tire with tread pattern
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NinjaFlex 85A TPU in Steel (Gray) is in the house. I'll see if I can get to this over the next few days... the wife's list is pretty big (actually, huge) at the moment.
Here is a tire printed with treads. With this hardness 95 of TPU I am not sure if it will help traction.
Marty
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Marty- My treads were recessed into the tire not on top of the tire, so that they don't affect the speed calculations.
Although with the treads outboard the increased diameter is not that great.
Alan
Just a thought, but wouldn't you want as much surface area on the rail? Thus, either way would reduce surface area.
Marty
Marty
this creating a custom wheel tread is a whole new concept,
maybe there should be a groove in the tread to match the shape of the rail; widened enough for curves ?
Alan,
That groove would be very interesting. But it goes way beyond my meager ability to design 3d objects. I will stick with the basic flat tires.
Marty
I wouldn't expect treads to make a difference but you can bet your bacon I'll be watching to find out! We'll have to get one of those spring loaded gauges for measuring how hard the engines pull.
The wife gave me a few minutes in the Train Room today YEA! Then, ARGH!!!! my entry level Ender 3 Pro definitely needs a little tweaking. There's a bit of spaghetti'ing from spool into the bowden cable... apparently, from the elasticity of the TPU. I'll get it but it may take a hot minute.
Getting there...
Entry Level Printer - Ender 3 Pro... and TPU.
1) Heat to 220C - No other adjustments 
2) Moved Spool so that it feeds directly into Bowden Cable.
3) Upped Heat further (228C)
4) Retraction Speed & Retraction Distance (OFF)... TPU retraction settings: None – 0
Feels good in the hand, flexible, springs back. Need to try a few more to get it dialed in... then get'em on the rails and see how they do.
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Wow, those look thick! To be fair the 3rd Rail tires are very different from Lionel's and MTH's. Narrower and shallower to be sure.
In any case, I probably have 10 hours on my K4 now and the TPU tires are hanging tough! Nice to see I started everyone thinking about making their own. There are some that are just unavailable now.
@Norm Charbonneau posted:Wow, those look thick! To be fair the 3rd Rail tires are very different from Lionel's and MTH's. Narrower and shallower to be sure.
In any case, I probably have 10 hours on my K4 now and the TPU tires are hanging tough! Nice to see I started everyone thinking about making their own. There are some that are just unavailable now.
They are thick Norm... I'm only trying to get the process down now ...once that's done, I'll get the fitment honed in. AND, I thank your neural neurons for the AHA moment and for sharing!
As far as feel goes, I am not able to sense any difference in friction/drag between the 85A and standard tires. If there is any it's probably pretty negligible.
@Dennis-LaRock posted:They are thick Norm... I'm only trying to get the process down now ...once that's done, I'll get the fitment honed in.
I thought maybe you were just printing racing slicks haha
I wonder if the resin printers will make better tires than the FDM printers. It would be interesting to see some side by side tests.
Bill,
Maybe resin would detail tread better... but, as just a straight traction tire I don't think there would be a significant difference. Even my sub 200.00 printer (with two spools of PLA... including tax and shipping) is doing a very good job of printing what we are used to using/seeing as traction tires. Yes, it took me four attempts to tweak the machine to a filament I'd never used before... but, that's not to big a deal.
It will probably take some time for folks to get a hundred or so hours of rail time on them before we really know how well they perform. I'm going to stick a few into some gasoline, PB Blaster, oil, alcohol etc for a couple of days and see how they react to that.
@Dennis-LaRock I have the large version of your printer (CR10S Pro). I guess I would have to try to dial my printer in a bit more. I've never tried anything besides PLA though.
I'm still very excited to see where this all goes.
Traction tire treads were probably just a gimmick. It certainly wouldn’t do anything for a narrow 3rd Rail tire. Tweaking the OD to stand a bit proud of the wheel diameter would be more effective.
Traction tire treads were probably just a gimmick.
Don't agree. Thinking relatively, the width of an actual car tire that contacts the road is less than a shoe contact area (High School Driver's Ed.).
Car tires have treads for a number of reasons, water shedding, ice, etc. But mostly to provide traction. Running your car with minimun tread depth provides very little traction (Discount Tires Store salesguy)
Scaling that to a toy train traction tire, the relative contact area is about the same as a car. Treads on toy train tires would, it seems, provide better traction than tires without treads.
@AlanRail posted:Traction tire treads were probably just a gimmick.
Don't agree. Thinking relatively, the width of an actual car tire that contacts the road is less than a shoe contact area (High School Driver's Ed.).
Car tires have treads for a number of reasons, water shedding, ice, etc. But mostly to provide traction. Running your car with minimun tread depth provides very little traction (Discount Tires Store salesguy)
Scaling that to a toy train traction tire, the relative contact area is about the same as a car. Treads on toy train tires would, it seems, provide better traction than tires without treads.
Only if the track was wet...
Regular tires have tread, unlike race car tires which do not have any tread at all. Regular tires are designed with tread to keep a car stable and safe in different road conditions. Race cars use tires without tread because smooth tires provide better traction in dry conditions.
If the ground is wet, however, drivers will suddenly find themselves needing the grooved tread that siphons water away from the tires. Otherwise, water will come between the tire and road surface, causing the driver to lose traction and hydroplane. The tread patterns of a tire are designed to displace water so that the tire and the road maintain contact. If you only drive on dry, flat ground, you will be fine with a smooth-surfaced tire. But since rainy, snowy days are inevitable in most parts of the country, tires with tread are the best option for safe driving.
Wow.
It's time to start loading the sand domes!
Inclement weather traction... in Vermont we ran chains.
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Coming full circle back to Cost:
the cost of FormLabs flexible resin is $199 a liter; also need a clean new tray at $298; so total cost for materials is about $500 plus shipping.
16 tires take about 40ml is 0.04 liters ; for a liter (1000 ml) I can make about 400 tires. My material cost per tire is $1.25 per tire.
On the Bay; Tires are listed for sale at $1 to $2 each usually sold in groups of 12 or 4.
Making tires may be convenient, but for me . . . not real cost effective!
Unless I can show that the life-expectancy of a resin-based tire lasts way longer than a traditional rubber tire.
I guess we'll gave to start modelling the rain so we have an excuse to use treaded traction tires haha
I think I'll stick to buying the tires from MTH or Lionel. 
Manufacturing the tires for oddball configurations like early 3rd Rail, Weaver, or Williams brass with the narrow tires makes sense, those seem to be unobtainium.
I have been printing tires with an old Anet A8 printer. The only cost I have incurred is a clogged nozzle replacement and a roll of TPU for $10.00. It took about 1 day of experimentation to get the printer and tire design right. I can now print a lifetime supply of tires for pennies. I am not sure how they might compare to flexible resin but it looks like it will work as a replacement for $1.00 on ebay.
Marty
I enjoy the experimentation... most probably do not. Like Marty, I have the printer for other projects and the TPU was 12 bucks (1/2 kilo) delivered... I could go to a bar and spend that on one Manhattan. Fortunately, filament hasn't gone up as much as booze over the past couple of years.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:unobtainium.
My new favorite word!!!! 
In fiction unobtainium is any hypothetical, fictional, or impossible material, but it can also mean a tangible but extremely rare, costly, or reasonably unobtainable material. Less commonly, it can refer to a device with desirable engineering properties for an application, but which are exceedingly difficult or impossible to achieve.
@Dennis-LaRock posted:I enjoy the experimentation... most probably do not.
I'm sure it's pretty obvious that I really enjoy the experimentation part of the hobby.
While browsing the Prusa site for STL files I can upon a file for treaded traction tires, though not for trains.
I didn't want to run a loco unattended except for the MPC era U36b for testing... just finished up 24hrs with TPU tires about 12hrs without load and 12hrs with. No difference in slip or pulling power and no signs of wear. Further testing... Replacing sloppy/worn out tires in pairs when one or both tire(s) wear out on a driver. Installed TPU sets on FM TM-2 and the Sharknose... will do the same for all locos over time and monitor. We'll see how it goes.
That is good news
That's awesome!
I think so Ray. It's now time to throw them in some chemicals along with some regular tires and see how that goes.
Here we go...
5w-20 and Contact cleaner... these (obviously) are products I use for my trains.
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Beer and smoke fluid might be worth testing too! 
Bored with doing taxes. So, Costs Analysis of TPU vs Resin, not that it matters... but, 1/2 a kilo is about 500grams. The diesel tires I printed weigh less than a gram each. Lets call it a gram... so, 500 tires. TPU costs including tax & shipping $12.03. That's, 2.406... lets round up to 2.5 cents per tire. I don't know how much electricity is consumed for the printing but using Alan's straight line Resin cost analysis... Resin seems to be about 50 times more expensive for printing tires (1.25 per tire).
I know I'm late to the party on this but does anyone have an STL file for the tires? Figure I could tweak it for tires for an old 3rd rail I have.
Thanks!
Dan
Dan,
Not sure if this helps but what I did was to take a small car model on thingverse with tires and started to modify the tire to fit on my wheel. I used a caliper to make the tire fit on my wheel and then started to adjust the width and thickness. It took some experimenting with prints but end result was ok.
Marty
I just use Tinkercad to make the .stls. Keep in mind you will probably want to measure the actual tire groove and dimension the TPU tire pretty closely to the groove's actual dimensions. You can shrink the ID a bit (0.5mm to 1mm) for a tight fit and adjust the OD for grab. The width will be pretty close. Here's a couple screen shots of the tires I made for my Y6b:
Second grab shows the part 'blown apart' to display the ID. If you try to dimension the TPU tire using dimensions from a typical unmounted tire you will find very quickly that TPU has way different material properties and it's best to make it using groove measurements. Hope this helps and further explains the thought process behind this.
Now if you buy an FDM or resin printer just to make tires it's an expensive proposition until you can print 25-30 sets for yourself. I looked at it as a sort of bonus of already owning an FDM printer for my Kadee adapter and TMCC board mount prints. A halfway decent FDM printer can be had for under $300 now and it's basically at or below the cost of a decent benchtop tool (like a mini tablesaw, modeler's mill, etc.).
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Thanks @Norm Charbonneau! I have a resin printer I bought several years ago (to make signals for subways), that's what I was planning on using to make the tires, I'm just used to downloading STL files off thingiverse and resizing them in the chitubox. I'm gonna test this approach and see what happens.
Thanks!
Dan
Tinkercad is pretty easy to use and you don't have to download anything, just run it in your web browser. I watched a couple Youtube tutorials and got the hang of it pretty quickly.
