My build ( 3D printing ) of a scale wild west 4-4-0 locomotive

@C&O Allan posted:

I did go back and edit the past posts.  Please let me know if there are still ones with issues as I can see everything correctly.

Looks great! Excellent modeling! You really did a first-rate job

Thanks Allan. 

Here is the last post until next week as I have family coming into town.  I completed the cab printing.  It came out pretty rough, but since how it needed to be printed (inside to outside), I think it came out ok.  I'll need to use a fair amount of filing and filler to smooth everything out, but I think that will go pretty well to make it look good.

Next week I plan to work on getting the boiler mounted to the drivers and doing a full test before I print out the rest (cowcatcher, smokestack, etc.).

Hi All,

I hope everyone had a good weekend. 🙂

I'm back at the model again. I started to get the engine ready to run by figuring out how to do the center rail pickup.

I ended up taking the stock pickup slide and modified it to have the MTH pickups mounted to it.

I took out the springs on the MTH pickups because the springs from the original slide pickup holds them on the rail.

Here are pictures of it:

Lastly, I got a couple of the General passenger cars which I will strip and repaint:

Tomorrow I will start the drawbar design so I can connect the engine and tender so I can set up the electronics.

You are really cranking this out!

So I have good news and bad news.

The good is that I got the engine bar on and was able to get it set to the tender length (the drive rods are not the final I made today).

Now for the bad news.  The motor assembly will not work.   I got it set up with the drive rods and when I gave power, it ran!

But...

The motor got too hot to touch after about 20 seconds, so it is too much for that drive. 

So, now I'm back to square 1 the motor assembly.  I'm now thinking of getting the older AC Motor Gang Car.  It has the same wheelbase, and the cab will fit around the motor.  So Other than this, I don't have any other idea how to get a motor in place that won't burn up.

I should be able to do this, but it won't be as pretty as I hoped.

Oh well...

I'm a little late to the thread but is the motor getting hot because of gear ratios or something?

I'm really impressed with this build! I just did an ingot buggy for my steel mill. I don't know about you but I've mostly enjoyed designing and producing my own equipment. It's a challenge but mostly a good challenge.

@BillYo414 posted:

I'm a little late to the thread but is the motor getting hot because of gear ratios or something?

I'm really impressed with this build! I just did an ingot buggy for my steel mill. I don't know about you but I've mostly enjoyed designing and producing my own equipment. It's a challenge but mostly a good challenge.

I think there are a lot of things.  The gearing goes directly from the motor worm to the gear on the drive axle which is not big to begin with.  It was also designed to run one set of small wheels (almost no torque needed), not large ones and multiple at that which has a lot of friction.

So I have two options.  The first is to see if I can use a Lionel 0-4-0T LionChief engine that I got reasonably.  If the wheelbase is correct, it should be a great way to do it as I get everything including the electronics.  The second is what I put above - the Gang Car which I also got a really good deal on.  But with that, I would have to figure out how to change the wheels out when the axles don't match.

So once I get those, I'm hoping one will work and I don't have to make too many changes.  I really hope the 0-4-0T works so I can use the existing wheels/motor/electronics and I don't have to change hardly anything. 

But I agree with you - I'm having a blast creating this.  I am using a very simple modeling program (free) that is letting me do everything much easier than if I had tried using NX I have at work.

Thanks for this great 3d printing post.

My 2 cents:

I would try other motors first.

You may just have a bad motor, not a bad design.

I am using a very simple modeling program (free) that is letting me do everything much easier than if I had tried using NX I have at work.

What is the name of that modeling program?

It is DesignSpark Explorer (the free version).  Just search on that.

It lets you sketch and then pull/push your sketch. It also lets you rotate your sketch which is how I was able to do the whistle and the designs on the saddle/cowcatcher.

You don't have to set up references or anything like that - it is automatic.

Well I would have to break out my notes from college to remember how to specify a motor. It's been a decade since I had that class lol I thought maybe you had a big gear box in front of it but it doesn't sound super steep. Regardless, it's exciting watching something come to life like that. You'll figure the motor out, I'm sure.

I learned NX at college. I liked it but it was one of those programs that is only enjoyable once you learn it in my opinion. It really blew me away in my upper level CAD classes when I learned the advanced features.

These days I use the maker version of Solidworks. Little over $100 a year for Solidworks professional is a steal! I'm lazy; I model real world items at their real world size. Then I use the scale command to automatically shrink them to 1/48 scale haha

This is really great work though! I learned a lot from reading the rest of the thread. Can't wait to see the finished product.

So I'm back.  🙂

I got a couple options to replace the motor/driver option. I'm now going with a Lionel LionChief 0-4-0. The wheel length is 2mm longer than the previous.

I do have to make a change I hope to do this weekend.

The motor sticks too far out the back, so I'm going to make a change to move the front drivers to the back. The axle is just past the motor and there are screw posts, so it shouldn't be too hard. I will also reposition the pickups to center them. Finally, once moved, I will cut away the front where the driver was.

Also, I'm excited that the LionChief board fits in the tender so I get the remote/Bluetooth!

Stay tuned...

Hopefully you can find some time to get it done. I'm also trying to find time to work on my own project.

Did you intend to use the Lionchief board or was that a happy little accident?

I didn't intend to use it, so it was a happy accident I found someone selling the engine without the set.

Hi All,

Things have slowed down as my daughter is back in school and doing all of her extra-curricular activities (softball, band, more softball, etc.).

With the holiday this past weekend, I was able to finish changing the motor and redesigning the boiler to fit.

What I started with is a few posts up.

I then moved the front wheels to the back:

To do this, I made a new attachment to hold the wheel.  It actually will work out better than I thought because I now have a way to connect the under the boiler detail.

Here is what the attachment looks like:

Lastly, I installed the 3rd rail pickups which worked great as I already had mounting holes lined up (I just had to expand the opening of the pickup assembly.

Next came the harder part.  Due to the new Engine setup, I had to completely redo the underside of the boiler.  I took the original and started cutting/filing to try to get the general shape correct:

Once done, I printed out the new version.  I also realized why I was not getting a circle - I was exporting a Medium quality .stl file.  I then changed it to Fine to fix that.

Here are the two (old and new) to see the differences:

So now it is on to a worm-gear cover as it is now exposed that will also hold the mount for the drawbar - it will also include the bracket to hold the cab on the frame.

Getting close to where I can get to connect and do a trial run!

Friday Update:

I worked from home several days this week, so I had time to work on the engine.

I completed the base for the cab that includes the mount for the drawbar.  It also has a channel that I will run the wires though - it will have a top cover to hide them.

Here it is staged on the engine:

The next thing I did was to create the side skirts to go around the wheels:

The next thing I plan to work on are the Main Rods.  I purchased (but not received) are the ones used on the Lionel 746 Engine as they are the perfect size for what I need.

I will change how they mount to the guides so it looks more like the one on the Jupiter 4-4-0 (which will probably be my template for the painting).

I hope to start this next week.

Until then...

Your project is looking great!  A real challenge of design and mechanical engineering.

Alan,

Thanks - I'm enjoying being a Mechanical Engineer (my degree) instead of an Engineering Project Manager!

For today's update, I mounted the pickups (center rail and common) and plugged them in (also with the motor) to the LionChief Board.

When I tried running it, there were issues due to too much slop in the wheel I moved.  So I spent the afternoon redesigning the wheel well so it has a smaller diameter (1.5 mm more than the axle) in all directions.  I also nested the two plates so the axle rest was round.

So the are being printed as I type and won't be done for another couple hours.

For those of y'all who print, I highly suggest doing it on glass - it is the best surface I've found that has great adhesion for the first layer of the plastic bead.  When I got mine, I just clamped it on the stock platter and adjusting the Z axis position.

I won't have free time until Friday to get everything back together to try out.

I'll post how it works and if it does, I attach a video. 

@C&O Allan posted:

Thanks - I'm enjoying being a Mechanical Engineer (my degree) instead of an Engineering Project Manager!

Preach! I hear that.

Where do you get your glass?

I got the glass from Amazon.  The biggest thing was getting the correct size.  From the picture above, I'm holding it on with binder clips.

After I set the new Z offset (moving the default position of where the platter will be after the glass makes it higher), when I'm ready to print, I first clean with a general cleaner.  Then I move the platter up using the Z offset utility, but I don't change it.  I use a business card and move the print head over the various areas of the platter where my print will be to make sure I have to actually push between the head and the glass meaning the head is touching it the card, but the card can be pushed through.  If too big or too small a gap, I use the platter screws to do the fine adjustments (which I rarely have to do).  But I check this every time just to make sure.

Then it is print away.  Once the print is done, make sure the platter (glass) is cooled so the print will pop right off.  If warm, it will still be stuck to the glass.

I installed a bltouch sensor to mine,  no more having to manually level the bed with paper.

We have liftoff (well, movement)!

I put in the new wheel well and tried running the engine and it worked!  Next up is making the tether so I can put everything I've done together. 

And Part 2.   The Tether is done and I connected the sound (I can live with 1 chuff per revolution - I can always unplug it if I want).  The sound is quiet because I have not drilled the holes to let the sound out yet.

I'm really happy with how this is turning out!  The next step is getting the Main Rods in place.  That will take a while since I have to figure out the connection rails at the steam chest side.

I'm back with good and bad news.

The good news is that I figured out how to attach the drive rod to the pistons.  I designed it as a slide like the 4-4-0 Jupiter has.  I painted the boiler and steam chest so I could have those with a first coat before I connected the rods to hold the slider.

This is very rough at this time as I'm finishing the design.

Now comes the worse part.  It was running pretty rough with the front driver moving all over the place.  It had too much wiggle-room so to speak.  So I decided to redesign the driver holder using the one from the rest of the chassis I cut apart.

Here you can see the recesses set up to hold the ones I cut off the chassis.

I don't have a pick of them installed, but they are there now.  Once installed, there was no wiggle in the front driver, so I thought I was golden when I got it all together.

But that is when it became the bad news.  The Engine wouldn't move - it seemed the driver was jammed.  When I took it off the track, I tried rotating the front driver to see what was up (since that is all that changed from the previous version) and they were pretty much jammed.  After I removed the rods, it rotated fine.

Then I noticed something - if you look at the video in my last post, you will notice that the side rod is not going in the same direction - it is almost an oval.  That told me that there was something wrong with the play of the rods connecting the two drivers together.

Sure enough, when I took it apart, I noticed that the driver I moved was too far away from the driver connected to the motor which prevented a smooth rotation - it was getting held up on the shoulder screw.  It wasn't off by much, but 3mm in two directions (each side) is a lot.

In this picture, you can see the hole on the right side is not centered.  Also notice that the wheel counterweight is not even in the same place - the one on the right is slightly counter-clockwise making it worse once they match position.  You can actually see it in the two pictures above as well.

So now I will design new side rods that will be the correct the length issue.  But on a better side I'll get to change the shape to be more than a look of a piece of metal.  The drive-rod has more definition, so I'll make the side rod match.

But that will be in the future - I have other things I have to get to, so I don't know my timeline yet.  But I am working on it, just slowly.

I've finally fixed the rods and I have movement again.  There is a slight hitch, but I'm thinking that it is because the axle is not square with the frame.  At this point, I don't know that I can fix it (I might try later).  But with some weights added, I've got it running pulling its consist.  Everything is just in place and not glued down, so it is kind of a mess, but it gets the idea of what I will be getting at the end.  I'm pretty happy at this point. 

Sorry for all the mess on the railroad.

And I'm back.

I was able to finish the chassis work and verified everything is where I want it.  So I'm ready to paint the underside and start printing the details - almost done. 

So what I did since last time was set up the mounts to fasten the boiler to the chassis using the wheel fenders.  Then I made  the crosshead holder to keep it in place.

Lastly, I made the front end of the driver assembly that angles up to the boiler - you can see the screw holding it on under the boiler below:

Here is a picture of the overall length before the cowcatcher which is printing as I type this:

And lastly with the consist behind it:

Hopefully I can paint tomorrow, but I'm not sure with the weather.

Until next time...