flubrush

It won't be a complete waste of money if it teaches you what to look out for next time. :-) The first lathe I got was an old, umpteen hand one and was a bit of a dog. I never did any good work on it but it taught me what to look out for in the next lathe. :-) I meant to mention that I mostly work with a piece of Conti board as a spoil board on the machine table. This gives a smooth surface on which to use double sided tape to hold down the styrene sheet. The Conti board is remarkable true in thickness and flatness and I don't have much problem making it flat and true for milling. Letraset used to do a double sided lo-tack tape which was low tack on both sides and was excellent for styrene jobs but they seem to have taken it off the market. The other low tack tapes on the market are low tack on one side only and sometimes it can be difficult getting thin styrene parts off the table without damaging them. I find a Stanley blade is the best tool around the table for helping to get parts off the table and for scraping adhesive residue off the surface. Also, you will find that styrene sheet is not a uniform thickness, sometimes varying by several thou across an A4 sized sheet. That really threw me when I started milling styrene when I wasn't getting the results I expected. Now, I use sheet a size thicker and do an overall surface cut to get it down to the thickness I want which is also a constant thickness. This can add quite a bit of time to a cutting operation even using a 5mm diameter cutter for the job. Jim.

Definitely carbide. :-) Jim.

That might be worth a go. You seem to have managed to dig up a few discussions on the machine, GRBL, etc., so you will probably be able to get someone to help you out if you run into problems.. The Emblaser1 also uses GRBL and that seems to work well. With GRBL you can get software like Universal GCode Sender to interface with the GRBL board to send GCode files to the machine. To generate the GCode files, you need a CAM program (or a program like Fusion 350 which has a CAM facility built in). I use Vectric Cut2D which is very good but I suspect that its current price could be more than your machine's price. I got it bundled with my CNC mill so I didn't have to fork out separately. Programs like Vectric Cut2D have quite good drafting facilities, but I prefer to do my drawing in AutoCAD LT or Draftsight and import the files into Cut2D to geberate the GCode Files. Cut2D will import files from Autocad and various other vector graphics programs, but not Inkscape. http://support.vectric.com/aspire-questions/item/what-vector-file-formats-can-be-imported So if you are looking for a CAM program, even a free one, you might want to look at what files it will import. The process is a bit long winded - draw in your vector graphics or CAD program, export a file to your CAM program to generate the GCode files, generate a text GCode file from the CAM program to use with the program which interfaces with the GRBL board on your machine. You might well find setups which streamline the operation. With Emblaser1, Vectric's Cut2D Laser can interface directly with the GRBL board so that CAM files are sent directly to the board in the machine and the CAD design can be done in Cut2D laser as well. On buying a milling machine of any type, get the biggest you can afford or accommodate. Not only do you have to take account of the maximum travels of the table, you also have to allow for clamping material on the table and that also requires a bit of space.. However you will find that CNC milling is not a fast process and if you draw up a large complex part to machine you could find it taking hours (I have read of some process taking over a day!!). I now find myself breaking jobs down into sub sections which only(!!??) take a few hours so that if any part has to be re-done for any reason, it's only a matter of hours, not days. :-) , and that can just about justify a smaller table. :-) Jim.

Just one or two things about the machine. I can't see any mention of control software for it. The control board has a USB connection but I can't see any mention in the listing about what drives the machine. It could be worth finding out before you splash out any money. Some of these Far Eastern milling machines come with bootleg copies of control software like Mach3. But if the controller is based on GRBL then there is free CNC software which will control it but you will need CAM software to generate the GCode files to use with the control software. The collet on the spindle is 1/8" which suits a lot of engraving cutters. But if you want to do proper machining you will want to use carbide slotting cutters and you could find that you have to use ones with metric shanks, which could be a problem with the 1'8" bore. It would be worth investigating what's available with 1/8" shanks. For cutting plastic you need carbide cutters - high speed steel cutters tend to heat up and melt the plastic giving a poor finish. But it could be worth a punt for cutting plastics and wood. In fact you don't want too much power in a milling machine when cutting plastics like styrene since the material itself starts to deform around the tool and give poor results if you start pushing too hard in feed speeds and cutting depths. Jim.

This is basically what I had found out when I researched Scottish slate roofs. For everything but the top quality buildings, the slater worked with what he got delivered on site and part of the job was sorting out all the different sized slates he had. Starting large and going small as you go up the roof makes sense to keep wastage down. Jim.

One thing I do note on current MRJs is the lack of legibility - certainly compared with previous output. The very early editions used about the same size of font, but used a serif font and black letters. Over the years, the captions changed to a sans serif font which lost a bit of legibility, but were still quite good since the letters stayed black. But the current editions have changed to a fainter font in both the general text and the captions and the text of the captions is getting close to unreadable for older eyes. For me, reading the MRJ is now becoming a bit difficult and it's almost easier just to look at the pictures. Jim.

I can't remember exactly how long it took, but it did take a long time. The actual slating of the roof wasn't too bad - it was cutting all the different sizes of slates and bevelling them which took the time. I have had thoughts about how strips of slates might do the same job but getting the result to be truly random would be difficult. There's also a question of quite how random the slates on a roof might be since a slater might have tended to select piles of slates of the same width and height to work on an area to cut down on the fiddling that might have to be done to get the overlaps acceptable. When working on my old slate roof. (ex church manse circa 1860) I got the feeling that a fair bit of the random factor was caused by repairs over the years with whatever slates were handy. :-) Jim.

I did a Scottish style slate roof in 7mm on a goods shed. It was the subject of a thread in another forum http://www.westernthunder.co.uk/index.php?threads/slating.1979/ ...and I think you have to register to see the pictures. There are some links in that thread to article on slating. The method of building was to cut individual slates from Plastikard sheet and bevel and colour them before laying them on the roof, with proper sarking. It was a labour of love and took for ever. :-) But it did ressemble the slightly rough and ready looks of the average Scottish slate roof. The slate sizes were graded from large at the bottom to smaller at the ridge. Not all Scottish roofs were rough. I do remember a large house opposite my house in Vale of Leven which had a superb Ballachulish slate roof with smooth and beatifully cut slates all over. When they pulled the house down to make way for a bypass I couldn't make use of the slates since they were too good for my more average quality roof. :-) Here's one pic of the shed roof nearing finish. Jim.

I'm afraid not. :-( Like yourself I have been using AutoCAD LT for many years and transitioning to a program like Fusion 360 has been very difficult for me with so many years of ingrained AutoCAD LT experience. I've had one or two goes to get under the skin of it with not much success so far but I'm going to have to get with it some time. :-) I did learn to use an old version of Rhino to do 3D drawings and that worked quite well since it worked with a similar command structure to AutoCAD but it stopped working when I upgraded to Win10 and I'm afraid I can't afford to purchase a current copy of the software. Jim.

I would agree with that. I've just spent a week, on and off, trying to get good slow speed running on a Tsunami fitted to an American Models S scale GP9. I've downloaded all the "How To" articles I could find on the web and must have messed about with most of the CVs and got some very weird motor responses, some not unlike the OPs loco. I've used reset to default often to get back to a starting point which gives a fair performance with poor slow speed starting. I might get a decent result sometime, but I won't be using any Soundtraxx chips on the other locos I have to fit DCC sound to. Jim.

Things have moved on, albeit a bit slower than I had hoped. First I had to modify the Tortoise motors to fit in the trough at the back of the layout. This meant chopping off one of the mounting lugs and adding sections of alloy angle bolted to the motors' cases. Here are some of the motors fitted on one of the central boards. The turnouts were operated by plastic rod in tube under the baseboard top with a point operating unit under the tiebar with a pin which located in the PCB tiebar. This was the system which held things up since my use of a second layer of baseboard top on top of the original top created installation difficulties. However, with a lot of gritted teeth I got them all installed. :-) The two small circuit boards in the picture are single frog juicers to feed the crossings on the diamond. I started working out a powering system using relays, switches, etc., and gave in gracefully to the juicers. :-) I'm using the switches in the Tortoises to switch crossing polarity on the turnouts, so the bit of twin and earth on the backscene is a local DCC bus for these switches. This is a picture of the boards now installed on the back wall of my bedroom showing seven of the eight Tortoises installed, the eighth being on the baseboard behind the lens. Next was to start looking at getting something running on the layout and that wasn't quite straightforward either. :-) the first loco to be chosen was my American Models GP9. This is the loco as it comes with sprues of detailing to add to give permutations to cover different phases of the locomotive. However, the first job is to fit a DCC chip. You would think that, with an S scale full high hood body, there would be plenty of room, but a chunky can motor and two high gear towers take up a lot of the available real estate. :-) So I've opted to fit the Tsunami chip and two speakers on a strip of Veroboard to fit (just) in the top of the hood And here's the board clipped temporarily on the side of the underframe to test things out and to try and get the Tsunami programmed properly. There's also another job to do, and that is to machine the wheels to suit my self-guarding frogs. The frogs were designed to match Code 110 wheels and the wheels supplied with the locomotive are closer to Code 125. So they will all need a visit to the lathe to get their width down by 15thou. Then I might get something running. :-) Jim.

Giles. I've used the 1mm MDF from Maple Street http://maplestreet.co.uk/hobbys-catalogue-items-board-wood-p-4764.html ...and that has cut well. I did a run of S scale wagon bodies using it with no problems. Their deliveries are not the quickest - I think they keep minimal quantities on the shelf and order up on Mondays to fulfill any orders that have come in. But other than having to wait for a few days, I have had no problems ordering from them. Note that you have to order at least five sheets of the 1mm thickness. Jim.

Colin, It might be worth talking to the whoever in the 2mm Association arranged the production of their plastic based track. It might give you some idea of costs of mould making and production costs for a product which is similar to what you are looking for. Even if you get someone to design and produce a mould tool for your track base, you might also fall foul of the minimum order number required from the people doing the moulding. For the S Scale Society Parts department I deal with one company in the UK who does a lot of work for model railway track parts and their minimum order number is 10,000. Jim.

Sorry - with me modelling the Caledonian that means that there's a tendency for me to include the "n" on the end. :-) And I remember the Argyle Arcade and the Clyde Model Dockyard. When the family made shopping expeditions from Dumbarton to Argyle Street, a visit to the Arcade was mandatory, with lunch in Sloan's restaurant and noses pressed to the glass at the Dockyard at the corner in the Arcade. Back just after the war, I remember going to Forbes with my father to get model railway parts. I also think we went to Blackadders to do the same, although I'm not so sure about that. I think that Blackadders was primarily a photographic shop and my father was a keen photographer so he could have been following his own interests. :-) Jim.

I probably am showing my age when I note that no-one has mentioned the Caledonian Model Company - originally in Pitt Street but moved onto Argyll Street near Anderson Cross before closing - maybe late 60s/early 70s. Jim.

Simon, I'm using a bit of thick plate glass held in an MDF frame sat on the original alloy base of my Emblaser. The frame holds the glass about 6mm clear of the alloy base. I went for glass since I wanted to hold the work in accurate positioning using small squares of double sided tape. The MDF frame also provides a base to hold a metal square which is used to register material at machine 0,0. I had got some honeycomb material to use but that would have made work holding difficult and I went for glass instead. I also tried using MDF as the base for a cutting surface but that didn't work well - fine for doing shallow surface etching but useless when trying to cut through material. I read a suggestion in the Darkly community forum that this was possibly due to the MDF base absorbing the heat of the laser as it got close to cutting through the workpiece and prevented the cutting process. I could cut through after a lot of passes but the MDF base took a lot of punishment and I gave up on the idea. :-) The glass does accumulate a bit of dirt from the charring when cutting through and needs a bit of cleaning on a regular basis. Jim.

Nick, That is so for Cut2D but the new version of Transfer appears to be written over the previous version such that there is only one (the new) version on my machine. I'll try re-installing the original Cut2D Laser and that should re-install the old version of Transfer. I'm just off to have another bash around and see what I can find out. Jim.

Anyone actually tried the latest version of the Vectric Cut2D. I only got round to cutting bits on my cutter yesterday after a few weeks doing a lot of other things and this was the first time I had actually put the software to use to cut something. V8.5 Cut2D worked well and the new features (Cut Inside, Cut Outside, etc) made life an awful lot easier on the CAD work. Previously I had been drawing extra lines offset from edges to get an accurate edge cut with the laser cutting on the extra lines. But when it came to cutting the files I had generated, I couldn't get it to send the files directly to the new version of Transfer. I don't know if this is a fault with Cut2D or Transfer. However I was able to save the files and upload them to the Emblaser using Universal GCode Sender and all worked well. I went back to have another look at Transfer. Loading a file into it is not all that obvious but I found that if I clicked on the file name box, a dialog box appeared to let you select a file. But if you cancelled this dialog box, you couldn't get it back again by clicking and had to shut down and re-open Transfer. Once I had got the file loaded I could send it to the Emblaser. However, I then hit a major problem. My file starts cutting close to the origin at (5,5) and I found that the Emblaser seemed to be trying to cut further left than this and it stalled when it appeared to be trying to get left of (0,0). I thought I might have lost line up of the machine so I got Transfer to re-home the laser in the top ;left and tried running the file again, with the same results. This is the same file that worked perfectly using GCode Sender. I haven't got any further with the investigations and I'm not sure if I can revert to the previous version of Transfer at the moment. Jim.

I did raise the matter on the forum but the Vectric representative who responded didn't seem to be fully up on the latest version. So I've had a look at the .nc files produced and found the following. The "Kerf Width" setting sets the offset for Cut Inside or Cut Outside - i.e. the cut offset is half of the Kerf Width. The "Allowance Offset" is added to whatever offset is calculated for Cut Inside or Cut Outside using the Kerf Width value. At the moment I think the "Allowance Offset" allows you to adjust any offset value without having to mess around with the Kerf Width value. Negative values are allowed in the "Allowance Offset". Note that there is only one option for move speed - mm/sec - whereas the earlier version gave several options. I'm used to working in mm/min so I'm going to have to change for the present. :-) Jim. .

Thanks for the pointer. I've just downloaded it and had a quick look round. Setting an offset will be a big plus point and will save me having to draw offset lines in my original CAD files. With reference to the kerf width, I wonder if this requires you to fill in what your kerf width is, rather than the software setting that width. I had a look in the help file but that doesn't appear to have been updated as yet from the original V8.0 version. "Allowance Offset" also requires a bit of investigation. :-) A Vectric forum message is probably the best bet at the moment. :-) Jim.

Nice one. :-) As Giles says, you must have access to a big laser cutter. I've had the occasional thought about doing a Grampian in 1:32 scale but the length is the major consideration at just over two feet. I machine my sides from sheet styrene and I've had to make my 48ft sides in three sections to get them to fit on my CNC machine. This is the 48ft side... ...and this is a close up of one of the sections. I've managed to machine the bolections in place. I did this work last summer and other matters have put the project on the back burner. Your excellent work has got the thought processes going again. :-) Jim.

I also use AutoCAD LT or DraftSight to do my drawings and import the .dwg into Cut2DLaser and it works very well. I use Cut2D Desktop for CNC milling so I'm well used to the program. But as a carry over from CNC milling, I treat the laser beam as a very small diameter milling cutter which cuts with its centre on the required line. So if I want accuracy I generate an additional line offset from the required edge by half the width of the laser kerf and make the laser follow the offset line. Generating the offset line is easy in AutoCAD or Draftsight since there is a specific operation to do this whereby you specify the offset distance and on which side of the original line you want it. This means that your original drawing can remain accurate and the offset lines carry the adjustments for the kerf. I haven't used layers to separate the offset lines but I suspect it would be possible if the drawings got too confusing in Cut2D Laser. One point I would make is that I recently adjusted my focus and got the kerf down to 0.1mm width on 160 gm card, which I didn't think was possible, I used a video microscope and the jaws of a vernier caliper in shot to verify the width. So the offset for accuracy would be 0.05mm and I wonder if this would be applying an accuracy that the Emblaser might not be capable of working to. :-) Jim.

I also found mine was cutting slightly out of square. The belts had been set up properly according to the instructions so I had a closer look at the assembly of the machine and found that there was a small amount of play in the positioning of the brackets holding the "Y" bars. I re-positioned them by slackening the holding bolts off then pushing the brackets in the direction I wanted them to move whilst tightening them again. I've now got the machine cutting pretty square. I also tried using MDF as a cutting base but found that I had great difficulty cutting through thicker material - like 2.5mm MDF. I did find an answer on the Darkly forum where a poster reckoned that a wooden base absorbs the heat of the laser and reduces the cutting effect as the laser approaches cutting through the material. I am now using a piece of glass plate held about 6mm above the machine base and that seems to work well. For holding material down, I use electricians' tape at the edges to hold down thin card or paper or, for thicker materials, small pieces of double sided tape cut off a roll. Jim.

Trevor Nunn's new layout "Trowland" at Yate, 4th Feb. Trevor Nunn's "East Lynn and Nunstanton" at Doncaster, 11th Feb. - probably definitely the last time out. :-) Jim.

I dug it up in Streetview and eventually found the bit of the building in the picture. :-) There's a fair bit of interesting architecture around that site which could come in handy. I note that all the brickwork seems to be Stretcher bond so I assume that the buildings might be steel framed with brick facings. That third storey does look interesting. It would be good to get some closer pictures of it to see what the construction might be, I assume that the pipe which features in the picture above might just be a soil pipe. :-) Jim.