Greengiant

Yes. Martin

Hobarts for ply and MDF, then Trotec for their ADA plastic sheet after being recomended these by Giles. Martin

Shipment company do it all and send you the bill. Just had my bill today £252 VAT, £33 Import duty and £11 Disbursement. Martin

Scale is 7mm to the foot. Interesting about Laserweb, I have got used to it but it is very laggy, which surprised me because I have it on a couple of quick Macs. Lets hope the new software has some decent documentation, wasted a lot of time looking for information dotted all over the place. I ended up making my own manuals for reference. To be fair to the software it was designed to control a multitude of machines, having machine specific software should speed things up. Martin

It has been a love hate relationship so far with Embalmer 2 but hopefully, fingers crossed, we are getting somewhere. Had a couple of issues now, first is struggling to get good, consistent cuts, the second is the laser turning off mid cut. Eventually sorted the cutting problem by doing a deep lens clean, once I had found the manual to do this, although the outside surface was not the issue, I had kept that clean by light cleaning. The problem turned out to be a small rectangle of fogging, although it looked like it was on the lens, it was in fact on one face of a prism, where they face each other. Not easy to clean, but managed it using the small tapered offcut we had to remove from the air assist hose, this I wrapped with some lens wipe and it was just flexible and soft enough to get between the prisms after a couple of goes. Very hard to see in this photo but the red arrow points to were it shows, but it actually located between the prisms, accessed by the gap to the left of the arrow line. The switching off laser has been traced to a temperamental lid safety switch, have been in contact with Darkly and it appears I am not the only one with the issue, their suggestion was to gently twist the lid sideways left, which did work for while, but then stopped again mid job! My work around so far has to to put a 2kg weight on the corner of the lid with the troublesome switch, not ideal, but it has at least enabled me to progress with cutting today. So far a factory side wall has been cut out consisting of three laminations. This is them clamped together, one of the window apertures is filled in with breeze blocks, at least that was what I was trying to achieve. A close up of the blocked in window. The apertures are designed to take Port Wynstay resin cast window frames, the cills I have yet to cut. I spent some time preparing all the template cutter guides for all of the eight types of window I have, tweaking them until the frames will stay there without glue, although I will glue them. I also managed to cut a suggestion of the return courses on the brick edge, which just shows up in this photo. I am quite pleased how this turned out. As others have done, spent a bit of time creating the interlocking corner cuts, which turned out to be a lot easier than I expected, chuffed they worked first time. Gradually building up a library of elements which should speed up future building drawings, the only downside, now that I am getting there, is someone in the household has noticed so now I am cutting out bl**dy snowflakes and table placeholder names! Martin

LG Miniatures do a range of tools and fire irons see here. Martin

If it is of any interest I have MRJ issues 115, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122 and 123. I would accept £25 +pp for all seven. Martin

Tried again this morning and it is definitely a problem with the lid contacts, wiped them, blew them out, pushed and prodded and eventually got the laser to enable. Managed a few cuts but on some the lid contacts failed and switched off the laser mid run. Those that I did get at last gave me a full depth cut through the 2mm MDF, but it is so unreliable at the moment that for time being will leave it alone which is frustrating because I have a number of projects i need to get going with. Not had a response yet from Darkly to my request ticket, but I have updated it with my findings this morning. They have responded to some of my Laserweb queries on the forum which has given me useful information. Martin

Yesterday I ran tests on 2mm MDF with my Emblaser 2, eventually getting it to cut right through with 3 passes at 100%, 0.15mm beam and 150mm/min. This morning even 4 passes will not cut through. Tried another run slowing it down to 120mm/min to see if that would work, part way through the first cut the laser light switched off but the machine kept on tracking. Restarted the Emblaser 2 and Laserweb but now the enable button does not work! It will run the job but without the laser. I have put in a support ticket with Darkly, hopefully they can come up with a solution. Finding this very frustrating, I have a number of buildings to cut out, at this rate I will need to go back to a scalpel and plasticard. Martin

I joined a D&E Facebook forum (with 1000+ members) recently where the standard of modelling is superb but the general opinion was that the Guild didn't cater for their interests. Randall Do you have the full name of this FB group? Sadly the searching on FB is not the best, the only group that came up had 126 members, all the rest were models of a different sort along with a selection of various fueled vehicles! Martin

Managed to cut some squares and circles in 3mm ply today, so another step forward. Things I need to remember is make sure laser is ‘enabled’ before cutting and open a window and put the extration hose out! Martin

Had my Emblaser 2 nearly a week now and so far not managed to actually produce anything! I have had frustration after frustration and banging my head against the wall trying to make some progress, is it just me? My first issue was trying to maintain a USB connection to my Mac, eventually solved by working my way through the various USB choices and ending up with the one with the least likely name. Got the calibration test done and bowled over with excitement ploughed on creating a test file. The file was created in Illustrator CC 2017, consisting of some lines ranging in thickness from 0.1mm to 0.5mm, some squares, some circles from 3mm to 20mm and some simple text. The lines were also duplicated and outlined to form effectively long thin rectangles. Used save as to produce an svg file, this I imported into Laserweb, or so I thought, the import box saw the file but imported nothing, got a 'this file has serious errors' message, so made a new file with just one line, used save as, went through the same import process and again nothing. Thought I would try exporting the original file as a dxf file, this imported, but I got the the outlined lines and not the original lines, the squares appeared but not the circles, the text appeared but also had some formatting text included as well. Had a thought and tried export rather than save as when creating the svg files. This imported with a message 'this file has minor issues', the original lines and outlined lines came through, although the original lines all came in at 0.1mm and not their various sizes, the squares and circles were nowhere to be seen! It really should not be this difficult, looks like I have a lot of searching to find a solution, otherwise I have a very expensive doorstop and a pile of laser materials I don't need. Edit Had a nose around the Laserweb page and found a setting that needs to be changed when saving as Illustrator files into SVG, under Advanced Options, the CSS Properties need to be changed from Style Elements to Style Attributes, this I did and now the file imports into Laserweb with all the lines, although the various sized ones are now all 0.1mm, which won't really be a problem, the outlined lines are all the correct width and filled, the boxes and circles have appeared at the correct size, but the text is just a grey box. I suspect I will need to convert the text as outlines for that to come through which is fine. Now to progress further and see if I can get it to cut something Martin

Geoff Taylor recently sent me the link to his new website which features his version of the station in 4mm. www.geofftaylormodels.com Martin

Just had an email from Darkly, my Emblaser 2 should be shipping next week Martin

A very good show. For those who were not there around 4pm on Sunday when the Vistors vote result was announced it was: 1st Denton Brook 2nd Arun Quay 3rd Bridport Martin

Pleasure as always Giles, see you at the next one. Martin

Still for sale, everything is boxed up and in storage. Martin

Bringing this thread up to date. On the RotaYard the main machining of the bearing blocks is now complete, but we do have three bins of swarf now! The gear wheel is a stock item, so that saved a lot of work. We have mainly been sticking down sleepers. A couple of jigs were made to match the spacing of Bredgar sleepers, then some were slightly skewed and offset, again to match those at Bredgar. When the glue is dry the sleepers will be lightly belt sanded to ensure a good level surface for the rail. A while ago we received a lot of packages containing cast chair baseplates, slide chairs, pandrol clips and baseplate bolts, all made from our own patterns. A close up of some the castings. We have a good few evenings work cutting these from the sprues and cleaning up. We also have a website for the layout www.fsij.co.uk where you can follow our progress in one central point, although I do need to do some updating to bring it to where we are now. Martin

Just been checking, it is a year ago today I placed my order for an Emblaser 2. Happy Birthday me Martin

Now the RotaYard progress. The main construction welding is now complete and the main drive shaft bearings have been sourced. An overall view of the RotaYard in position on the two supporting baseboards. The main drive shaft should be machined to size tomorrow if all goes to plan. Focus turned to the end disks which support the gondolas and provide the drive to them. Mark 1 end plate. Aesthetically this was not ticking the boxes for us, so back to the keyboard and revise the design. Welcome Mark II. This one is a lot better, having been run and 'proved' in the CAD simulation the files were sent away for water cutting in aluminium. A few days later a package with two disks arrived. We mocked them up with a broom handle acting as a temporary drive shaft to support them. The gears for the drive on this are due to be delivered early next week. Here is an overall view, on the gondola are full size 16mm CAD drawings of the stock of the longest train we will be running on the layout. To give some idea of the size of the RotaYard, I placed a 7mm standard gauge wagon on the gondola. Once stock leaves the final scenic board it will pass onto the RotaYard support boards where before entering the RotaYard it will cross a loco size traverser. To support and guide the traverser we bought some lovely bearings and guide bars, off hand I cannot remember the correct name for these, but they are very free moving so will need very little power to move them. These are actually shown upside down and not at the correct height or position. Martin

Bringing the thread up to date with a few posts on progress so far. Lots of cutting and machining of timber has taken place to get 350+ sleepers. Plus a few longer ones for certain parts of the points and switch lever mountings. After a lot of this cutting you get a little bored and do daft things! Those sleepers that did not make the grade were not wasted, they were used to test the strength of the glue we intend to use and have something to develop the painting and ballasting techniques. Thin beads of Titebond III was first applied to a piece of scrap ply. Sleepers were pushed into this, weights laid on top and left overnight to dry. Next day they were attacked with a wire brush and pleased to say they all firmly stayed put. Then some initial colouring trials were started, these pictures are of a very early stage in the colouring process. Martin

All held up trying to get EU type approval or whatever it is called. Had mine on order since last July, so next week will probably light a candle on the 'One year waiting' cake! There should be some information here. Just found this thread. Martin

Construction has at last started on the final two boards of the layout, these are the ones that will be supporting the RotaYard. The mid-joint cross pieces get quite thin at one point, this has been compensated for by beefing up some of the other surrounding structure materials. This is a mid-joint cross member with all the machine done. One element beefed up is the 3mm ply sides for the front channel, these have been upgraded to 12mm square softwood. Then topped off with 12mm ply rather than 3mm ply. This did involve some thinking on how to get it all clamped while the glue dried! Now the scenic boards have the foam in place and carved to shape, some form of safer storage was needed, so to this end some old bits of Dexion came in handy to make a supporting frame for the boards. Now the basic structure has been made for the RotaYard support boards, more detailed construction can take place using the main metal frame as a guide to where all the elements should go. We will be welding on some adapted Spur shelving brackets for the main uprights. Here you can see the beefed up front beam of the baseboard supports the frame full length, some softwood timber will be machined to support the full length of the rear frame. Also the CAD of the RotaYard can be seen on the laptop, which we use not only to create working drawings for the construction but also to check it will work and all clearances are sufficient. Martin

The final scenic board now has the foam cut ready to be glued in place. The prototype gondola support bracket has been CNC milled from plywood and has passed all weight and stress tests. Here shown with some stock in place to show clearances. Now we can go ahead with production of the twelve supports and construct the RotaYard. Martin

Baseboard construction continues and ground form starts to make an appearance. Final piece of scenic section trackbed now installed, four of the six scenic boards are in this photograph. Using a lot of this stuff to stick down the foam. Gorilla glue expands to three to four times its size and also acts as a filler that can be carved, sanded and painted. Sticks like the proverbial to a blanket! What you must remember to do is make sure location dowel holes are covered at the rear! Some of the boards with foam waiting to be stuck down. Trunking for the wiring is also installed along with aluminium tube to hold the point rodding. Very therapeutic shaping this with a Surform, makes it very easy, sometimes too easy. CAD of the RotaYard main support frame. This has now been welded up and ready to be used as a guide when building the plywood baseboards in which it will sit. The RotaYard gondola supports are out being CNC'd at the moment. Plywood for the RotaYard support baseboards has been machined and now awaits assembly. All of our patterns for the track plates have been cast and the brass castings have arrived. The rail which we imported from the USA has also arrived. Cutting sleepers is the next task, then we can start sticking these in place and build the track. Martin