Alan_LSWR

Always difficult to judge colours when viewing on a screen (for instance I have brightness right down and contrast high to ease the strain on my eyes). But those test arches look very good to me. There is a fair amount of black and I think in reality much brickwork would be stained with soot as the Victorians burnt copious amounts of coal. But maybe more yellow (umber?) as I recall London brick is made with yellow clay. I often think many models look to pristine! From memory (and memory can play tricks), I recall there was a lot of grime about when I was a child in the 50s. Also, I think many models have too much relief to the bricks. Whilst sometimes the mortar can be very set back, I think most times they are almost flush with the surface of the brick and even a slight setback would hardly be noticed at 1:76 scale. I've never liked those embossed plastic brick sheets for this reason.

See this post of mine for photos of my home built equipment - it's an adapted bread bin!

Many thanks Graham. That's very helpful. Presumably that firmware upgrade was specific to your problem as their website only has single file firmware upgrades https://www.anycubic.com/blogs/videos/videosall-you-need-to-know-about-photon Actually, there are 2 firmware files listed: [Newest]Photon firmware V5.0.2 (Photon Upgraded Only) Photon firmware V4.2.19 I see a post on Reddit says " "Photon upgraded" (otherwise known as "Fauxton")." and later says that's a new version of the motherboard. As I bought mine in Mar 2019 I must have the original. PS Great you are up and running and good to see Anycubic giving support. Regards, Alan

Hi Graham. So how did you upgrade the firmware if it cannot be done using the USB port? Or have I misunderstood something! Alan

Question has been asked numerous times. Try searching. I found this as an example posted December 18, 2018:

I made a fume unit (see photo) which the 3D printer sits. It is used in the utility room and I can nip outdoors to clean in IPA (the wheelie bins are at a useful height!). I wear a respirator, gloves, goggles and apron. The fan unit has a variable speed fan (controller is hidden behind the duct). The fume box is a mix of MFD (lower parts) and plywood (upper parts) and acrylic sheet. It actually folds fairly flat for storage. It has a LED lamp and adjustable feet. It is lined with Formica laminated sheet which I found hard to find and expensive but fortunately stumbled on a gumtree advert at a £1 a sheet just 50 miles away. I wanted it to be able to contain any spills. It was built to double up as a spray booth, hence the filter but the fan is not suitable for flammable paints or for cleaning with IPA. Non flammable fans cost an arm and a leg. The silver box is a bread bin lined with UV LEDs controlled by a timer for curing. I have my "network room" in the adjacent garage with a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) so I brought a cable through the wall to a 6 gang sockets so I can guard against power spikes and power failures while printing. [the black and yellow switches are nothing to do with all this - they are for the solar panels] I can also take the fan unit, ducts and the board covering the window opening to my modelling room for when I do a lot of soldering.

Thanks for mentioning that Tom. I did a quick google for a UK stockist. Amazon UK list it as currently unavailable. I found a Dutch site https://www.fepshop.com/shop/accessories/cleaning/monocure-3d-resinaway/ but couldn't see delivery prices - only they use DHL. Then I found this Photocentric Resin Cleaner with an almost identical claims and it comes in 1L at £24 inc. vat and shipping at £7 or £8. https://3dgbire.com/products/photocentric-resin-cleaner-1lr?variant=12832668287029 Next size up id 5L at £114 and probably no free delivery as ex vat is under £100. They state "You can also use Photocentric Resin Cleaner in an ultrasonic cleaner to increase its lifetime for multiple uses without the need for filtering or refilling" which is a useful attribute. This stuff might be easier to dispose of as well ----- no! Just read H&S data sheet and it says "Transfer to a suitable container and arrange for collection by specialised disposal company". I guess maybe the same for IPA. So far I've left used IPA to evaporate outdoor but it takes ages.

Hmm. User name of linmeiyun1758 and only sold 10 items. No business address given and seller says he is based in the UK rather than a specific town. Ebay is flooded with Chinese sellers who give a generic UK location (sometimes London) but are based in China. I understand they employ a student or similar to post it from the UK but as the package often shows, there is a Royal Mail pre-paid label on one side and a Chinese export label on the other. Sometimes delivery can be within a week but sometimes the items never turn up or turn up after months. Also, Royal Mail would not accept Isopropyl Alcohol and I doubt airlines will take it. So it's a slow boat from China and then courier - all for £12? You can get 50 listings all for the same item - same pictures and same text and just the title changes with some random characters at the end. Business names sometimes vary I think these are all computer generated. I now try to find real UK sellers but it's getting a bit of finding a needle in a haystack, especially if one sorts on price low to high. Unfortunately, some items can be extremely difficult to find from UK sellers, probably all driven out of the market. Better stop, this is getting to be a rant!

Having a backdrop of real trees and natural daylight really enhances the scene and shows your great work to good effect.

You have the same 3D printer as I have. I found thin horizontal items tended to curve, maybe due to the force of the spatula when removing the items off the plate when the printed items are still soft. Vertical prints were much better. Many suggest 45 degrees to stop the impact of suction creating distortion as the plate lifts up and back down between layers. It seems you have your 3D printer in a domestic setting. I hope you are aware that 3D resin is highly toxic. I made a container tray lined with laminated sheet. I also have an air extractor system. Having said that, I have now purchased (but not yet used) some of Anycubic's plant based non-toxic eco resin. Must say you are making very good progress and producing good stuff at a rate of knots.

As Compound2632, I've often stared at the platform facing walls, either from another platform or a train. I particularly note that at Whitchurch (ex LSWR) where there is a steep ramp down from the platform to either end of the station building with a surrounding retaining wall. My guess is the station booking office exit to the platforms must have been raised. Photo here (geograph, © Copyright Chris Talbot, CCL) It opened 3 July 1854 and is a typical Tite building in style. As a child I recall seeing at the old Southampton station a wooden ramp in the booking hall up to the platform. At Gosport which I'm modelling the platform slopes down from the platform edge to the station buildings with platform extensions at a higher level. The LSWR had a reputation for low platforms and I recalling reading once that the BoT told them (c1900?) to raise them. An early painting of Gosport (1841) shows very low platforms, in fact Queen Victoria seems to be walking on air as she alights in 1845! Note: picture is reversed - should have carriage on the left. The picture shows Prince Albert in the carriage doorway and King Louis Philippe is helping the Queen alight. Outside a huge storm was blowing and it was decided that the King could not return to France by his boat moored in the harbour. By the evening the King was restless to get home in case another revolution was brewing. The LSWR were told to provide an engine to take him back to London. He left Gosport at 7:45pm and arrived at Nine Elms at 10:30pm. His party crossed London to New Cross station where a huge fire was raging. The King reached Dover at 02:30am. Reading the historic accounts it's incredible that so many dignities and troops met the King at short notice on his journey including directors of the railways and mayors of the London and Dover. I doubt the railway companies today would pull out the stops and achieve such timings. On the inward journey a week earlier the King asked for his congratulations to be passed to the engine driver for an outstanding performance from such a small engine! It would be another 2 years before the Paris to Le Havre railway would be fully open. Full account here London Illustrated News 19 Oct 1844 (scanned copy - hard to read)

Les, there is also Fusion 360 from AutoCad. As with all 3D software there is a steepish learning curve but there are plenty of videos on YouTube. I used it as it was recommended by my son who is a design engineer, so I didn't compare it with other products. It is cloud based although the files are cached on one's own PC so can work offline. Autocad offer a free subscription to hobbyists so there is a risk that could change. Fusion 360 is especially suitable for home Windows PCs as it uses Microsoft's DirectX 11 supported by the common AMD Radeon and Nvidia GeForce GPUs. I.e. it doesn't need a special graphics card. An 8GB minimum of RAM is recommended. Whilst these 3D packages can export STL they tend to store designs in their own format (.blend for Blender and .F3D for Fusion 360) there may be limits on converting. With Fusion 360 the native file format holds a timeline of the individual steps in building the 3D object whereas the STL is I believe just the finished object. Fusion 360 does export the ISO standard STEP file but I've not used it.

Hi David I did sort my problems after some hours work. It was a bit of a fluke I think. Here's my email to Silhouette without the screenshots: Re the lack of USB2 support. Having just bought a Portrait I'm very annoyed they are selling stock that they knew would not be supported. I'm currently on Windows 7 but no doubt will reluctantly move to 10. Whilst electrically a USB 2 device should work in a USB 3 port it seems that it is dependent on a Windows driver and often as not the driver is provided (or not) by the device manufacturer. Doing a bit of quick googling, it seems that new PCs no longer support USB2, even through a USB3 port. I thought of using a USB2 hub but I found this explanation in reply to someone who could not get a GPS device to work: Caveat: poster may not be right! Would installing USB2 PCI card help? It would presumably come with its own driver or do Portrait 1s have some peculiar interface? Or maybe run Windows 7 in a Virtual Machine? I run XP in Virtual Box and on a 3.5GHz PC it runs fine. I do store all my XP user data in a shared drive with the Windows 7 system so that my XP user data gets backed up when backing up my Win 7 user data.

Thanks for the heads up on the plant based resin. I've just ordered a bottle at $29.99 to try it. On clicking "buy" the next screen pops up with £25 which seems the going exchange rate, but then the rest of the order reverts to $. Delivery is free with a choice of 2 groups of carriers - I choose FedEx. Payment is CC or PayPal. I choose PayPal but it said I would be charged £25.85 so I backed back in the browser and changed to credit card. Let's see if that is nearer to £25. No receipt / confirmation screen just "Thanks for your order - We’re getting a lot of orders right now. You should receive confirmation by email or text soon. If you don't receive it in the next hour, let us know." - Got the email quite quickly with a URL to my order details. Amazon normal resin is currently £16 to £19 depending on colour. So like organic food this plant base stuff is a bit more expensive. Let's hope Amazon or others discount the plant based type. Based on existing discounts they are likely to charge £26-£27. Postscript: If you go to the link given and click on "buy" it takes you to https://www.anycubic.com/products/anycubic-plant-based-uv-resin . If you then page down there is useful information about layer exposure times and also note to say use at 25C to 30C and wash in either alcohol for 30 seconds minimum or in washing up solution. Plus one should still take care to avoid skin contact.

Excellent work there Mike. What software did you use to get those complex curves where the dome and chimney meet the boiler?

In short yes but I've yet to use another make as I thought I should stick to the manufacturer's stuff initially in case I made a claim. There's a s/s here of people's experiences: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1crvzMnt_8NJXAsABinoIhcOjE8l3h7s0L82Zlh1vkL8/edit#gid=0 PS I updated my earlier s/s to include the respirator (originally it was under the fume/containment box that I did not include costing for).

David. See my attached costings s/s. This is for the AnyCubic and all the accessories/PPE and a home made curing box with turntable - a UV nail varnish machine will be cheaper. S/s includes URLs, mostly to ebay. 3D System Specification with Costs ex Fume Box.xlsx

Great prints Skinnylinny. I for one will be interested in seeing a comparative print at an angle. I notice that on the curved wagon ends there is no stepping. Was that printed at an angle? My own limited prints so far have shown no stepping on curves. I printed at the default 0.05mm layer but I've read of users printing OK at 0.025mm. Plus we now have the anti-alias firmware but logic tells me that anti-alias can only compensate for coarseness in the slicing software and not the physical finesse of the printer.

Have a look at this thread by SkinnyLinny starting here https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/130588-great-southern-railway-fictitious-exploring-3d-printing-lswr-lavatory-tricomposite/&do=findComment&comment=3540954 where he has bought a Photon and begins to build a carriage.

The filament printers are getting better (finer layers) and I have seen photos of prints that have very little signs of layering but today it comes at a cost - prices will fall. As Trofimow showed with the SR Banana van the print details for resin are amazing especially at the price but the process is messy. Re using a shed. I've not done enough printing myself but I've read that resin printing needs warm stable temperatures so a shed in the winter may be problematic, especially on 6 hour print runs. There is a certain Chinese lady who reviews high tech gadgets on YouTube including 3D printers. It appears she lives in a tower block. There must be some risk (e.g. dropping a bottle of resin that seeps into the flat below). One day the laser cutter she was using caught fire. Luckily she had a fire extinguisher to hand. When handling certain materials she has the gloves, face masks and safety glasses but wears very little clothing!! Humans have a wide spectrum of assessment of and appetite to risk.

The AnyCubic Photon has a print volume of 115 x 65 x 155 mm (LxWxH) so it could just fit diagonally. In fact it is recommend that items are printed at an angle. This is because the print head lifts up between printing layers (the items are printed up-side-down under the print head) and as the resin is viscous there is a risk that horizontal surfaces create a suction stopping the resin flowing underneath the print head before it descends to print the next layer (and also distorting what has already been printed). Also the suction can put a strain on the FEP film. If the FEP film ruptures then resin will flood into the printer - a nasty toxic mess to clean up.

Some people do that. Depends how close the window is and how big but the wind may blow the fumes into the house rather than out. What's the floor covering? Worst case scenario is spillage on the floor of resin. This needs to be washed down with IPA (which is toxic and highly inflammable) . So a carpet is a no-go. Also you need to think about the fumes and risk of explosion when washing the items in IPA or meths. So plenty of ventilation is required. I find the utility room ideal as the floor is tiled and I can pop outside to do the washing. The 2 wheelie bins outside the door make ideal work bench for cleaning. Once when raining I washed just inside the open door and managed to spill the washing container. I was glad I had a tiled floor. I also use a 3M 7502 Reusable Respirator with carbon filters rather than those simple cloth face masks.

Calvin. Just seen this thread after you posted on the AnyCubic thread. Very atmospheric layout. I particularly like the pub, it really looks like it is hundreds of years old. Also the street scene of the houses on the hill is very atmospheric. Too many layouts for my liking have too neat and square buildings that could have been built yesterday. Hey, even my 1997 house hasn't got square rooms

I've not read any article that says some resins are not. A quick google gave this article as the first https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/6513/toxicity-of-light-curing-resin Also note that nitrile or neoprene gloves should be used and not the latex type, wear a face mask with a filter and safety glasses as a minimum. The IPA used to clean is pretty vicious as well. I read about one person who spashed it on his trousers and didn't take immediate action and it badly damaged the skin on his legs. Some people use methated spirits. Take care.

I've been doing prep work, namely building a combined 3D printing fume box and spray booth. Pictures here: https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/142773-anycubic-photon-3d-dlp-printer/&do=findComment&comment=3583105 Whilst I'm raring to go on the main station building, logic tells me to walk first, so I shall build the Railway Hotel that was built adjacent to the station, seen here on the right. Built when the station opened in 1841, it seems the hotel stopped functioning by 1945 (if not decades earlier) when it came a gentlemen's club. From 1962 it was a Pickford's store but then became derelict until rescued in 1983 by the current owners who ran a guest house. More recently the owner converted it into short stay flats. The windows, bay, cornice mouldings and chimney are quite ornate and ideal for 3D printing as are the quoins. And no, I shall not be painting the model pink!