The PA Turnpike Provo Poles (Elegoo Mars 3 Pro first project)

That's beautiful. You have a nice product there. I miss those old utility poles.

Looking good there Norm!

Nice job and I'm simply amazed at the level of detail these home 3D machines can capture/print.

Very cool!  I used to collect insulators and still have hundreds of them in milk crates.  The colors and styles are so varied. 

The most common insulator I found in the Mid-Atlantic was the Hemingray No. 42.  They came in several iterations and colors with the most common being aqua in color and having round drip points on the bottom. 

Well done, Norm!!!

George

That’s funny, I just found a 42 this weekend out in the far reaches of western MI:

All, thanks for the kind words on my latest experiments! I hope to get back at it by the end of the week. The individual insulator print needs a few more tries. I may try to suspend them with supports on the next try. Can’t stick them to the petticoat as it is very thin. May try sticking them to the sides with them inverted. At least I can get a feel for the capability of this style of printer.

Nicely done, Norm! How about doing an article for the magazine (which would also appear in the Digital Edition) with your next project? It might inspire others to invest in the proper equipment which, fortunately, is becoming more affordable.

Norm, those are awesome!

@GG1 4877 posted:

Very cool!  I used to collect insulators and still have hundreds of them in milk crates.  The colors and styles are so varied.

The most common insulator I found in the Mid-Atlantic was the Hemingray No. 42.  They came in several iterations and colors with the most common being aqua in color and having round drip points on the bottom.

May I suggest the Western Reserve Insulator Club.  Email newsletter is $7 a year.

https://www.insulators.info/clubs/wric.htm

Lou N

This is just amazing! its the little detail that fits in so well.

Norm,

Looks like those are some very realistic insulators you've created! 

Tom

@Lou N posted:

May I suggest the Western Reserve Insulator Club.  Email newsletter is $7 a year.

https://www.insulators.info/clubs/wric.htm

Lou N

I'll look into it Lou.  I have an early edition Milholland guide and used to subscribe to "Crown Jewels of the Wire" during my teens and 20's when I collected most of mine.  Like a lot of my hobbies, I go through phases and sometimes circle back and sometime don't.  Still waiting to circle back on this one. 

I have about 30 in my collection that are considered rare or at least uncommon. 

However, for a layout I would personally stay away from the unusual colors as the most common colors were clear and green / aqua.  Only once did I see a carnival glass insulator on a pole in Hawely, PA and the pole was 40 feet tall.  Even as a fearless teen I wasn't about to shimmy up that pole!

Pretty amazing there Norm, that's cool!  I used to have one of those insulators but someone admired it and I gave it to him.

Outstanding job, Norm! Thanks for sharing it with us.

Cool! Looks a little better than gluing beads onto pins, eh?

Thanks everyone. Allan, once I get a few projects under my belt I don’t see why not!

BTW, here are the links I used in my research:

https://www.hemingray.info/database/detail.php?id=249

https://www.alamy.com

https://www.insulators.info/service/provo.htm

The second from the right is a Hemingray-42 (known as a CD-154 in the hobby) in Hemi blue:

I also used some other insulators as "props" in a few of my model photos, the car is a K-Line 21" Bombardier commuter car:

BTW< collecting insulators is my first hobby, trains come in second and telephones a very close third.

Wow that looked great. If that is a first attempt, can hardly wait to see what the more finished ones look like! It is amazing what we are and will be able to do with various forms of 3d printing. Once I get my layout done, that will be one of the things I look into, would be fun making my own items.

Looks great NORM!!!!  Now can you make me a front sight in green for my Flintlock Hawken 50 cal.?  👍👍

Norm, with the complete crossbar print with the insulators, might it be possible to dip the crossbar in paint for color, then just touch up the uprights?  That might streamline the process of making these.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Norm, with the complete crossbar print with the insulators, might it be possible to dip the crossbar in paint for color, then just touch up the uprights?  That might streamline the process of making these.

Funny, that was exactly what I was thinking as I scrolled through this thread!

When I did my own power poles (all two of them), I had metal castings for the crossarms and insulators as one piece. I painted the latter in gloss green. They're of course opaque but the look wasn't too off.

Hemingray insulators were manufactured in Muncie, Indiana where I went to college.  Makes sense as the Ball company is based there and is more of a household name for glass products. 

This is great thread on a related topic to trains as they are huge part of historic railroad landscape all the way back to the civil war era.

This was a very first attempt and I probably got a bit ahead of myself in my excitement.

Painting these crossarm assemblies was very easy so there‘s no real time savings in need of pursuit here.

I am back home for a couple days so I hope to get some time to perfect the design and assembly plan. I am definitely going with the separate insulator idea for these poles. Keep in mind these were some of the largest size clear green insulators that were in regular use. They were almost twice as large as a Hemingray 42 in all dimensions. That makes the scale versions real easy to handle. I really want to capture the look of the pin inside the insulator!

One of my plans is to model the upper third of these poles (including double arm and H fixture style) as one piece (crossarms with pins and supports). I hope to capture as much hardware detail as I can. The square washer detail on the first shots was very promising, showing this fairly inexpensive resin printer can resolve fine surface relief to my satisfaction. I would model the upper third of the pole, say about 75mm. I could print socketed pole extensions that I could stack to achieve height. I am limited to 175mm in the Z (vertical) axis so I have to be a little creative.

Going all out for detail, sounds like it'll look great.  I guess seeing other pictures of your layout, that makes sense.

@Norm Charbonneau posted:

Allan, once I get a few projects under my belt I don’t see why not!

Excellent! I absolutely love the extent you go to in assuring that things are as close to prototype as possible. Not sure if you mentioned it earlier, here or elsewhere, but what is the make/model of the printer you are using? It's a subject I know little about, but I sure am interested in learning.

Hope to see you sat York in October, my friend!

Allan, this is the model I am using:

https://www.elegoo.com/product...-mono-lcd-3d-printer

I found some time to play around with the crossarm assemblies yesterday. I had to adjust the angle of it to optimize the supports and got ok prints. Not sure I want to go this route. I may experiment with printing the crossarm/pin assemblies and the supports as separate pieces and assemble them onto 1/4” dowels. This print was made to plug into Evergreen .219” styrene tube:

My curing machine showed up during the week:

Hanging from the platen. I tried some Anycubic clear water washable resin:

Separate insulators on pins. I adjusted the size of the pins to fit into the cored insulators I printed earlier:

I slopped a little RR Tie Brown on the assemblies to see things in better contrast. I am liking the insulators on pins look. Just wondering if it’s worth the hassle! I need to clean up the shop and organize for better work flow and will commence with more experiments.

I see why you wanted the separate poles, it really does look cool with the pins visible through the insulators.

Incredible as always!

Thanks man. I am learning here that I may have gotten lucky on the first crossarms as they printed flat to the platen. My crossarm/upper pole assemblies haven't come out so great as I didn't have enough angle on the part. I realized that the Chitubox slicer will highlight sections it wants more supports for. 45 degrees seems to be best right now. I have another set of assemblies printing now.

I think I finally got a reliable way of making all the major variations of these poles (plus an H fixture) along with the separate insulators. I made a dozen altogether and plugged a few of them in to the scenery to see how they look. Most likely they will end up elsewhere in the layout.

Very, very, very cool.  Did I mention how very cool these are?  Trackside poles are such a fixture of railroading and they are so often overlooked.

Those are about as realistic looking as possible in 1:48, nice job!  Just need wires...

Thanks! I thought of different ways to construct these during the course of this project. The visible pin/separate insulator pursuit yielded mixed results. If I make more of these I may just print the crossbar/support assemblies with holes and print the insulators with hollowed petticoats on a pin. That way I can plug them into the crossbars. The pins were reduced to 1mm and I broke a few during removal from the platen and assembly. I certainly learned a lot though. I learned how to orient and support the assemblies during the print and was able to get reliable results after a while. I am really impressed with the resolution of this printer. Surface relief details show up nicely. I should probably make some wood grain attempts on future efforts.

Wood grain would be icing on the cake!   Maybe a few spike holes in them, the lines need occasional maintenance, right?