PaulaDoesTrains

Ah I see. Thanks for the clarification.

Do bear in mind that if you take more off one side than the other then you're slightly alter the wheel spacing WRT the connecting rods. The difference between binding a sliding fit might only be a 1/1000th of an inch. Removing antiny amount then checking the fit seems the way to go.. You shouldn't really be having to remedy shoddy workmanship at the factory though.

I updated the firmware on one of my FDM printers not because the supplied firmware didn't work but for some reason it wouldn't work with Octoprint. Generally though I agree "if it's not broke don't fix it".

What a beauty.

Or "none"? Or "tone", "phone", "bone" or "alone" ? Given the state of the world today, does it really matter?

The 1mm brass sheet I buy off that well know auction site tends to be closer to 1.2mm. You could just buy a sheet and cut off a strip to the desired width. At the other end of the spectrum there are companies out there who laser cut all manner of materials (including brass) for the model engineering community.

I think you mean fine scale bodgers. There are many truly first class loco builders who post on here on RMweb. I've never seen any of them use split chassis construction. A split axle will never approach the concentricity or strength of a solid one.

I'm quite surprised (although perhaps I shouldn't be) that anyone is still making split-chassis locos. Their major design flaw is that the axles have to have a break in the middle and be joined by an insulating section. This is very bad engineering. I have an old split-chassis Mainline Jubilee which I bought very cheap with the idea of build a new chassis for it. As is it runs sort of OK (axles are OK) but I think all my old Hornby and Airfix locos better it. I certainly wouldn't pay more tha about £30 for any split-chassis loco.

The train set we (younger brother and i) had when I was little was TT3 and I've got a continuing affection for the 3mm scale even though I'm heavily invested in OO. I can't remember much about it except I had the diesel shunter and my brother had the Jinty. Not that either of us had a clue what they were. And dad knew nothing about trains; cricket was his passion.

I’ve been using bCNC as the Gcode sender for my CNC router for a good while now. Amongst its many features is the ability to handle manual tool changes by intercepting M6 commands. It can then use the G43.1 Tool Length Offset (TLO) command to continue without the need to manually reset the Z height. To achieve this I’ve made a rather Heath-Robinson tool length touch post as in the attached image. It’s made using a real hodge-podge of technologies. The base plate was machined on the CNC router, the mild steel touch post was machined on my Proxxon F150/E lathe, the fork mechanism was 3D printed (it’s phosphor bronze contact was CNC’d) and various other bits were sawn with my little Proxxon bandsaw and drilled with a hand drill. The purpose of the fork mechanism is to provide electrical contact to the underside of the collet and hence the tool. It’s wired back to pin A5 (probe) on the controller whilst the touch post is wired to ground. This allows probing for the TLO without the need to clip a connector onto the tool. A piece of lead wrapped around the outer end of the fork provides enough resistance to ensure a good electrical contact. In practice the system works very well. I’ve done jobs which have required three tool changes and it’s worked flawlessly. Previously this would have required splitting the Gcode into separate files for each tool and manually setting the Z height for each tool. On the CAM side it’s worth noting that GRBL post-processors tend to filter out M6 commands as GRBL itself doesn’t support M6 so a mod to the code is required to pass the M6 command though the output file.

I'm assuming it's like my Duchesses (and most of my other Hornby steam locos). Under the drawbar is a "forked" connector. Check that it's clean and that it's contacting the tender peg with some pressure. As 33C says also check that the pony truck screw has it's spring and that there's no corrosion there. These locos are very simple but with a bit of TLC should just run and run.

I've successfully imported Scalescenes PDFs into GIMP as a set of layers,one for each page. At this point I could have edited them if I so wished but in my case I wanted to use the laser to cut them out so I exported them as images, loaded them into FreeCAD and "traced" over them to create the outlines of the various walls etc.

Well said.

Madness isn't restricted to Ebay then.

I use sewing machine oil for everyting except the gears which I feel need a something a bit stickier to stay attached to the gear.

Have you considered meshing with one of the intermediate gears instead of the gear on the centre axle?

I'm not convinced that Design Spark Mechanical would be a suitable choice for the OP as it's Windoze only and he uses a Mac.

Stafford last year clashed with a weekend sailing on the Norfolk Broads but I might go this year if there's enough layouts that I'd like to see. When I went in 2020 there were quite a few 3mm layouts which were wonderful to see. Our train set when I was little was Triang TT and I've always had a soft spot for the 3mm scale. Not that Im considering going 3mm. I'm too invested in OO now but it's lovely to see 3mm still has a following. For some reason YouTube keeps suggesting this video. I have no idea why

Something like a bus seat is trivial to produce in CAD. Just create a sketch of the seat's cross section then extrude to the required width. Just a few minutes work in FreeCAD or Fusion 360. Even a complete beginner will be able to do that after watching a how-to video. If you want to include the grab rail, which is traditionally found on top of the seat's backrest, that's probably better represented by a piece of bent wire.

I've watched quite a few YouTube videos of people trying to put these cheap Chinese lathes right. It often seems to require access to another, decent quality, lathe and a milling machine! Your friend advised you well IMHO. When I decided I wanted a little lathe I was somewhat constrained by not having a workshop so have to work off the kitchen table. I eventually bought the little Proxxon FD150/E which is serving me well for the bits I want to make for OO gauge.

That's very nice @Giles What thickness brass did you use for the chassis?

That 47 looks almost as nice in black as it would in two-tone green.

Another way to go is OnShape which is a cloud-based CAD system. It's primarily developed for commercial use but you can get a free account as long as you're happy for your designs to be public. Then there's OpenSCAD which uses the same idea as TinkerCAD of boolean operations on 3d primitives but is driven by a script file rather than on screen. It's fun to play around with personally I wouldn't like to design anything complex with it.

I think your main choices will be between Blender, FreeCAD and Fusion 360. All have a significant learning curve. There's also TinkerCad which is a simple online CAD program.

Beat? Did you mean bleat?