The New 3D Printing Thread

I don't know if you recall, but some time back one of our members posted about some track they had designed for use with the PlaRail Advance range of Tomy trains.  Well at the time I said I would be interested in printing some to see how good they are.  Well I've finally found some time to start looking at this and have printed one of each type of track piece apart from the points (or turnouts if you're american lol).  They seem to have come out pretty good and will need only minor cleanup, the only thing I think that needs working on are the little connectors that join the track pieces together as I have found the sample a bit of a tight fit.  This is not unusual and is maybe just down to the printer and/or the filament as sometimes you can get slight expansion of parts if there is something that doesn't work 100% perfectly.  I'll be trying printing some at 95% width and see if this fixes the issue, other wise it will mean lots of sanding to adjust them when printed at full size.

Hey Nigels, first of all thanks alot for giving my tracks a test. They are a tight fit because the Plarail Advance trains are very sensitive to imperfect track. Im not sure how bad it is on your end but for me its still possible to connect the tracks. Looking at the pictures you send the tracks seem to have very harsh imperfections, maybe your printer is ready for a service? Maybe your filament needs a drying session? It looks all so mushy to me. My printer prints edges quite well. Maybe just a few tweaks to the slicer could already improve it.

Cheers Ron

Thanks for the input Ron, the problem was with the filament not the printer.  It's a reel I opened months ago and despite being stored in an airtight bag with desiccant it's still been a bit of a pain, but to be fair I was just testing the prints so wasn't too worried about a perfect result this time round.  The reason I'd not used that filament previously was simply that straight out of the box it was a bit iffy and not performing well, poor winding causing some near jams at points due to it catching etc...  Also even when it was running smoothly the performance was not great.  So it had been put to one side to be used for 'test' prints.  Maybe a bit unfair, but at the same time when running test prints I'm looking for sizing and functionality primarily.

As for the fit of the connectors, it was such that they simply did not fit at all, maybe I could have put them in place with a hammer, but that is probably a bit too tight for me.  Having re-printed some at 95% width it fixed the problem, they are still a tight fit, but one that does allow them to fit with only a small amount of excess force

Out of interest did you ever make or consider making a bridge/slope?  If not I may have a go using the large straight as a starting point.


Cheers, Nigel