Jonathanj

The NSWGR 46 was definitely a Co+Co with a drawbar/traction link between the bogies, hence (in part) having bogie-mounted buffer beams as well. Contemporary press release mentioning such : https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/image/16410_a111_6_000246 Picture where you can sort of see it : https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3115/2533612904_edb212d029_b.jpg Presumably, the mechanical arrangements of the NSWGR 46 bear at least some resemblance to the original plans for the EM2 before those got hastily redesigned with LMS10000 derived bogies after the EM1's were running qualities were revealed. That said, the 46 is considerably more powerful, so there can't be too much in common. If taking a CIE MetroVick A ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_001_Class ) or C( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_201_Class ) class and revamping the roof to add pantographs doesn't appeal, how about these? (Sorry it's all links, I'm wary of reposting photos that aren't mine) http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T5JRUyh5DxY/Tb1iWZOxiYI/AAAAAAAAAIg/o2_HIpHNBWI/s1600/MV+Brasil+Photo+06.jpg Supplied to two mining railways in Brazil by MetroVick in 1952. 3000v metre gauge in reality, but the British loading gauge being what it is, even a metre gauge loco wouldn't look out of place here. Oh, and the original livery for at least one of the lines was a very BTC gloss black and silver with a chrome waist-stripe. I don't think anyone actually makes a model, but it's a nice simple shape, and plenty more information is out there. And you were freelancing anyway. http://vfco.brazilia.jor.br/locomotivas/SR-5-RFFSA-Rede-Ferroviaria-Federal/25-eletrica-Metropolitan-Vickers.shtml http://www.oestedeminas.org.br/2011/05/as-eletricas-da-rmv.html I like them anyway. And I'd definitely go for all-purpose Bo-Bo units, and double head as necessary... https://www.flickr.com/photos/johannes-j-smit/30409838153 J.

FIX for LONG CUTS Nice guy called Brian at Graphtec looked into the problem promptly and came back to me. Basically it looks as though this is one of the outstanding bugs in v3.0. I was running V3.0.293ss, and the latest update is now v3.0.343 - if that doesn't fix it (I haven't tried), they'll presumably get to it in due course. The known good version is still v2.9.45, which can be found at : http://www.silhouetteamerica.com/media/apps/studio/silhouette-studio_v2.9.45.exe So uninstall v3, then download and install v2.9.45 from the above link. It then does exactly what it says on the tin, follow the instructions in JCL's post on the last page and the job's a good'un - I've just run a 205 x 930mm cut (ie a touch over 3ft long) with no problems. In terms of the warranty, all UK machines are registered at dispatch, which is why the system couldn't accept my serial number - it already had it and thought I was trying to add a duplicate machine. J.

I wound up making a 'template' spacer for a motorbike wheel the other day. I say template because it wasn't suitable for use but did allow all the dimensions to be checked prior to cutting steel. What did Mr G. make the gasket out of? I can't think of anything suitable that'd go through the machine and wouldn't also be more expensive than Halfords.. J.

Since it looks as though I am following the instructions for longer cuts more-or-less right, I've now emailed the UK importer, graphtecgb, with my screenshots showing the problem and asking how you do it. I'll post their reply plus my results up here when I hear back. J.

1a) That's what I'm doing, and it doesn't work beyond 24". Even that seems to be dependent on what mat you last used. Started up the software and let it open a new file, no content. Cut the media width down to 8" to suit the portrait cutter, and you get : Extend the media area to 30", and you get : Red box is the cutting area, 24" long. I've tried put things on that extend into the last 6in, and all the lines simply stop at the virtual 'edge'. Normally this red box would still be only 12" long, but I'd previously had it set to a 12x24" mat, and I think it had retained those settings. Too 'prove' this was the issue, I then selected the Portrait 8x12" mat, which cut the cut area down to suit (sorry, forgot to grab a screenshot), and then selected 'none' again. As if by magic the area stayed at 8x12" as determined by the now unselected mat : I can flick it back to 8x24" by choosing the 12x24" cameo mat again and then deselecting it, but I can't get anything bigger than that. I've been in the silhouette website, and while it says in several places that you can run up to 120" long for materials that don't need a mat, no where can I find instructions on how. Ditto the manual. If no one else has done it, I guess it's time to email Silhouette. 1b) Thank you, done. Haven't tried it yet, will tomorrow when I have something new drawn up to cut. 2) It has done about 6-8 hours of actual cutting, all at slow speed and 'high' depth settings on 20 and 30thou material. So I'm not totally surprised. After about 4 hours there was the very distinctive sound of a stepper motor stall, and the line it was doing at the time was short, displacing everything else it did afterwards. I'm reading this as the blade being too blunt to drive through the material at the rated torque. I'm still using the blade, having dialed it down to depth to 7 with no repeat of the stall, but I think it's on it's last legs. As an aside, I don't quite agree with the idea of setting the depth to 10 for thicker sheet. After the initial stall, I fitted my unused spare blade and cut a series of identical rectangles in a range of blade depths from 10 down to 3, all in 30th material. Then I tried snapping them out to get a measure of how deep the score was. I could detect no difference 10-9-8-7, a slight change to 6, and then it got noticeably different (harder) each time. Hence choosing 7. This sort of makes sense to me mechanically - as far as I can see there's no very sophisticated pressure mechanism, just locked up and down. So if your blade on 10 (1mm protrusion) is failing to penetrate 20thou/0.5mm material, that means the tip of the blade is at the bottom of the cut, rather less than 0.5mm down. If the blade is 'out' more than that the top of the casing must be correspondingly 'up', ie you're deforming the machine crossbar to provide the downward pressure. That's fine within limits, but there'll come a point where more deformation ( = more pressure) doesn't result in meaningfully greater cut depth, it just increases the machine friction. Which I think is 7 on my machine. 3) I'll have another go just in case I missed one. If that doesn't work I'll ask the mob what sold it to me. Thanks, J. PS : Oh, and I've lurked here for a long while, just rarely post anything. Anywhere, ever.

Hi All, So I saw the thread, read it from one end to the other, and then went out and bought a cutter (a portrait for now), complete with spare blade from when I knack'd the first one experimenting. Couple of Questions - 1) How do you get it to cut pieces longer than 24"? I'm drawing in autocad, exporting as dxf and then importing that into studio. Studio seems to re-scale the dxf file to suit current page width, but I've got around that by putting an outer box of known (imperial) dimensions on - I simply rescale in silouette so that's the right size. But I can't get it to go longer than the 12"x24" cameo matt. Selecting 'none' for mat seems to restrict the cutting area to 8.5" x 11", which makes no sense to me, and I can only see 4 other options, Portrait 8x12, Cameo 12x12, Cameo 12x24 and Stamp6x7.5. I'm on a laptop and it's just occured to me that the menu box does run down to the bottom of the available area, are there more options I can't see? For reference the software thinks I'm running v3.0.293ss, I haven't updated it in case that proved to be a bad move. 2) How are people finding the CB09 blades last? I reckon I've killed my first silhouette blade after a few hours - not confident enough of this to actually try stabbing my finger with it - so I'm either going to need a boxfull, or some nice longlife CB09's. 3) where's the serial number? I'm trying to register for the warranty, and silhouette won't accept any of the numbers I can find on the machine... J.