The New 3D Printing Thread

The white-ish discolouration in the middle of the rail is caused by my trying out the technique of washing with ethyl acetate which is meant to be a solvent for PLA and good for smoothing out any general roughness. All it did was put a white film on the surface. Maybe it was too dilute in the product (nail varnish remover) that I found in my local pharmacist?

I cannot overstate how grateful I am to Nigels for committing his time and resources to this project. Now I just need to negotiate an acceptable price for a couple or three more. We can't expect him to go on doing these things for free!

Hi Chris,

I think you'll find out the ethyl acetate wash (vapours work just as well if not better) is really for use on ABS plastics not PLA.  To my knowledge there are no smoothing techniques like that for PLA, what most people do if they want a shiny finish to an ABS print is to suspend it in an upside down jar or similar and pour some of the acetate into the lid which you then place the jar onto.  The main issue with that though is that you not only get a shiny finish, but if left too long you will lose all detail on the print, the reaction also continues for a period after you remove the model from the fumes and it has to dry/solidify for hours.  Until then it is sticky as hell and if you touch it you can leave finger prints or whatever in the surface.

It would be very interesting to see a bit of video of one of them being printed.  

Is it printed in three pieces as per https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5390179 ?

What's your rough estimate of the cost of printing one pier?

The reason for designing the pier to print in 3 parts would be to save filament and printing time as well as improve the look of the final piece I reckon.  If you print it as one piece standing up in its normal orientation you will need a lot of supports for the 'arch' or underside of the top cross-piece or it will fail as a print.  An alternative would be to print it laying face down (so you have a 'U' pattern on your build plate).  The downside to this is you may get some dodgy surface that would need fixing on the side facing the print bed and still need supports for any large overhangs.  Print it as 3 pieces and it should print easily and quicker.  The only problem with this is making sure you can glue the legs to the cross piece securely enough that it is strong enough to survive use and handling

That looks nice

Found these quad girders on thingverse, they are super cool and thought I'd share. You do have to glue the legs on but they go together super easy with some CA glue. File has a few different heights for the legs. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4627062

Nice design, I like them

[Super]

Thanks for sharing Juhs 👍

Hey guys!
While we are on the topic of sharing stuff and I got used to working in Blender for 3D printing id like to show off my track pieces for Plarail Advance. Its not entirely my idea as I saw this being done by someone who sells them on Rakuma (https://buyee.jp/rakuma/search?seller_id...91f0e0ba20) and got so excited by the idea I just HAD to do it myself! Gotta admit since im not familliar enough with japanese railway infrastructure I did use the Unitrack system from Kato as a reference here and there but I think its still a pretty nice system even if its so tiny right now



Some of the bits and pieces that I've printed out to test


3 different buffers have been printed, the right one is the first version but I changed it to the version in the middle. The left one is a completely different design


The male/male connector thats used for all connections


Buffer size comparison


All pieces have their "name" engraved into their back so I can keep track of everything. It has nothing to do with the plarail indexing for their pieces but does copy it pretty much

Already have more pieces modeled (curves, plarail to... "this" adapter and cant wait to try out doing crossings, bridges, raisers and all the other fun stuff)

Cheers

[Super]

Thanks Ron. A single rail for the Plarail Advance....thats a different idea.

Looks really nice! I've never seen something quite like it

Those are excellent models for PlaRail advance, the trains are almost as good as some N scale trains, albeit with less detail of course, so having some realistic looking track really finishes off the system if you ask me.

I'd be interested to see a small layout and a train running on it, just out of curiosity to see how well they run on it

Just WOW!

Look what I found waiting for me when I finally got home yesterday. A present from the super-generous NIGELS (along with another amazing item that I'll show elsewhere soon).



https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4874744

Maybe a Shinkansen isn't the most appropriate prop, but it was the first train that came to hand when I unpacked the bridge.