Carlislecitadel2

Personally speaking I apply these transfers as water slide transfers and they work very nicely. As I say I have used them to letter up many of my LNER kits and some BR ones. I have applied them to Hornby 21t wagons which I have repainted and to modified Parkside kits. I do have the new kits in my stash and will dig them out to check those decals. Much of this could be moot now given Accurascale’s announcement of NER hoppers!

I should have added that I normally replace the rounded 3 in the later period, small sized NE fixed numbers with a flat topped 3, which is more in keeping with the style used in the later 30s by the LNER and the LMS.

Not the best of pics but it should show you what’s in the transfers under the backing sheet. Personally I find these sheets great. I have built nearly 30 of these wagons over the years and they fixed numbers are easy to slice up to mix the numbers up and you have the extra digits included on the sheet as well.  I use the extras to letter and number up the vast majority of the LNER wagons in my fleet and quite a few PO wagons too.

Has anybody tried a 0.2mm nozzle in their filament printer, and did you see an improvement in detail that justifies the extra print time?  I have read it will produce better detail in the X and Y planes and test shots shown of lettering printed on a credit card appeared to support that. However looking at videos on how to change nozzles it looks like it’s awkward, but doable for a beginner. I have the nozzles but have not fitted them yet and it will another couple of weeks before I do. I know the Gauge 1 modellers use a 0.2mm for finer detail such as buffers.

The bridge looks amazing. I did not think anything would rival your church but this does.

I do not know what area or period you are modelling, but the old Model Railway News (later Model Railways) magazine ran a series of articles called LMS lineside in the mid 1970s which had items like that. Everything from ballast bins, bike sheds, mileposts, outside loos up to LNWR stable blocks was covered. I have some of these scanned and can probably access the rest if needed. A lot of this infrastructure lasted well beyond LMS days of course. PM me if this is of interest to you. 

LMS Banana Van Body Conversion

My friend and I have drawn up an end vent to convert the Ratio-PECO BR banana van body to the LMS body design and have uploaded it to Thingiverse. Robert did the hard work in Fusion360. Its drawn 1:1 so it can hopefully be scaled down to suit. It printed OK on an Ender 3 S1 at 0.05mm nut would need a bit of tidying up with a file after printing. I'd be interest to do how it prints on a resin machine if anyone tries it. I'm going to try and draw another couple of vents to ease conversions to produce additional fish van bodies. I will hopefully get these drawn in the next week or so. The banana van vent can be found at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5569096

Cheers. I will look up some of the slow setting superglues. I have a stack of white metal kits to built too so I will get a couple of bottles in at least.

A couple of quick questions for those who print in PLA. I have run off a few samples of the LMS banana vents and placed them on the ends of a Ratio van. They are slightly too big and the proportions are not right so they will be redrawn. However what is the best glue to join PLA to the plastic used in injection moulded kits?

I have been printing in Techbears white filament which gives a pretty smooth finish. However trying to file some of the layer lines on curved roofs has been tougher than I expected. Is there a softer filament or brand of PLA which is easier to file or cut with a chisel blade?

I have also ordered a couple of 0.2mm nozzles as recommended by PaulaDoesTrains above. Unfortunately it will be another couple of weeks before I get a chance to print anything and see how big a this difference it makes. If some of the Gauge 1 modellers use 0.2 nozzles for their prints then it’s bound bring out little more detail in 4mm.

Thanks in advance,

Stephen

Hi Mike I am looking forward to seeing what settings you believe will work best on your FDM printer. I recently bought an Ender 3 S1 hoping it might achieve results almost as good as a resin printer on 4mm wagons. Unfortunately I just have not had much time to play with it since it arrived, but the couple of N gauge items I scaled up to 4mm in the Creality slicer package printed as well as I could have hoped for.

I said in last  nights post I’d printed some legs for a drone. They had curved surfaces in places, tighter radius than most 4mm loco boilers. I had a look at them today and struggle to see or feel the stepping from the different layers. It is there but it’s difficult to see and could maybe be sanded a bit to get rid of what there is. They were printed at 0.05 mm. I might try an industrial loco at some point to test that out but I was quite impressed by it. I was using Techbears white PLA which was recommended on a 3D print website with an article on best filaments.

I bit the bullet and ordered an Ender 3 S1 as it can print to 0.05mm.  The included Creality software would not install but I was able to download the latest firmware build from their website and it installed ok. The fall back position was the Cura slicer which I have also downloaded and might switch to as Creality's own is just a cutdown version of Cura.

I got it up and running yesterday and have had a good few failed printed but also some successes. I'm doing simple things like crates to begin with. I tried an LNER cast iron bffer stop but while the main parts printed OK the thiner iron supports at back did not. I need to figure out why. A rescaled 10mm 16t mineral wagon end door also failed to produce the horizontal webs. I did download some 2mm containers from Cults 3d and was able to scale them up. The H type container as used by the LMS has printed realy well and the plank lines are clearly visible. I've lso printed a couple of other items like parts for a drone. Defineitely a bt of a learning curve but so far I'm impressed with the macine's capabilities, if not my own. Sithlord of this parish has kindly sent me a 2mm fie for an LNWR D84 to try and scale up. I have several 4mm versions on order from Bill Bedford along with several other of Bills pregrouping stock, but I fancy trying to print some of my own. I really must extract a digit now and start getting to grips with Fusion 360. I intend to design some end vents for LMS vans to convert some Cambrian kits to the twin end vent type. Then next up will be the end ventilators found on LMS banana vans to aid with converting the Ratio kits. The old LMS lineside series of drawings from the 60s for things like ballast bins will also make for good introductory designs. Let the fun begin.

I might hold off for a couple of months while I get to grips with Fusion 360, just in case an affordable 0.02 FDM machine comes out.  However from the responses on here it seems unlikely even that will deliver the detail I would be hoping to achieve on riveted wagons, though it would be fine for other items like crates, small sheds, etc.  It sounds like the resin printer will need to reside in the garage as well so I will need to clear a space for it out there. The technology is improving all the time but the key seems to be to get good at CAD drawing first. I also do a lot of 1/35 military modelling so the printer will be useful in that field as well. A lot of the small military modelling companies have moved to 3D printing for detailing/ correction / conversion and even complete kits, like FCM https://www.fcmodeltrend.com/172-scale-lp-1-51-familia-9/ . Hopefully  more of the railway community will do the same. I have a sizeable order in for some on Bill Bedford’s nice designs and have some of the NIU detailing parts as well. But there will always be items no company is likely to produce. If I find I need more than one of these items then 3D printing seems as sensible as making a master and resin cast but with advantage that parts can be resized or modified into other prototypes more easily than making a new master and mould. And the .stl files can be shared.Thanks again for all the responses. They have been very helpful.

Thanks for all the tips. If resin printing is the only viable solution for rivet detail then a resin machine it will have to be. It’s good to know that the excess can be left in the sun to dry out rather than being washed away. I will look into the IPA and acetone as well. If I go for the Mars 3 is it worth getting the washing and curing stations?

Thanks Paula,

I’m new to this so probably am getting confused. I generally build wagon kits or modify them but am looking to go to the next level and design and print some wagons and parts that are not available. I will be happy to share/swop .stl files if I can learn Fusion 360. My first item to try and draw will be the end vents for LMS banana vans. Then maybe some LMS meat containers and chassis.

My friend and I are experimenting with 3D printing. Robert is doing most of the work as he is producing big items like switches and panels for his 737 simulator and fine detail is not important to him, whereas I am  trying to find a balance between fine detail, cost and environmental factors. The slicer programme in Robert's Ender 3 was set to 0.2mm but we now know it can go to 0.12mm. So, to my mind and I could be getting this completely wrong, that should produce narrow layers which should allow us to print the greater detail which is in the .stl file, but obviously at the cost of time as nearly double the number of layers is required. The nozzle on the Ender is 0.4mm and that seems pretty standard for most filament printers. However, the specs on various machines with a 0.4mm nozzle say they can print from 0.4mm to 0.1mm on most of them, with a few going to 0.05mm. The Begonova Rose Go claimed to be able to print at 0.02mm which is up there with the resin printers, IF I have understood correctly. Maybe you need finer nozzles and filaments to achieve this? My main question is whether any filament printers sub £800 could match the likes of the Mars 3 or Anycubic resin printers in the £2-300 pound range for producing fine detail such as rivers in chassis. I think I would prefer a FDM machine if it’s more environmentally friendly than a resin one.  That might be a big if, but I’m concerned about how to dispose of the resin waste. I have seen the level of quality that members like Woko produce on 4mm wagons on resin printers and would like to match that.

Hi,

l’m new to this aspect of the hobby and am seriously considering buying a 3D printer. A friend printed a few free designs from Ironmink for me on his Ender 3 Pro filament printer at 0.2mm. The LMS hoppers were not too bad but the springs and axleboxes were not great for detail.  We now know we can get the Ender down to 0.12mm in Cura and will try another hopper this weekend.

As I envisage printing stock with a lot of rivet detail, I would be aiming to get something that can print at least 0.05mm, 0.02 would be better. I see that resin printers are generally recommended over filament ones because they handle the fine detail better and I do have my eye on a Mars 3 having read other posts here. However I am concerned about the resin being messy and needing washed and cured. Just how messy can the process get doing typical LMS sized wagons? Crucially how environmentally unfriendly is the clean up process? I see you can get an additional clean and cure station but where do you dispose of the resin wash afterwards? You should not put it down the sink so how do people dispose of it? I work in the water industry and recycling water with chemical waste or micro plastic is a very hot topic these days. It’s best not to put it back in the system. 

Ideally I would prefer a 0.02mm resolution FDM machine but the Prusa one is £700. I did see ads for and reviews of the Rose Go for around £400 which seems to print at that quality but the only ‘shop’ selling them is  Aliexpress and there is little about the company on the web which would make me hesitant to buy it in case spares are hard to get.

https://www.begonova.com/  The price of a Mars 3 plus a cleaning and curing set up is edging towards £450 so is it better to pay the extra for a Prusa and avoid the resin waste issue. I know plastic of any sort is not environmentally friendly but, on balance, I suspect it’s probably easier to deal with the waste created by a FDM printer than the resin. Do you think budget filament machines that can do 0.02mm are likely to hit the market soon?

Grateful for any thoughts on this.

Hi Kevin,  that’s a neat looking build especially for your first wagon. Be warned - wagon building can quickly become addictive, very addictive!