MikeTrice

My young Grandson is coming tomorrow so I packed everything away, until some idiot posted his GCR Bogie file. So I have had to get it all out again! Trying out another option.

Even if the laminations are symetrically identical they don't actually cut symetrically identically so I find they make a considerable difference and would not go without them now.

Now you know why I put the small "pips" on my cuttings to act as registration marks. Putting them off centre works best then there is no doubt about which way round, or up, the lamination goes.

It looks as if sales of CutWizard have now been stopped: http://www.hobbyplotter.de/download/content/index.php?id=43

Styrene is typically a pale grey rather than white. Try a light spray of white primer before the hairspray coats. It might lift the colours.

I don't see why not. The only question then is the glue. Perhaps a spray adhesive?

Windows aplenty. Scribed and snapped from 0.5mm PVC (not the easiest to photograph under artificial light): Regarding blade depth, the most reliable way of checking the depth is to place some spare sheet alongside the blade and running your finger across it. You should just be able to feel the tip. Alternatively view the same under magnification. If you are using a 3rd party cutter holder such as the CB09 there are no graduations to act as a guide.

Fixing glazing is a long way off yet, but I might try Clearfix and yes, it should be possible to use the cutter to cut the glazing.

When I tried cutting card from Inkscape it was not very successful and I do believe it was because I could not control the pressure of the cut.

Mark 2 design: As with the axleboxes I include a small registration mark (top right) to help get the layers the right way round. Here laminated together but before the vents and bolections added: The rear showing the recesses for glazing: At 7 laminations it is quite thick, but unlike my original attempt very solid: The turn under is created the same way as my original design: View showing how deeply the windows are recessed for the glazing.

For 10thou styrene I would say a blade setting of 10 is far too much.The blade only needs to project for the thickness of the material plus a tiny amount. For 10thou I have never gone above 5. Much deeper and you will cut up your carrier sheet. As an aside you must ensure the end of the cutter holder is free from dust or cuttings as it will stop the blade going deep enough.

You tease!

I was not planning on trying cutting textured hand made paper containing pressed flowers

I am really looking forward to seeing this cut and laminated.

This is a picture of my 6 wheeled NER coach some 2 weeks after construction. I have not experienced and pitting from the solvent being used between laminations. What I have suffered from is distortion where the inner sides are fixed to the partitions: Now I seem to recall many years ago reading that as the solvent evaporates the molten styrene shrinks resulting in the sides being pulled in. With the top slots for glazing this part of the coach is quite weak resulting in the problem. I think I am going to abandon trying to use slots for the glazing and just provide recesses in the rear, like Colin Parks does. I am also going to invert the shell so the roof is permanently fixed and the body open beneath. Should be rock solid then. Fortunately revamping the Silhouette artwork and recutting is far less stressful than doing it by hand.

That's the word. Thanks.

I have tried printing direct on styrene in the past with some success. The problem would be the slightly raised edges created at the cut line (my mind has gone a complete blank as to its name - call it a senior moment) that you would not be able to sand down. Mike(Trice)

Too many Mikes. Originally the artwork was 4mm exported at 600 dpi. Although the software keeps reseting the resolution to 600dpi later it will let me export at 1200 dpi which is much better. Better still is to enlarge the original drawing before exporting (then shrink in Studio) which does make a big difference, so thanks for the suggestion.

I have moved the bell out of the way as we do not want it cut out of the wall. We now need to decide exactly where we want the cutter to cut, which means deleting the lines we no longer want. Rather than just delete these, I have highlighted them in blue so you can see which ones I am about to delete: Having deleted them I them decided I might as well use the waste space in the door way to cut the bell and have moved the various parts apart accordingly: The finished Cut 20thou layer which I have now locked: Turn off visibility of the Cut 20thou layer and switch to the Score 20thou layer, select the objects and ungroup several times, then delete all the objects except the score lines: Just to check everything was Ok I then made the Cut 20thou visibile again. Whoops, the repositioned bell parts were going to get scored which I did not intend: To rectify, I unlocked the Score 20thou layer and selected the score lines on the left hand wall: I can now use the resizing handles to shorted them, then lock the layer again: Now I can unlock the Cut 20thou layer and move the bell components to the area above the left hand wall away from the score lines: We can now turn off visibility of the Cut and score 20thou layers and turn on the Cut 10thou. Here I have deleted the score lines and the office walls and moved the various door and window components together. Unlike the 20thou layers these do not have to stay aligned with the previous layer. Once again I have highlighted the various lines that I will delete. This usually takes some thinking through to ensure you can subsequently fix the cut items together: And after deletion: The various 10thou items rearranged on the page ready for final cutting: Phew, we finally made it. I don't know who got bored the most, you folk reading it or me writing it. I donlt intend to go into the cutting process itself as that has been covered in Jason's thread, including the bit where I talk about cutting direct from Inkscape. Basically the process is: Load 20thou into the machine, switch off visibility off all layers except Score 20thou then print to the Silhouette using a small blade setting. Without removing the styrene or cutting mat from the machine, increase the blade depth, switch off the Score 20thou layer and turn on the Cut 20thou layer then send that to the cutter. Finally remove the 20thou sheet from the machine and replace with 10tou and cut the final layer I will be honest and say that I would like more control over the cutter than Inkscape alone gives me, so it was quite disappointing to hear from Jason that CutWizard did not work properly (CutWizard is a third party cutter control software). What I typically have to do is run the same cutting layer several times to get the depth of cut I desire. This can be mmade easier by duplicating the objects on each layer two or three times before cutting, but remember to save you file first, and then don't save the mutiple duplicated version. Remember that it extremely unlikely that you will manage to cut straight through the 20thou layer and the various components will need to be snapped out or assisted with a knife. Something I have not done here, but have done elsewhere is include a X from corner to corner of opening in the 20thou layers where I want to subsequently snap out waste. As Jason asked earlier, feel free to ask questions if you have any. I have only scratched the surface of what Inkscape can do. Fortunately in order to create cutting files you only need to know so much, the rest can wait until you have a need for something more adventurous. There are many ways to achieve the same result, but I have tried to document the process as I have physically done it (warts and all). If you find something does not go exactly as you expect click on Edit - Undo (repeating to step back though things since your last save) and try again. Save regularly, and during the early days you might want to save different versions as you progress. Most importantly give Inkscape a try even if you have no intention of using to cut styrene as it can be used for many other things.

This is the part of the process I quite enjoy as you feel you are finally working towards being able to cut the model and moving away from just drawing. Jason's original thread used three distinct sets of drawings for the Coal Office: 20thou cut; 20thou score and 10thou cut. As we are using Inkscape we will use its Layer capability. Select the "master" layer (avoid clicking on the layer name or it will try and edit it): Click on the "+" sign below and add three layers representing out different cutting layers. For the moment leave them visible and unlocked: Select the "master" layer again and ensure that all the drawing objects are selected and form a single group (this is not essential, it just makes the next stages easier): Duplicate the selected group (Ctrl-D) then click on Shift-PageUp. With any luck the currently selected layer will move up from the Master layer (you can just make out the slightly darker background of the current layer in the right hand layers window): Hopefully we have now copied our group to the Cut 20 thou layer. We can prove (or disprove) this by hiding the original Master layer. Is our group still visibile? If it is not, redisplay the Master layer and select it, then click on the grouped objects to select them and repeat the Shift-PageUp. Hopefully it will work. For some reason I occassionally find it does not work first time. Zoom to Page and move the group into the top left hand corner, or wherever you want to place them for cutting. Duplicate the group and move horizontally to the side of the first. We now have 4 walls for our Office instead of just two: Group both sets of sides and repeat the process used previously e.g. select them, press Ctrl-D then Shift-PageUp so we end up with a copy on the Score 20 thou layer. We can now turn off visibility of the previous layer to confirm we have successfully copied and move the copy to the required layer. IT IS IMPORTANT AT THIS STAGE NOT TO MOVE ANY OF THE OBJECTS ON EITHER OF THESE TWO LAYERS AS WE NEED TO MAINTAIN REGISTRATION. Finally repeat the process to copy and move the group to the final Cut 10thou layer: Play around with the visibility settings to ensure that each of our cutting layers have the grouped image present. Turn off the visibility of the two upper layers, ensure that Cut 20thou is selected, and visible and unlocked, then select the sides and ungroup them several times (watch the display in the bottom status bar to see if you still have groups involved): Carefully select the score lines and delete them, together with the unwanted windows and door from the right hand walls:

Brilliant. This is what I tried to do earlier in the thread with the NER Clerestory but had problems using Inkscape to create the artwork for printing. The problem was that when exporting or printing a bitmap it insisted on aliasing the edges. This probably would not have been apparent when scaled and printed however I had hoped to use Silhouette Studio's trace capability. Perhaps I need to revisit it. The major benefit of this approach is the ability to reproduce a complex livery that otherwise might be difficult to paint.

Happy to do so, although I was not thinking of a general question and answer on all aspects of Inkscape, just those related to the topic. There may be value in having a separate Inkscape thread for general questions and it does not just have to be me that answers. IT would certainly be interesting to hear of anyone who has given Inkscape a go (or any drawing package come to that) as a result of these postings. While between topics, one for Kenton who asked a while back for other uses of Inkscape. Well I did the artwork for this control panel using it:

You may well have to create your own roof. If you have not already done so you might be interested in reading Colin's thread here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/15056-bulleid-2hap-emu/

On the home run (at last). With the other layers hidden I have now selected all the objects in the visible layer and changed their colour to black and line width to 0.1mm: Now need to add the panelling. Draw a vertical line: Zoom in, keep duplicating it moving them to the right spacing them around 2mm apart (accuracy at the point is not essential): One side completed. Now select all the panel lines and distribute equaly as shown: Group the lines then move and resize the group to match the wall edges: Duplicate the panel line group and move to the right overlapping the right hand line of one with the left hand line of the other: I decided to select the gabled end and resize it to match the panel lines: Then reposition the door and side window: Ungroup the lines then delete the unwanted ones at each end of a side, then select all objects and group: Pat yourself on the back and wonder who is the most bored, you reading this or me writing it? The end is in sight when we tackle producing the actual cutting patterns.

Middle horizontal line added and centered: Zoomed in on window. Note that the green working lines were set to 0.5mm width, the minimum reliably cut with the Silhouette : Top left window added using the edge of the middle glazing bar as a guide: Duplicated to right: Both top windows duplicated and moved to bottom half: And grouped (although I did not really need to do this): Moving across to draw the bells using the Ellipse tool drawn with the Ctrl key pressed, then duplicated and moved to the right, then the two grouped: The backing unit added then centered with the bells: Zoomed to drawing to show current state: We can now hide the Bitmap and Guide layers: