The New 3D Printing Thread

You can never have too many clamps........

ROTFL, out of interest what type of glue did you decide to use? Surprisingly, I've found the best glue to use with PLA is generally Uhu (if you remember that), it seems to work better than even superglue. If you're not sure where to get it, I usually find it in Poundland of all places

Scratch that question, I just saw the Gorilla Glue bottle in the background lol!

[Super]

Curious if you tried printing the tracks whole (not split lengthwise) and have two pieces instead of four so they don't have to be sandwiched glued together or is that not possible?

Curious if you tried printing the tracks whole (not split lengthwise) and have two pieces instead of four so they don't have to be sandwiched glued together or is that not possible?

My thinking was that if you did it that way the underside would need to be literally full up with a support mesh, better to have a nice clean flat surface on the printbed.  Nigels would know better than me though.

[Super]

Would printing them vertically instead of horizontally be an option to reduce the supports?

Hope these monorails slopes works well. Will be getting 3D printer some stage to print customs tracks and piers.

Would printing them vertically instead of horizontally be an option to reduce the supports?

Backing up Chris here the solution he came up with of slicing them as he did is probably the best solution.  If you printed them flat as one piece all the 'space' (aka where the wheels go etc) would require 'supporting infill' on the bottom of the piece.  This does not usually come away without leaving marks of some type and it would be a real balls ache of a job to sand them flat again to remove these marks.  Also if you have the lines to provide extra traction on those spaces these could get compromised by the supports.

Printing them on their sides which is what I suspect you mean by vertically would then require supports between the inner lips of the track pieces or else the top edge would not print correctly, also bear in mind these are curved pieces so the bottom edge would not sit flat on the print bed which again means supports to attach it to the bed while printing.  The other issue is the parts connecting with the bed would only have the footprint of the side on view of the track, this means you run the risk of the track leaning as it grows higher resulting in a poor quality print or in a worst case scenario a failure due to it leaning as there is no solid base for it to print from.

If you were talking a straight piece or single sided piece of track then it would be a different case as that would be a far easier print to achieve easily.

One solution to the printing issues might possibly be to print them on an SLA (UV resin) printer, but the issues there are;

1. Resin printers have a much smaller build plate, although they are slowly getting bigger even the biggest domestic one would probably require the track to be printed in 3 maybe 4 pieces.

2. Most resin prints are printed hollow, partly to save cost as the resin is expensive relatively to FDM filaments, secondly if you print the models solid you can sometimes get issues with them literally cracking or in extreme cases actually exploding. The reasons for this is that the resin prints once completed are not fully cured, you need to subject them to UV lighting (or daylight) to finish the curing process. If it is hollow then you only have the outer shell to worry about and as long as its not too thick you get a full cure. If it is solid then the inner resin does not necessarily fully cure if the model is too thick and this partly cured inner can cause the outer to break due to slight shrinkage etc... The thicker the model the more likely you'll have trouble, not to mention as i said the cost. I've not checked the prices recently but typically a 1 litre bottle will cost some £30+, FDM filament if you use for example PLA is typically £15+ for a decent type, although if you want fancy colours, silk or whatever the price can rise to £30 or more for some of the more esoteric types.

3. Resin prints while typically stronger are also more brittle and do not take flexing very well.

[Super]

Wonder how the several YouTubers that make custom tracks print both sides?

No idea Super, maybe they have some special dark art to it