How about this?... a 3D printed coupler mount in a 3-rails Atlas GP7 pilot.
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That looks really good, wha twas it printed on?
Matt Makens posted:That looks really good, wha twas it printed on?
Thanks, Matt.
Printed from Shapeways in "Black; Strong & Flexible" plastic.
Here's the Atlas GP35 version:
Printed dual sealed-beam headlight inserts:
And the Lionel H16-44 coupler mounts & spacers (As used by Norm, THANKS NORM!):
CENTRALFAN1976,
I have a question for you. Back in your posting this past June, you have photos of several engines that have classification lights with silver painted housings on them. The chop nose GP(?) in the first photo, the GP30 that has them front and rear, and the Chessie GP(?). Are those classification housings/lights something that came from whatever mfg produced the engines, or are the lights something that you added and if so, where did you obtain them? I have a project for down the road and these are exactly what I am looking for. Thanks for your help.
Nick
It is funny how people with any technology or change have an all or nothing attitude with regards to technology and tools and such. Injection molding works great for some applications, not for others; with metal work, milling works great in some cases, forging or casting in others. Things that once had to be made almost by hand can be done by CNC machines at a fraction of the cost.
3D printing is a relatively new technology, and yet it has improved tremendously, and it has its role. For hobbyists, machines in the range someone at home can order could potentially allow that person to make detail parts, lamp posts, potentially window frames and the like, things of that nature, and depending on how they actually print could come up with some pretty fine scale things, if they are willing to do it slowly, it is just another tool in the shop, I can print a window frame on a 3D printer or make it out of plastruct or something of the same, or make it out of wood using an exacto knife and strip wood.
Is it likely that a manufacturer will use 3D printing anytime soon to mass produce body shells and the like? Even though 3D printing can work with a variety of materials, including metal, it unlikely they would be producing in mass the parts needed for an engine, and even with something like a freight or passenger car there are limits, speed and cost being big concerns. However, they can use it to produce prototypes to check out how it looks.
However, seeing how fast technology evolves there is no reason to suppose that eventually there will be rapid, fine scale 3D printing, and it could take over from injection moulding and the like, they already can print metals, so you could eventually see 3D printing used to make the parts and robotic technology to build the train, there is absolutely no barrier to this happening, and I would argue it would be a suckers bet to say this couldn't/won't happen in the next 10 years, given how fast 3D printing and robots and AI are coming along.
We could get to the point where build to order would literally be that, where 3D printing and robotics could allow you to get an engine or something for an obscure railroad that no manufacturer would produce and I would speculate at a price not all that much different than what let's say the Lionel Vision Big Boy costs.
For today, 3D is a hobbyists tinkering thing and on the high end for use in limited applications, like industrial prototyping, for the most part. 45 years ago the first home PC had 400 bytes of memory, and even the largest mainframe computers had a fraction of the computing horsepower your smart phone has, within 10 years the PC was threatening the power of mid range systems (ask someone why IBM restricted the speeds on the Intel processors their PC AT used, it was because it was threatening their system 36), 10 years after that and mainframes were becoming boat anchors *shrug*. 3D printing today is where PC's were in the late 70's roughly, but the rate of change is not the same, it is accelerating, so who knows? I'll also add that right now it can be difficult to do the 3D programming needed to run the printers, but again look at the computer world. Once upon a time it was difficult to program, but over time languages evolved, and today someone with very little training can design and build complex websites, and there are tools that allow people to write phone apps with very little effort. Eventually, tools are gonna happen where you don't have to use autocad to do 3D design and printing, potentially you will be able to 'tell' the software what you want, and it will do the detail work for you then print it *shrug*
As far as a printer being able to print 'complex scenes' like the one a poster put out there, I don't think so, to recreate that takes a kind of artistry. a 3D printer might help you make the parts,might even print them out in color, but the actual design of that scene and putting it together is more akin to art, and computers and such don't do a very good job with that, they are wonderful tools and aids, but the vision is the artists
This vendor makes figures for two of the more legendary people on the RR I model. I got one of each in O scale and the detail was very impressive. Whatever machine they use, it must be one of the more expensive ones.
They're printed in a translucent clear plastic. I haven't painted them yet and they look like ghosts!
machinist posted:CENTRALFAN1976,
I have a question for you. Back in your posting this past June, you have photos of several engines that have classification lights with silver painted housings on them. The chop nose GP(?) in the first photo, the GP30 that has them front and rear, and the Chessie GP(?). Are those classification housings/lights something that came from whatever mfg produced the engines, or are the lights something that you added and if so, where did you obtain them? I have a project for down the road and these are exactly what I am looking for. Thanks for your help.
Nick
Nick,
the ones with the silver rimmed class lights are on a Lionel GP30 (NYC) and Lionel SD40 (Chessie), and are indeed stock. For stuff like this, I would (and have) used a silver paint marker from Testor's.
I started on a inexpensive piece to try first and it was easy.
Good luck!
Bigkid, well done.
-Mario
I would be happy just to be able to print MPC, post War, or Industrial Rail level quality. Not the highest resolution, but they blend rather well.
Old thread, I guess, but... I agree, the typical 'home' 3d printer is (still) not up to the task of detailed model parts. There are materials and processes that are, however. Here's an example using Shapeways detail acrylic material:
p51 posted:This vendor makes figures for two of the more legendary people on the RR I model. I got one of each in O scale and the detail was very impressive. Whatever machine they use, it must be one of the more expensive ones.
They're printed in a translucent clear plastic. I haven't painted them yet and they look like ghosts!
That's pretty neat - Didn't realize that 'Dr Albert' had a license to operate a steam locomotive! :-)
I realize this was an old thread, but it is interesting to note that the original goes back to 2015 and in that roughly two year span just how much things have changed with 3d printing. In the auto industry it is still used primarily to create prototypes and the like, but they also are using it to build jigs and the like used for conventional manufacturing, and there are companies poised to make large scale parts for the industry, if not already doing it. I read one article where Ford was talking about making some parts using 3d on a large scale, like spoilers and the like. We also have metal 3d printing now, which could make parts outside the current nylon/plastic range of things......and a lot of this has happened since the original post 2 years ago.
One thing to keep in mind is that 3d printing is a very, very young technology, 10 years ago it likely was a laboratory experiment, something Phd students work on at places like MIT (I don't know the exactly timelines, not an expert on it). Injection molding is not exactly a new technology, its first uses were back on the late 19th century, so has had roughly 130 years to evolve to where it is today, a cheap way to mass produce plastic products, so the fact that today 3d printing can do what it does is pretty amazing, and it is changing pretty fast.
Will we all be producing trains via 3d printing? I would tend to doubt it, the process of making a train like that would be pretty intense, plus there would be a lot we couldn't print and it would be costly to buy the things we can't make ourselves, like motors and the control boards. On the other hand, combining low cost/high res printers (which are inevitably going to come to the home level) with AI based design systems that don't require experience with complicated CAD design systems, will allow people at home to do more than a bit.
I will add that large scale 3d printing could potentially revolutionize the toy train industry in other ways. In theory, if it truly does what it says it can do, it would take out the cost advantage of building the trains in China so we would lose all that entails, and the other thing would be in theory build on demand might be a different experience. The kind of build technology we have today, as sophisticated as it is, still has major limitations, so it would be too expensive to build tooling for some obscure engine that people love, but in theory the combination of large scale 3d and AI could allow them to build almost anything at a price not unlike what we pay today for high end engines. Things like the motors and the control boards are pretty universal, the drive for a typical diesel model isn't going to be all that different (I am not talking necessarily to the level of a vision line engine with the steam features or the swinging bell, I am talking more a typical command control engine), and things like the sound is basically programmed in...so you could in theory order something for a road name and for a configuration and have them build it truly on demand, much the same way the auto industry used to let you order a car to order (I don't know if they still allow this, never did that myself) and they would build that model and ship it when done. It will all depend, of course, on how the 3d technology improves, how rapidly the quality goes up and prices go down, but it if holds to what is projected, what I am describing could happen and I wouldn't bet against it.
3D printing among other things compared to injection molding (again, if the technological improvements happen the way they look like they are) is a lot more flexible, much the same way that in lean production you can build 5 or 6 different models on the same assembly line whereas the old process and technology only let you build one model on each line, this is even more revolutionary than that.
About all I can guarantee at this point is that for us home users 3d printing will become better, cheaper and a lot easier to use, and that will have benefits, like creating a broken detail part or adding detail or making scenery and so forth, and likely it will go beyond prototyping they current use at Lionel and MTH et al.
