). It may be that i was overcuring the standard resin during printing, which I generally do to some extend to stop the supports ripping off. If I was going print more of these, those are the sort of tests I would start running.

Thats as close as I can get with it still looking great. In hand, there are a few flaws... on the track though it will be good enough! For me it's the hassle of switching resin that I find the biggest drag! I'll be printing clear things for a while now. Here's a test fit of the resin windows on one of the 'spare' bodies. They come out frosted. Successive layers of gloss varnish appears to clear them to some extent, as per the Siyaratech info, but they still look a bit murky. I wonder if I should attempt to polish them first but thats going to be a fiddly job... Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the sirayatech clear. It's the 'simple'/ water based one. I expect the craft version is even better.

Just a mini update before the New Year... It looks much better on the bench than in the photo and I'm really happy with this. I just wonder if I should 'stick or twist' with the weathering The Railtec transfers are great. However, I forgot I needed two sheets of numbers and had to make a '009' from the class 09 transfers. I'm going to have a crack at 3d printing some windows. Having recently seen some good results with clear resin on Instagram, really crystal clear, so I decided to trust the internet and ordered a kilo of Siraya Tech's 'simple' clear. (I wonder if I should have ordered 'craft' but the low-odour was a factor there.) I expect it will need some finishing but I hope it works, as I have rather a lot of it now. To improve the surface finish I'm going to back to Prusaslicer... I've just printed some Daleks for a friend using their 'rotate for best surface finish' and they looked really good. Still at 0.05 too... as they were printing in our kitchen and 0.02 was going to be 4hr longer. I am MUCH more aware of shrinkage and warping now though - and noticed the all the bases needed rubbing down to get them flat even though the shape of the model looked fine. I think skirts and sprues might be the answer to give the shrinkage some pull in the opposite direction. Room temperature and cure times are supposely a factor during forming... but at some point surely the material needs to be fully cured and will want to shrink to the full extent of it's shrinkiness? I'm just thinking of fibreglassing or casting in polyester or wax where it's just inevitable.

Yes, there's quite a bit of wargaming on there - I've downloaded a lot more than I have had time to print, let alone paint. I realise there is going to be limited use for a body without a chassis but I felt I might as well put the listing out now as it maybe of use of other scales. That's really good quality. I wish I had more time to experiment - I didn't think to try adjusting the layer height. I can see the shrinkage in the bottom left corner, and perhaps a little on the right there. It's just the corners though? (ie the edge is true) The rivets don't look too far out of line though, and fi that was the case I would take the pragmatic approach and fill the gap. One of my deltic is a complete 'cut and shut' job from the ends of two failed prints - it might not be one for macro photography but I think it will be OK at a practical viewing distance. Point me in the direction of your thread if I miss it. I think it's early days indeed. I haven't seen much work in other eras while I have had my head down working on this, but I do love earlier eras too. Soon, I'm sure there will be a pretty comprehensive range of models across all eras and scales - and the printers are getting better and easier to use all the time. Once I've made some headway in this area, I'm staying corporate blue, but heading up to Flitwick, near Bedford, to have a go at 45's and 127 DMU's... and some of the local buses. I've just looked at the diesel allocation in Stratford depot and that looks amazing in itself. Thanks, it's still only blue at the moment. I gave it a another light rub down and then some more blue today. I was hoping to start weathering it but a giant christmas jigsaw puzzle has appeared - so that's me out of action for a while. I shall emerge in a few days, have a good christmas!

I'm using cults3d at the moment. It's ok, I guess. They take quite a bit of commission, and hold on to your money for 30 days. Then it is released to Payoneer, who have a minimum payout of £50. I had an Etsy shop for a while, and would sell prints, but I found them worse to deal with and somehow even lost money on some sales. I soon released that if I want to scale up my printing to a point where it could become profitable I wouldn't have any time to design anything. I've uploaded it here; https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/class-55-deltic-tt120-rescaleable-to-2mm-3mm-n-ho-oo-etc I really struggle with pricing. Around £20 felt fair to me... Mine too... I don't expect to save much making loco's given the source of my parts, (need to work on that!), but I think a really decent amount of rolling stock will be much cheaper. I'll make a note of those magic angles... I think a few print contours are OK though as part of the model making process, as long as it doesn't erode detail, but there's no point making it harder for myself either. I might make a 313 build thread when I've made some more progress. This has been really helpful, (and less of a solitary endeavour). I don't know the 313s as well as the 319's that replaced them, my parents are in Flitwick on the other end of the Bedford - Brighton Thameslink line, but it was sad to see them go. Since I began my research I spare them a thought every time I walk over Hornsey station and see the lines of 717s / 378s

Thanks - I will definitely try that. Edit --------------------------------------------------------------- I tried it, and it was remarkably effective! Thanks again.

I left some of those supports on while curing the model. When I compared this print to the standard resin prints I noticed, to my horror, that the sides had blown out slightly. I think it must have been during the final cure. The roof is thicker than the walls, so maybe it pulled the walls out of shape. The grey ones are still good enough for trackside static features I guess.

A better view of the supports on the cross braces...

I woke up to quite a nice print this morning. Here are the results at 45 degrees. My wobbly one, was about 12 degrees. That seems to concur with your experimental results. I think the supports are sensible... it was just interesting how the additional 6 cross members changed the support layout. It's only a few supports on the outside of the body, but none inside now - which is great because they were a pain to clean and remove. I still left the buffers on, but I think it will be ok. I'm long past expecting to freely whip off the supports like velcro! It will be a surgical operation- clipping then away from the model and filing back, like a plastic kit. I'm going to stop tinkering and try and finish one of these now. I've got some of the RailMatch acrylics ready for the blue and yellow. I think the final adjustments were worthwhile though. I feel pretty confident selling this an an stl now. I'm a little in two minds about charging for the files... There's a lot to gain by allowing others to share, work on, and improve a model. Doing stuff on my own is painfully slow sometimes. The flip side is that I haven't got any budget for this project... so, if she's ever going to have any wheels, or track for that matter, I'll need to put my ideology on hold. I know what you mean about distraction. I've already made a significant start on the 313. The rest of the list is just folders of images and drawings. I would love to see a print of that 20 when it's ready though, it's looking great 'on screen'.

Thanks for that - that's really useful to know. Yes, but that plays in our favour to some extent, as I find all the detail can hide a join (and all the contour lines) if you can find a path around it I have backtracked a little since my last post. Today I have... reinforced the borders of the model, added some temporary lateral supports, cleaned the FEP bed and am now printing a model really slowly and gently at 45 degrees with a bit of left over abs-like. It looks OK so far, 3hrs to go. Interestingly, since adding the lateral support, Anycubic's slicer wants to support the cross beams - and doesn't fill the model with supports... but it wants to put more supports outside the body, which I'm less happy about. So the surface finish should be improved... but there will be some scarring here and there. That said, while this has been printing I ran a bit of plastic putty over the contour marks, rubbed it down, and threw a coat of primer over them. They are looking really quite good now, probably not worth another photo - they are still just grey - but good enough than I'm a little excited about painting them blue. On balance... I think I've improved the model today, but I would have got away with it. I will certainly have more deltics than I intended by the time I've finished. In addition to Alycidon, I've also printed nameplates for Pinza, Meld and Nimbus. I'm going to need some static bogies for the others.... and a DMU shed. That research looks interesting. I should look into print alignment in more depth, it could save me a lot of filling and sanding. What was the result of the class 16 roof test? There's nothing like resin for fixing resin. I used to cast in polyurethanes/polyesters and any dribbles left in the pot after a pour would fix up all the holes in the last batch. I have repaired completely broken parts too... but you need to support them in the curer, while it is spinning!! Maybe I need a portable UV light for that.

I printed mine horizontally, with 'medium' supports to allieviate warping. It's not ideal, but I had some considerable warpage when I tried to print it at an angle... I'm not entirely sure if it was the model or the printer, but didn't want to risk it. I've seen this effect before on my prints that are normally ok. However, this time I know I'm asking for trouble because - until I have an idea what my chassis will look like - there's no lateral internal structure between the sides. At the least I'm thinking of putting a thicker rim along the bottom edge with temporary cross bracing to be clipped off post printing. I did think about parting the model. One happy accident of printing horizontally was no support scaring on either end, the downside is some contour marks on the roof. The vents are hiding a lot of that though, so I'm still weighing up separating the roof in future. I'll see how the painting goes before I make that call. I'm keeping a bit of a snag list as I build these... and I guess this thread is partly a record of that. I ruled out parting the ends because I couldn't see an obvious point to hide the join. I consider the nose quite a critical area! For my coaches and EMU's, I'll probably go with a seperate roof, and maybe sides/ends, and I'd be more generous with wall thickness. I see aeither path involving some model making / scratch building but it's only part of the fun. I sometimes fill chips with a dap of resin on a cocktail stick before curing. Or to glue parts I've hamfisted broken . That's a good point though, the buffers will probably get broken at some point. I'll leave them on for now, but i'll export a 'spare buffer' stl. Brass buffers are also very tempting. Thanks! The 2mm one has had me looking thoughtfully at the 2mm association parts list. If I see a 2nd hand co-co chassis I might go for it, but, despite the strong urge to build my own trackwork, I have the immortal words of Gold 5 in my ears; "We're too close. Stay on target" Sadly my russian doll isn't getting any bigger. While I'm printing them horizontally I can't fit the 3mm deltic doll on the print bed. I like the idea though.

I can see the sense of printing the buffers separately. Whilst I think I got away with it, leaving them on, it was pretty delicate work to cut away the supports there. I left my grey resin in the vat for too long and I think the white pigment has settled out on the FEP. I loath emptying that thing, so I stuck it out by increasing the bottom layer times and lowering the z speed. I'm getting away with it, mostly, but small parts are a gamble. For my wipers, nameplates and horns I did a whole sheet of them just to be sure I'd have enough. Last night I tried a 2mm print at 1:152 and it performed well - (not that I'm hedging my bets or anything). It retained far more detail than i expected, although the wall thickness is getting a bit thin. (0.6.. 0.4mm) I really like it...

Some initial results. I have had a few issues, but I think I'll get three decent models out of this batch when I'm done cleaning them up. I had a lot of warping on the first model. After reorientation, and increased support, I fixed that. However, I was then plagued with models lifting off the bed... essentially, I think my bed is level, but my FEP film has had it. I did get two good prints out of it by the end of the day though.

I'm keeping an open mind regarding the chassis. Designing a new thing might be easier than adapting an existing thing... I will have to wait and see for now. I assumed the 37 wouldn't be far down their list. The 47 and 32 will be nice too. Do we have any idea of when phase two might happen? On the one hand, I'm kind of tempted to ignore there schedules and make my own as STLs will be generally useful... but on the other hand, if I have to wait for the Hornby models for my bogies anyway it does make me wonder if the thing is worth doing.

Yes, I've got it relatively easy with the 55... I'm not even in a rush for the early version. By taking a hands on approach it can be easily achieved by cutting bits off and cutting holes into the late one. I'm also concerned that, when I finally see a chassis for the 55, there will be a bit of work to carry out adapting the interior of the model to the chassis and I don't really want to have to replicate that across other versions. Other classes present more of a problem yes. I looked at the 31, but it's a way down my list. I will probably try the 47 first - which also has a page of end versions in the mainline book. I think in such cases I will try and focus my ambitions to what was around on the ECML in late seventies/ early eighties and only think about extra versions when I have something that's 'good enough'. Oh, I have a few pairs of goggles around. Everytime a cutting disc decides to liberate itself from the dremel I feel moments like that.

Fun indeed! If I have a good audiobook on, it's quite therapeutic. I'm going to keep the file versioning quite simple, as it can escalate fast. In my mind I'm settled on just this 1982 version, and the earlier (or preservation) variant with no EHT jumper, and the headcode box, in case I ever want a green one. I'm only exporting STLs in TT120 scale initially, as that's what I've been working in, and will ultimately print it in. It would be fine scaling it up a bit for 3mm... anything else would need testing out first. Every time my son breaks an E string I am gifted a length of 0.2mm hard steel wire, I think it's mechanically identical to piano wire in that it will try and take out your eyes as you work on it... but I have other gauges lying around, and some soft stuff too.

Yes, I'm looking forward to some 'proper' modelling! Thanks - I'll make a note of Ninja Ripper. Yes, that's what I meant about needing to be rebuilt. It's amazing what they can do with half a dozen vertices and a normal map. Although a lot of my initial components were seperate, and now I'm deep into boolean clean-ups on that journey to a single manifold hull. Nothing of interest happening here for a few hours/days... While I'm massaging vertices I'll probably do an earlier version with route codes and no EHT jumper... although I might not use it myself. All those wires at the front are about 0.3mm in diameter - so I'm thinking about cutting those in as holes, for to use actually wire.

Which software did you use? I built a model from a game rip for a model truck was doing in 1/14... I haven't done any rips myself, but I pulled it out of a game mod. Have you tried preparing one for print? In my limited experience, the results were pretty good, and far from rough, but it took a lot of work. The bodywork tends to be (mostly) ok after a subdivision surface mod, but every detail needs rebuilding... that felt a bit ardious. I'm also planning to sell this stl on cults3d, and possibly sell some prints, and I'd really prefer to do that with a clear conscience... although, I'm sure there are a lot of gamerips and 3D scans on there. It definitely does feel more fun and rewarding to work from photos and drawings, if frustrating at times. While I was addressing the shape of sides I seem to have lost 1mm in height working from the front elevation! Otherwise, this next image was immensly satisfying - I offered up Hornby's 50 bogies against my model and the diagram from the Mainline book. It shows the expected 6mm difference in wheelbase, and is otherwise very encouraging. So, I have stopped thinking about building my own bogies from Piko parts - at least for now. I haven't tried Phrozen Aqua... I think my standard grey was on sale, because looking at the prices now, I find them quite alarming. I am thinking about a clear resin next after problems with pigment settling out, and probably an 'abs-like'. My choice will be largely dictated by cost though.

That's interesting... I have yet to try printing gears. I'm using Anycubic's standard resin at the moment, which I don't think would be appropriate. I've been looking at wheels this afternoon and the supply seems a little patchy. However, Piko seem to have a decent spares service so even if the BR119 isn't a suitable donor for bogies, or chassis... all the geared axles, worm gears and driveshafts seem to be available. There's a nice exploded diagram here; file:///C:/Users/emerg/Downloads/40264_ba_47346_7012_modifiziert.pdf The geared bogie, part 47340-33, seems to include wheels... I am thinking about attempting to reverse enginneer a longer version of that, or I design a 'something else' just to accommodate the 'Wheelset w gear' and worm gear. It's just a thought though...

Ha ha - that's a serious consideration. Given my budget, it won't be the only static model in the sidings either. Lack of spares or any second hand market is a problem. It pains me to be dissecting new models. I might have another look at 12mm gauge 3mm kits for ideas.