Feasible or not: 3D printing individual letters for diesel letterboard NP 6513B

Well, you can't really print something much thinner than a millimeter, so they'd be raised letters.  It's also probably not going to be all that easy to get good looking letters much smaller than about 3/8" in size.

Might be a good project for a laser cutter. How thick were those letters in real life?

It might be feasible to print the print the letterboards and numbers as one piece using a resin printer.  A resin printer is capable of printing thinner layers.

Jan

Todd Architectural Models has various laser cut wood letters for sale, and one option happens to be Northern Pacific letters.  He offers various sizes down to 1/4".  He offers 3/16" in other styles, so if you need the smaller size, I suggest contacting him.  He usually attends York.

Bob

@Norm Charbonneau posted:

Might be a good project for a laser cutter. How thick were those letters in real life?

The shop drawings I've found show the Booster unit in profile with various specifications that do not include specs for the letters other than height (8") and paint color (white); more specs are contained in other referenced drawings that I've not been able to locate.

For my purposes, material thickness should be 1mm or less(?)

@RRDOC, thanks for the Todd Architectural Models link. A while ago I contacted him for this very purpose and he was unable, at that time, to produce letters smalls enough without the material curling. The 1/4" letters he offers originated with my inquiry. 3/16" would be slightly large, but I'll reach out to him again and see what he can do.

@Jan, thanks for the suggestion. The letterboard consists of letters only. Check-out the link in my original post.

Thanks for the replies. I have some research to do to follow-up on these helpful suggestions.

If they're 8" letters on the prototype, they'd be 1/6" at 1:48 scale.  I think that's going to be pretty small for most consumer 3D printers to print clearly.  I think you might want to be thinking decals or dry transfer lettering.

There are probably some resin printers with the resolution to print the whole grille with the lettering built in. That would probably be the way to go about printing it.

The "best" way would be with brass etched lettering, but unless someone already makes them, thats a bit difficult to do yourself.

I'll second Norm's suggestion for the laser cutter, and I'll throw in another suggestion of a "Cricut" type machine (or other CNC cutting machine).  Either of these methods could also be used to set the spacing so you could use some transfer tape to actually get it on the model.  I know it doesn't answer the original question, but I thought I'd throw it out there in case you happen to have access and hadn't considered it.

As for 3d printing, I'd say it is feasible for a resin printer, but probably not all that practical due to fragility and warping issues at what ever thickness these are supposed to be.

I have tried to print these very letters

to do it you would need to cut out a strip of plastic on the shell  and insert a letter bar. Individual letter like below did not print and survive.

I tried this a number of ways with a bar that had holes that fit the pins in the back of each  of the letters.