ikcdab

5 hours ago, KimDurose said:

Tips for problem-free resin printing:

 

Find a quality brand resin and stick with it. Buy cheap, buy twice.

 

Use FEP2 sheets on the vat. Much hardier than the original FEP specification. I’ve printed almost every day since June without changing FEP.

 

Print environment must be at least 20 degrees Celsius or the resin will be too thick and not have chance to flow during lifts.

 

Stir and pre- heat the resin to the consistency of semi skimmed milk.

 

Support the models. Support them some more. No one ever died from using too many supports.😉

 

Use a quality slicer like Lychee rather than the freebie Chitubox. The annual subscription will pay you back in perfect prints.

 

Two stage washout: First in IPA in a STEEL ultrasonic cleaner. Second in running warm water. 
 

Remove supports while washing in warm water. The bonds will soften and come away really easily.

 

Dry on a piece of kitchen towel in a windowsill and leave there to post expose using the sun’s natural UV rays.

 

Post expose large or thick models for no longer than a minute in a UV exposure unit.

 

 

Thank you some really helpful tips here. Most of these i now do, some are new. Since i swapped to standard elegoo resin, the prints have been 100% successful. 

You mean a checkrail then? Take a length of rail from another piece of track and use that. 

Realised I haven't posted on here for ages.

I'll update on the new siding soon. In the meanwhile I have been building a new pair of block bells to add to the existing ones.

First I made the cases.  Just ordinary B&q stripwood stained and varnished.

Then next was the base and tapper.  Tapper is from 6mm square brass strip, drilled and tapped:

Then the striker assembly.  Again, 1" steel angle.

Bell and bell pillar:

Winding then coils using the lathe on the slowest setting. 

The finished innards:

And one of the bells in position by the mainline control panel:

More to follow soon!

Ian

There are detailed drawings of the water tower on page 160 of Measured and Drawn by Stephen Phillips.

https://lightmoor.co.uk/books/the-lynton-barnstaple-railway-measured-drawn/sp0103

It is the bible as far as L&B is concerned.

Contact me by private message if you need a sight of a copy.

Ian

12 hours ago, Coach bogie said:

Available for all to see at Watchet.

Actually its at Blue Anchor. There are three coaches there, I'm not sure when your picture was taken, but the middle one of the three has been recently heavily (and sypathetically) restored as a camping coach.

I use 3mm cork. You do need something to take out any roughness on the baseboard. I cannot imagine just laying the track onto bare wood, its essential to have some form of padding.

Richard on YouTube Everard Junction has covered this well in the past. Trouble is I now cannot remember which of his videos is the one to watch! But he shows repainting, adding details etc. someone else might know which video or you could try contacting him via YouTube.

59 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

If that happened, would the baby be a British or New Zealand citizen?

A child's nationality is usually determined by the nationality of its parents.   If this is undetermined and born in international waters, the baby has the nationality of the ship's flag.

Here are some pics of work in progress.  As I said, much the same design as before. I have made two of everything.

The base with tapper:

Bell and bell pillar:

Interior with solenoid cores:

Striker plate and new adjusting screw to adjust the striker:

The case:

16 minutes ago, bécasse said:

Series/parallel will probably depend on the resistance of the coils and the applied voltage but I suspect that series wiring was the norm.

 

The coils will lie N/S-S/N to enable the yoke to complete the magnetic circuit - it is easy to remember, just think of a commonplace horseshoe permanent magnet which necessarily has one pole S and one pole N alongside each other.

Thank you.  Amazon have just delivered a coil of enammelled wire, so now I'm good to go.

Ian

6 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

I would think it would be more accurate to say the concern is safet - a train shunting on the line used for arrivals is an avoidable hazard. 

You are right of course, but the regulations do provide for this. You can't give line clear to the box in rear until the line is clear to the clearing point. If the clearing point is to be fouled by a shunting move, then you need to block back first. But I do accept that accidents have happened in these circumstances, Knowle and Dorridge being one?

Hi all, the bells I made above have been very successful. They work well and are a talking point when visitors come to run the railway.

So much so that I am now making a second pair to work with the other terminal station. 

These are identical to the first set. The only modification might be to put an adjustable stop for the striker return ("at rest") position.

But I do have a question, please. Which of the following layouts for the two coils is correct? Ie should they be wired in series or parallel and should they lie N/N or N/S?

On my exisiting bells it looks as if i have wired in series and when i look at pictures of the interiors of prototype bells, they also appear to be wired in series. What I cannot tell is whether i have my coils lying N/N or N/S.

Please can anyone advise on the correct wiring and layout of the two coils?

Thanks again

Ian

14 hours ago, John Besley said:

It's a Keyhole Escutcheon plate - I spent 25 years selling architectural ironmongery

You may have misread the question! The escuteon plate is the piece with the hole in it which the key goes through. The "dangly thing" is the keyhole cover plate.

Most (all?) ready mixed household fillers are very smooth and water based. Just take a bit of one of those and thin it slightly with water to give the consistency you need.

1 minute ago, NHY 581 said:

 

Just checked. Just read the relavent act and section. You're right. However, we will still be charged by the card machine company for each card transaction. 

 

It will be sorted by the time the event goes ahead. 

 

 

 

Thanks. Already sighted on that. See above. 

 

Rob

its a pain. I am involved with another local (non-railway) show and we have to absorb these costs which, for us, are not insiginificant. we charge for entry so the costs get factored into the ticket price. For a free show, well, i am sure you will sort it out.

Hugely looking forward to the show again and many thanks for putting it on.

7 minutes ago, Sitham Yard said:

You sure about this? I thought this practice of traders imposing a surcharge had been banned!

Andrew

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/card-surcharge-ban-means-no-more-nasty-surprises-for-shoppers

9 hours ago, billbedford said:

 

Manufacturers will always tune their machines so the published settings work with their standard resins. Try other resins, and new settings appropriate for that resin will need to be found.

 

I found this guy helpful:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llQN-70i36M&t=7s

 

His printing guide also helps. https://bit.ly/3OZTPsi

Thank you that's very helpful. I was using the manufacturers resin, just the water-based version, and using their published settings. My problem was that one print would be perfect yet the next would fail completely, even with the same settings and print file.

I have my fingers crossed that things might have now resolved.

Ian

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

Resin is a funny old thing. I bought an Anycubic M5S or whatever it called - the 12K jobby - and just could NOT get my favourite resin (Elegoo ABS like) to work at all. I just got the initial layer stuck to the bottom of the vat over and over again, even if I dialled the settings to "ludicrous" like 2 minutes or something exposure time  for the initial layers. Non-ABS  resin was fine,  which eliminated levelling, temperature and so on as issues, and I bought at least 3 bottles of ABS-like in case it was a bad batch or old resin etc, all with the same result. Or non-result.

 

In the end I bought an Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra due to other issues with the Anycubic and the resin worked perfectly straight from the test print, and I've not had a failed print (oh except one when I forgot to hit the "create supports" button before I hit the print button!)  in 4 months of pretty much daily use.

Yes it is funny stuff. Just run a second print with the standard resin and, again, it's perfect. Using water based I can guarantee it would have failed as I never had two successful prints on the trot. So great, I now have renewed enthusiasm for the printer. 

On 11/12/2023 at 20:07, ikcdab said:

Thank you to all who have helped here. To be honest, a few months ago I gave up and parked the printer in the cupboard.  Trouble is I can't let it rest.

So i have now bought a bottle of standard elegoo resin and I have given up with the water based.

I will try again with the standard resin and see what happens.

Ian

The good news is that last night's print run was perfect. Best I've done so far! Coincidence? Or just that i used standard resin rathewr than water-based?

Anyway, i am now going to have another go and see if this has the same result.

Ian

On 10/12/2023 at 20:13, The Johnster said:

Impressive.

 

Am I right in thinking that the idea is that you download a file and feed it into your printer or the one up the library to provide a printed sheet of card that you can cut out and build?  I'm not a big fan of card buildings but they are ok for background filling and such, otherwise I prefer my stone or brick to have surface texture and relief, which makes a huge difference IMHO to the 'believablility' of a scene under layout lighting, which of course can be arranged to highlight or downplay this relief to your choice. 

 

It's not just modelling trains and buildings, it's modelling weather, lighting conditions, times of day, and so forth.  I run a WTT which features trains from 05.50 to 00.05, and midsummer high noon lighting looks very fundamentlally wrong when the Miner's Workmans' turn up with the 06.00-14.00 shift!

I've just been out and measured the mortar depth on my bricks. It's only a few mm and in some cases it's flush with the bricks. At 4mm scale that is imperceptible and essentially flat, very akin to printed bricks. I think the greater issue with card kits is the finish which can be shiny.  All my card builds are finished with matt varnish and weathered accordingly.  My opinion is that the result is more realistic than using embossed plasticard where they mortar depth is vastly over scale.

Of course, there are card kits and card kits. In my opinion, the scalescenes kits are the king of kits and top of the range in every way. The 3d effect around the windows and doors etc and the roofing really makes them stand out. And they are very robust indeed. I do not like Metcalf kits because of the corners and the "dolls house" finish to the walls, but I accept than many do. I haven't tried the kits linked in this thread, but these do look flat and rather basic.

I urge you to try scalescenes kits and see for yourself how highly authentic they are before dismissing them. There are some pictures of my own versions on my thread.

On 25/02/2023 at 14:29, monkeysarefun said:

The one possibility you didn't list in your first post was the resin. Ive read a couple of Saturn reviews such as the one linked below  which describe a litany of inconsistent results and unsuccessful attempts to fix via relevelling, changing settings etc. 

 

https://geekdad.com/2022/08/adventures-in-3d-printing-the-elegoo-saturn-2/

 

Problems in this case were only resolved when they bought a bottle of standard Elegoo grey. Granted, they were originally using ABS like resin rather than your water soluble one but given the similar issues to  what  you are dealing with  that's what I'd be trying next I reckon.

Thank you to all who have helped here. To be honest, a few months ago I gave up and parked the printer in the cupboard.  Trouble is I can't let it rest.

So i have now bought a bottle of standard elegoo resin and I have given up with the water based.

I will try again with the standard resin and see what happens.

Ian

1 hour ago, alexross42 said:

I have a related query that I hope someone can help with, I thought it better to add to this thread rather than start a new one...

 

I've recently acquired a few slides that have been produced by 'CCQ' and 'Modern Image Slides' but I cannot find any information about either company and suspect they may have ceased trading some years ago - if that is the case, what becomes of the copyright in this instance? If the stock/assets of the company are sold on to an individual or other business presumably the copyright goes with it?

Thanks,
Ross.

When the company's assets were disposed of, then the copyright would have been accounted for then. And if the business of the company was selling images, then they will have made sure that the copyright issue was covered.  If you have bought the slides, then there will be a copyright marking on the slides. It's tough, but if you want you reproduce them commercially (ie not for private use) then you will need to track down the current owner. 

This is a very difficult situation if the current owner cannot be found.  You could just take the approach that you will use the slides as you wish, and if anyone challenges you then deal with it then.  Most people are reasonable and will understand the situation if you do it sensibly. It all depends on what you want to do with the images. 

Is the battery ok?

21 hours ago, jpendle said:

They get a 16.66666% reduction on prices shown on the Hattons website, or any other shops website, as do I and anyone else living outside the UK.

 

VAT is an ADDITIONAL 20% added to the price of the good, so before VAT if the price is £10 then the price with VAT is £12.

 

To get back to the price without VAT you need to divide 2 by 12 = 16.666%

 

Regards,

 

John P

 

Haha clever with with the maths there. You are right that 20% isn't being knocked off of the £12, but it's the 20% of the £10 that is being removed.

Whatever what you look at it, you areb saving the 20% VAT.

I assume that purchasers in Australia don't pay UK vat , so in effect, get a 20% reduction on the prices showing in hattons website? If so, then a "mere" 10% increase is still a saving.  Though I admit that the shipping costs make my eyes water.