3D printed Passenger diaphragm

Is “passenger gangway” a synonym for diaphragm ?

It’s a different label for diaphragms most are not familiar with. JohnA

revised

@AlanRail posted:

Flexible Resins now available may make printing Passenger Car gangways possible.

this is a gangway design based on flexible resins.

Then it should be possible to print the full  width diaphragm used on streamline cars?   Can this flexible resin be painted?

Or printed in the color of the car (silver, etc)? JohnA

or printed full width with color for side stripes? For O scale of course.

Alan, you have my attention. Do you plan to try and make some? Full width for SP Daylight cars in particular could be a game changer.

Pete

I am just designing at this point. The part that attaches to the car will be solid resin.

I intend to add openings or slots for round micro magnets to be inserted to keep the diaphragms on adjacent cars together.

These are flexible resin so I don't see why they can't be painted.

FormLabs says these can be subjected to repeated tension and compressive loading. I think that the stretching that occurs as the cars go thru curves is minimal.

I added the pockets for the small magnets shown in RED. The magnets will keep the two opposing diaphragms together on a curve and straight.

The brownish frame shown above attaches to the end of the passenger car doorway frame. This frame would be solid resin.

The flex resin bellows attaches to the brown frame with crazy glue.  Surprised me  that my sample flex resin could be "crazy" glued to solid gray resin. FormLabs engineers didn't know this!?

More importantly, I now have flexible resin to experiment with.

Ill keep you all posted.

Interesting. Let us know how these pan out.

I just bought some Lionel diaphragms from Hennings.  As far as I can tell, the first 'flange' (or whatever) fits into a slot in the vestibule in my Lionel SF passenger cars.  No superglue required, however no telling if they'll fit in any other passenger car.

@AlanRail posted:

Ill keep you all posted.

This is pretty cool, I'd love to have diaphragms that stayed together on curves!

Not so easily done on S curves. They would have to be overly long and very flexible.

Pete

@AlanRail posted:

I added the pockets for the small magnets shown in RED. The magnets will keep the two opposing diaphragms together on a curve and straight.

The brownish frame shown above attaches to the end of the passenger car doorway frame. This frame would be solid resin.

The flex resin bellows attaches to the brown frame with crazy glue.  Surprised me  that my sample flex resin could be "crazy" glued to solid gray resin. FormLabs engineers didn't know this!?

More importantly, I now have flexible resin to experiment with.

Alan,  I may want to try this using TPU filament... have you gotten to the testing stage yet?

i have been working on other projects but i have obtained a liter of the flexible resin.

Boy, I'll bet there would be a real market for diaphragms that actually coupled together magnetically and were flexible enough to stay connected on curves!

2mm diameter magnets.  they need to be strong enough to hold the diaphragms together

but not too strong to rip thru the flexible diaphragms magnet pockets when being flexed.

I'd love to be able to have diaphragms that looked like the real thing in motion, what a cool modeling upgrade!