3D Printed Model Railroad Details

Here is an update on some of the items I had printed by shapeways.com. First I have three views of the chain hoist. For size comparison, the I-Beam is 1/4" tall. I designed the crane in HO scale to to fit the Evergreen brand styrene I-Beam, and it fit perfectly. This was made with the shapeways UFD, (Ultra Fine Detail) product. This is a brittle material, but the detail is great. This material will allow a cross section of .30 mm, that works out to .012 inches. I primed them with white, and then weathered them using rust colored paint, and alcohol and ink. I still need a hook for the crane. I ordered the hooks with this order, but the hooks had a problem in production, so I have had to redraw them. I will be submitting them again in the coming weeks, so I can finish this project.



This is the dump truck bed. I had this made out of Black Detail material. Not near as fine as the UFD. I general, it came out acceptable, however, if you compare it to the drawings in the previous blog post, you can see it is missing some of the finer details. Also, if you look at the picture of the bottom, you will see that a couple of the support members on one side did not form completely. Note these were about half the cross-section that was supposed to be able to be formed by this material. Considering that that four out of six formed, not bad. You can see, and feel the layering in this product. This shows up more in this weathered picture. Next time I will order it made in UFD, or FD (Fine Detail). It will cost close to twice as much, but worth it for the extra detail. It is not like I am going to need more than a couple anyway. Just to see how it will look on a truck, set it on a military frame I was working on.

The capstan, idler guide and horizontal sheave was also made with the UFD material. Several cross-sections in this project, as well as the chain hoist, are at the minimum recommended measurements. With a coat of clear flat, these are ready to install on a diorama. Since all Shapeways items are sold based on cubic centimeters of material used, I will be hollowing out the capstan, as I noticed that I forgot to do that on this order. I am real happy with everything I have ordered from shapeways.com. I will be ordering several new items from Shapeways in the coming weeks. I will also be updating my Shapeways web store and these items will be available for sale. I will have several HO scale model railroad items available, although, I am making them for my use, and if they sell, fine, it they don't, it really doesn't matter.