I can't believe you got that detail out of that printer! Pretty awesome! I have the same exact printer. I guess I just need to work on my settings. I'm usually printing larger objects though so I have higher speeds and extrusion rates.
What slicer program do you use?
The lamppost looks great, John!!
@BillYo414 posted:I can't believe you got that detail out of that printer! Pretty awesome! I have the same exact printer. I guess I just need to work on my settings. I'm usually printing larger objects though so I have higher speeds and extrusion rates.
What slicer program do you use?
I used what was available, so I can't take credit, I didn't get that detail... lol I used cura slicer and the settings built in for CR-10s pro
I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.
@Mark Boyce posted:The lamppost looks great, John!!
Thanks Mark,
@AlanRail posted:I have found that it's easier and faster to print parts you cannot find and connect them to parts you can find.
So I rarely print tubes I can find on Plastruct,
The base and head frame printed will have connecting tubes to fit the Plastruct tubes and holes for the LED(s)
That sounds like a great idea! My first venture into 3d printing and am just getting an idea what this can do and can't do. Thanks for the great idea to selectively print.
Here is a printed culvert bridge measues 4" x 4.75" I was again surprised at the level of detail and this was using the stock Cura slice settings. Thanks for comments in advance!
That's really cool John. I've been tempted to try 3D printing. One day......
How's the rehab going?
Bob
@RSJB18 posted:That's really cool John. I've been tempted to try 3D printing. One day......
How's the rehab going?
Bob
Thanks Bob for your comment and asking about rehab,
The rehab is overall going well, they tell me you have good days and some not so good. I have been having some good weeks and some definitely not so good. For the past 8 days I have been feeling worse with pain increasing and stregth decreasing. Yesterday morning was low point, after leaving several messages at doctors office I finally talked to them and they had me come in to check things out. No infection or blood clots, that was the good news. Bad news is they don't know if my hobbling around recovering from knee replacement knocked my sciatica out of whack. They did give me a steroid pack to take for five days. I started that last night and today had a HUGE improvement. It has been a little over six weeks since surgery so I should have been much further along by this time. I am really really glad this helped and now I can get back to physical therapy (which they stopped because I was in so much pain)
Now maybe I can stop the pain meds and have a clear enough mind to actually think and work on the railroad! 
Hopes are high at this point!
Again Thanks
John
Wow! The culvert bridge looks fantastic!
John, I'm glad the steroid pack seems to be helping already! I understand the ups and downs. I know sciatic pain can be devastating! Hopefully you will be able to get back at the therapy.
That bridge is fantastic! I never thought to try a bridge. Will you paint it?
The sciatic nerve sure can be a pain. It would be nice if humans could get an update like our phones to address some faulty nerves haha
@BillYo414 posted:That bridge is fantastic! I never thought to try a bridge. Will you paint it?
The sciatic nerve sure can be a pain. It would be nice if humans could get an update like our phones to address some faulty nerves haha
Yes it came out almost perfect, and it was from thingiverse for HO scale and my only contribution was to resize/scale it for O scale 1:48 I plan on painting it and weathering it also, which I have no experience doing, so if I mess it up then I'll print another one. It did take a little over seven hours to print. Of which I only checked up on it every 20 minutes or so while I worked on something else.
As for the sciatic nerve, I am getting relief from the steroids they prescribed and hopefully it will settle down again. It has been two years since I have been to chiropractor, hoping for another two this time around. With all new hips and knees I have run out of excuses to tell my wife why I can't do something. LOL
Thanks John
Thanks
@Mark Boyce posted:Wow! The culvert bridge looks fantastic!
John, I'm glad the steroid pack seems to be helping already! I understand the ups and downs. I know sciatic pain can be devastating! Hopefully you will be able to get back at the therapy.
Yes, Mark you are all to familiar with pain, you have the drive and spirit to plow through it where others would give up. Kudos to how much you have gotten accomplished while you entertained sciatic pain for so long. Hoping yours finally gets some well deserved respite for at least the next 30 years. You do amaze me with the quality work you do, then add the pain into the equation, your work goes beyond fantastic.
thanks for being so inspiring!
I just finished up a 26 hour print. I checked it twice an hour haha it can be nerve racking.
Please do share how the painting goes and how you do it. I have a tremendous amount of painting to do on my prints but don't know the first thing about painting them.
John, I'm glad the steroid is helping!! 
Like I mentioned in response to a comment on my Blackwater Canyon Line thread, I have been able to do most of it standing up and have the right height table to not have to bend much. That is the least painful position. In a couple more weeks, I should know if the anti-inflammatory works. An older friend from my retired men's Bible study has had great pain relief from a relatively new process that they use at some pain clinics near Pittsburgh. I have the documentation and requests for x-rays and test results filled out in case this doesn't help.
Bill, sounds to me that it is like watching grass grow.
We all know how badly I hate painting haha @Mark Boyce
Mark,
I feel your pain sciatic was the worst. Had back surgery for it and it worked wonders. Pain is gone but I have to be careful lifting heavy object to prevent it from reoccurring.
Marty
Marty, I'm glad the pain is gone. I had lumbar fusion last May. The surgery was successful, but the sciatic pain came back as soon as they had me go off the anti-inflammatory. I'm doing good for 65 in my opinion. Many friends didn't make it that far
Help! In my quest to finalize my electrical needs and start wiring the control area, it appears as I have some issues with AIU needs. The general electrical power is divided into 3 power districts. The main lines have five blocks each, which is extremely manageable with two AIU's However, add the spurs, 8 tracks for the roundhouse and probably 8 more for the yard and the total blocks to control with the AIU's goes up to 35 power blocks. Still doable until you add in the 21 switches that need to be controlled and I haven't counted the accessories. Besides purchasing two more AIU's is there another work around? I was also looking at local toggle switches for round house, yard and spur power blocks to be used in either the AIU or toggle switch would be in control. Right now the requirements are out of control. lol All suggestions are appreciated for sure!
John- I would use local switches for the yard and roundhouse tracks. GunRunner John makes a nice watchdog generator that will properly wake up DCS engines when power is applied. IIRC- he used one TIU channel for the whole 10-track yard, and just toggles power as needed. Check out his build thread.
Mark has them installed on his layout too and can share some pix.
Bob
@RSJB18 posted:John- I would use local switches for the yard and roundhouse tracks. GunRunner John makes a nice watchdog generator that will properly wake up DCS engines when power is applied. IIRC- he used one TIU channel for the whole 10-track yard, and just toggles power as needed. Check out his build thread.
Actually, the WD generator board uses the now hard to find MTH 50-1033 DCS Remote Commander as a signal generation base.
Bob and John,
MANY thanks for your valued input! I was lucky and purchased a couple of the 50-1033 remotes and with John's help, have the watchdog barking, at least on the o-scope. Not tested in real life yet.
I will take your sage advice and install local switches for the roundhouse and yard. Makes sense, since the action is there and so the operator will be close observing the maneuvers. That brings the total down to 21 for power blocks controlled by the AIU. Two main lines using 10 blocks and spurs using 11. With 21 switches that is a total of 42 AIU outputs. So one more AIU would do it and accessories! Sounds better from even the standpoint of trying to find all those blocks and switches on a MTH hand held or iPad etc...
Thanks for the help!
John
FWIW, I used manual ground throws on the switches to my 10-track yard as all the switches are readily accessible from the front of the layout In addition, each of the ten tracks has an illuminated power switch as well. I am indeed using the WD Generator on all my tracks, I have four of them feeding each of the four TIU channels.
@RSJB18 posted:John- I would use local switches for the yard and roundhouse tracks. GunRunner John makes a nice watchdog generator that will properly wake up DCS engines when power is applied. IIRC- he used one TIU channel for the whole 10-track yard, and just toggles power as needed. Check out his build thread.
Mark has them installed on his layout too and can share some pix.
Bob
John,
I installed John's watchdogs on each of my 2 TIU outputs and 3 AIUs. I am using 21 AIU outputs to control track power. I bought toggle switches, but didn't install them. Turning track power on and off with the handheld remote has worked well for me. On the other hand, I wired the AIUs to operate 13 DZ1000 turnout controllers, but have found it easier to use the fascia mounted push buttons. I have not set up routes in the remote to select more than one switch at a time. once I do that, I may find it useful to use the remote.
I wasn't quite done wiring when I took this photograph, but you can see the layout.
@Mark Boyce posted:I am using 21 AIU outputs to control track power.
You do realize the AIU relays are rated at either 4 amps or 5 amps, right?
@gunrunnerjohn posted:You do realize the AIU relays are rated at either 4 amps or 5 amps, right?
Thank you John. I was told that when I was planning and have them connected to 10 amp relays on boards with 8 relays each. It’s always good to double check.
@gunrunnerjohn posted:You do realize the AIU relays are rated at either 4 amps or 5 amps, right?
Hi John,
Thanks for the reminder! I thought I opened the AIU's up last year and saw all the relays were rated 10 amps, which I thought was not in keeping with what has been posted. I can certainly use relay boards to handle the heavy lifting and the AIU's for controlling those relays. That will not be an issue if that is what needs to happen. Old age is terrible on the memory boards in my head. I think I still have core memory, which is ancient by today's standard. LOL
So I will open again after I pamper my wife today for being such a great Mom!
Thanks
@Mark Boyce posted:Thank you John. I was told that when I was planning and have them connected to 10 amp relays on boards with 8 relays each. It’s always good to double check.
Thanks Mark,
It is ALWAYS good to double check. I just need to remember.
There were some AIU's with 10A relays, but there were also some with 5A relays. As I recall, MTH rated the box at 4 amps. Remember, even though they added 10A relays, the board layout is still the same. For 1 oz copper traces, to support 10 amps, the traces need to be almost .2" wide, and for internal layers they would have to be almost half an inch wide! I suspect there is a lot more than just the relays that figure into the power rating.
Great points GRJ!
Although that was one of the benefits of originally using remote relays to switch power to the blocks. Was just in the middle of that project using esp8266-12E and esp32 micro controllers with relay boards. So the original intention was to use AIU to set an Interrupt pin on esp32 to high and it would then, over the air, send that command to the esp8266-12E which controls a relay to actually switch power to the block. My mind went off topic when I was counting blocks and switches and came up with less AIU outputs than I had things to control. Initially I was looking for possibly a shift reg. solution or I2C. However your points are certainly well taken and as always very sage advice to look at the overall scheme and not just at a single specification. Not sure why MTH went with 10A relays if the circuitry does not support it. Could be availability or cost at the time. But it does seem intuitive that a circuit board was designed for 4A relays and then they throw in 10A. It would not be a reliability or performance factor. Sorry, that is my mind wandering again! LOL Again thanks for the big picture look.
I will still use the above micro controllers for the AIU outputs for the mainline power blocks and spurs, with toggle switches for yard and round house. Also looking into manual throws for the yard switches. I am using Ross switches, I see caboose ind. Ross uses manual throw and lighted signal. Also see all aboard trains has a nice brass lighted throw. Any recommendations???
My guess on the relay change would likely be availability or cost issues. I know that I've recently had several parts I use go obsolete in favor of identical function but higher capacity parts. They work fine in my application, but that's because the product is designed to the previous part's ratings.
All other specifications being equal, a 10A relay should be usable in any application that previously used 5A relays, just not at it's full capacity.
I am sure you are correct on the obsolete part or they got a better deal on 10A relays. I did double check and they are Omron 10A relays. However like you said the runs on the board my fry with currents above 5 amps. So I will use the original plan for power blocks using remote micro controlling 10A relays. And of course Bob's ,GRJ and Marks recommendation on manual on/off switches for the Yard and Round house blocks
.
Working on power control panel for round house whiskers, and yard tracks. 3D printed a panel that has places for ten switches, nine for roundhouse (8 whiskers and one rotating roundhouse track) and one for bridge power. Need to paint and then mount onto fascia. To cut down on AIU switch control, I purchased a manual throw from All-aboard-Trains to possibly use on the yard switches I can reach. I am thinking about using them on Ross switches, anyone have these throws and any suggestions for mounting and connecting? It is a beautiful throw, that feels sturdy with quality workmanship. I'd like to use them for sure.
Well, if we knew which manual throw you're talking about, maybe we could comment. 
I use the Caboose Industries ground throws I bought from Ross Switches.
Sorry about that all, yes more info would have been helpful.
It is : O Scale Racor/Adlake Switchstand 3 Rail TAS104
To be used on: Ross Switches #100M and #101M
These are on the pricey side for sure, however I do not need many. Just need them to work! Thanks GRJ I was also looking at the caboose throws. Not sure if I can add a link to the site here:"https://all-aboard-trains.com/index.php/movies-books/the-mechanic-detail" This may help...
Hmm... According to that site, this is the TAS 104
The one you picture appears to be this one.
Pricey little devils.
Here is a Pic I took of the item I purchased. 
I'd say that site is somewhat confused. 
Both TAS 104s look great! I hope you get what you are expecting, John!
@gunrunnerjohn posted:I'd say that site is somewhat confused.
If one looks closely, their are two descriptions in the above mentioned pictures. One is 2 rail, one is 3 rail.
Quick update. I have been working on remote control for powering track blocks, and also using the same setup to control turnouts. So far I have it set up using a ESP32 getting a signal from AIU relay then sending it to the appropriate receiver on a wemos (esp8266 family) that then controls the relay to power a track section. So I do not have to run wires from the AIU to the power blocks, that is done over the air. More info to follow.
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