Printed buffers for wagons

Kos

Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Kos » Sun Oct 05, 2014 10:06 am

Thanks Guy and John!

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Guy Rixon
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Guy Rixon » Fri Aug 07, 2015 5:24 pm

I've uploaded some more buffer designs to Shapeways. These are for LNWR wagons of the Emmett period - up to 1903, although this kind of buffer was apparently still being fitted to some new-built wagons five years later. They are the kind with 3 fixing bolts and no ribs; they predate the 1-rib design introduced by Mr. Earl c. 1907 and the 2-rib design of Mr. Trevithick c. 1910. There are 4 different lengths:

10-inch guide, 18 inches overall for 7/8/9-ton wagons with 3-link couplings;
12-inch guide, 18 inches overall for 10-ton wagons with 3-link couplings;
13-inch guide, 21 inches overall for 7/8/9-ton wagons with screw couplings;
15-inch guide, 21 inches overall for 10-ton wagons with screw couplings.

As before, the printed part is for the buffer guides, in sets of 20 guides, and you have to buy heads, rams and springs separately, e.g. MJT from Dart Castings.

I drew these up because the only equivalent buffers I could find from the trade didn't look right; they didn't represent the seatings of the fixing bolts very well and only one (indeterminate) length was available. And the printed ones work out cheaper. And because I was bored.

The buffers are available on Shapeways, at https://www.shapeways.com/shops/guyrixon. This plug is not entirely shameless: there's no mark-up on these at present so you only pay Shapeways' fees and I make no money on them. Currently, I consider these to be beta-test products and I'd welcome any feedback on the fidelity and/or operation. If anybody's interested, I'll post the SCAD source-files and notes in this thread.

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jon price
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby jon price » Fri Aug 07, 2015 10:17 pm

these look excellent, and I will have to get some as all my wagons should have them. It also makes sense to buy several as Shapeways postage and packing appears to be more than £7.00
Connah's Quay Workshop threads: viewforum.php?f=125

dal-t
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby dal-t » Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:53 pm

jon price wrote:It also makes sense to buy several as Shapeways postage and packing appears to be more than £7.00


Even more so if you want them sent to France, since charges to here are higher - Dutch company, but apparently manufacturing in NYC (probably still calling it New Amsterdam!). I've given way to temptation on this occasion, but I do object to (a) the disproportionate 'add on' cost of such high postage rates for items that are otherwise excellent value for money, and (b) the unnecessary waste of energy resources, shipping such things large distances when they are tailor-made for distributed production. Presumably in a few years (hopefully not decades) time, when we all have high-definition 3D printers, it will only be necessary to purchase the code to produce your own copies - as I am doing at the moment with downloaded PDFs for card kits.
David L-T

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Guy Rixon
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Guy Rixon » Mon Aug 10, 2015 3:29 pm

Shapeways' shipping charges are, I think, set in Euros for European customers. Currently, British buyers get a good deal because of the exchange rate.

I believe that the printing for European jobs is done in Eindhoven.

If anybody can suggest an operation that prints to 3rd-party order with lower shipping and handling charges than Shapeways, then I will check them out and maybe move my stuff there. But they must offer the same kind of shop-front. I do not want to be in the execution loop for every order.

Alan Turner
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Alan Turner » Tue Aug 11, 2015 8:16 am

Guy Rixon wrote:
If anybody can suggest an operation that prints to 3rd-party order with lower shipping and handling charges than Shapeways, then I will check them out and maybe move my stuff there. But they must offer the same kind of shop-front. I do not want to be in the execution loop for every order.


Alan Butler @ info@modelu3d.co.uk

http://www.modelu3d.co.uk/

regards

Alan

dal-t
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby dal-t » Tue Aug 11, 2015 9:19 am

Guy Rixon wrote:Shapeways' shipping charges are, I think, set in Euros for European customers.


Ah, I forgot the UK hasn't yet joined the common currency - so my postal charges are (marginally) cheaper than for you poor islanders (though still considerably more than La Poste's prices for sending a small package up to the Nederlands). And if European orders are indeed produced in Eindhofen, that makes better environmental sense than trucking everything across the pond - I guess company publicity simply lied (or was tailored to a xenophobic US audience) when it said all production was in Queens. Just have to wait for my packet to arrive and see what stamps/customs stickers are on the wrapper.
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garethashenden
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby garethashenden » Tue Aug 11, 2015 12:21 pm

dal-t wrote:
Guy Rixon wrote:Shapeways' shipping charges are, I think, set in Euros for European customers.


Ah, I forgot the UK hasn't yet joined the common currency - so my postal charges are (marginally) cheaper than for you poor islanders (though still considerably more than La Poste's prices for sending a small package up to the Nederlands). And if European orders are indeed produced in Eindhofen, that makes better environmental sense than trucking everything across the pond - I guess company publicity simply lied (or was tailored to a xenophobic US audience) when it said all production was in Queens. Just have to wait for my packet to arrive and see what stamps/customs stickers are on the wrapper.


Shapeways is a Dutch company but they have two printing facilities. One in NL and one in USA.

billbedford

Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby billbedford » Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:09 am

dal-t wrote: I've given way to temptation on this occasion, but I do object to (a) the disproportionate 'add on' cost of such high postage rates for items that are otherwise excellent value for money, and


Shapeways shipping costs are only marginally more that any other signed for, 48 hour postal rate e.g. Royal Mail special delivery.

billbedford

Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby billbedford » Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:11 am

dal-t wrote:Presumably in a few years (hopefully not decades) time, when we all have high-definition 3D printers, it will only be necessary to purchase the code to produce your own copies - as I am doing at the moment with downloaded PDFs for card kits.


How is anyone going to make a living doing that?

dal-t
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby dal-t » Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:40 am

billbedford wrote:
dal-t wrote: I've given way to temptation on this occasion, but I do object to (a) the disproportionate 'add on' cost of such high postage rates for items that are otherwise excellent value for money, and


Shapeways shipping costs are only marginally more that any other signed for, 48 hour postal rate e.g. Royal Mail special delivery.


Possibly, Bill, but more than an extremely expensive rate in the first place is still extortionate - and when postage represents more than the actual cost of an item many would-be purchasers, including me, won't buy. Plus I don't want signed-for (the factrice will leave our mail either in the box, or if too large to fit and we are out, then under our porch or our car-shelter, regardless of the 'service' the sender insisted on); and 'normal' parcel post in France usually achieves better than 48-hours, often better than 24 hours (unless it has to go via one of the major staging-posts, which builds in a 2-day delay) - and it has much more reasonable charges than Royal Mail.
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dal-t
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby dal-t » Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:42 am

billbedford wrote:
dal-t wrote:Presumably in a few years (hopefully not decades) time, when we all have high-definition 3D printers, it will only be necessary to purchase the code to produce your own copies - as I am doing at the moment with downloaded PDFs for card kits.


How is anyone going to make a living doing that?


Like any other enterprise, by matching costs to what the market would bear - works for the rest of the economy (unless you're a farmer).
David L-T

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Guy Rixon
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Guy Rixon » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:51 am

Licensing the CAD for a model is tricky if the customer needs the model in bulk. Suppose you have your own high-res, low-cost printer and I have the CAD for a chair. What do I charge you for the CAD? If I charge peanuts, then I make peanuts overall; not enough people need chairs. If I charge a lot, then only the most dedicated will pay and 99% of the market for chairs will go elsewhere.

The card buildings are different. Typically each customer needs only one of each building. Buffers and such are an intermediate case.

billbedford

Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby billbedford » Thu Aug 13, 2015 8:12 am

dal-t wrote:Plus I don't want signed-for (the factrice will leave our mail either in the box, or if too large to fit and we are out, then under our porch or our car-shelter, regardless of the 'service' the sender insisted on);


UPS, at least in the UK, won't leave parcels without signature, they have now started to use designated pickup points, usually a local shop, were they leave a parcel if you are out. When I've had to use this service I have been asked for some ID. All this is organised through the UPS tracking page, to which Shapeways gives you a link to when when they ship your goods.

Don't forget that it is the sender that has the contract withe the shipper so moaning about not having your choice of shipper is largely futile.

dal-t
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby dal-t » Thu Aug 13, 2015 9:35 am

Yep, I've just discovered that Shapeways use the ridiculously over-priced and ineffective UPS service, by which my order has now supposedly been 'despatched'. This helps to explain the charges but significantly reduces my hopes of actually receiving anything. UPS are routinely 'unable' to find rural locations in France, presumably because it eats into their profit margins to drive up the chemin rural to my house. So the best I can usually achieve, if they bother to phone me to say they're lost, is a rendezvous with their van outside the local La Poste (i.e the home of a much more efficient and cost-effective delivery service). How ironic is that?
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Philip Hall
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Philip Hall » Fri Aug 14, 2015 3:23 pm

Obviously I can't speak for France, but UPS in the UK have always given a very good service, in contrast to some other shippers. It does seem to be country related!

Philip

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Guy Rixon
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Guy Rixon » Fri Aug 14, 2015 9:12 pm

UPS delivered my buffers today. My wife and I were out, so they left the "must-be-signed-for" package on the step.

On the plus side, the buffers have printed nicely and the detail around the bases has come out looking very much like the prototype photos. I'll know on Sunday whether the depth of the bore is right.

dal-t
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby dal-t » Wed Aug 19, 2015 11:47 am

Predictably, UPS phoned yesterday (in the middle of lunch!) to say they couldn't find the house - but (helpfully?) they were near a place 'with chickens'. Spluttering through soup and croutons I arranged the usual rendezvous at La Poste and sped down there, seething a bit because I'd done exactly the same an hour earlier for a different courier, delivering goods ordered from the UK on Saturday. Anyway, irritating delivery experience over, I have to say I am absolutely delighted with the buffer castings (printings?) which were all perfect (just one disconnected from the sprue but still intact in its essential elements). Testing with an AG head and spring (the only set I could immediately put my hands on) the bores also seemed to be bang on. So, looking ahead to mounting them on wagons, can I raise the issue of painting? As I understand it, the only paint recommended for FUD is poster paint, but I've no intention of trying to replicate LNWR grey with that. In my very limited previous experience with this material, I've encountered a 25% failure rate (2 buffers out of 8 from 2 kits by a well-known member of this Bulletin Board!) and whereas one of those simply dissolved into dust on looking at it, the other did appear to melt into nothingness on application of Precision Paints B78 (although the surviving 6 seem to have tolerated it without dissent). So, does anyone have any recommendations for avoiding similar disasters in the future*?

*aka Klear, and yes I have considered applying a protective coat of that first, but its gloss finish is a trifle unhelpful for a wagon.
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Mark Tatlow
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Mark Tatlow » Wed Aug 19, 2015 12:39 pm

Have you thought of using these as masters for lost wax casting? I think that the finer whitemetal castings are sometimes too delicate for my clumsy mits, so plastic ones would be a no-no for me.

The set up cost will be circa £25 per sprue and then maybe £2 per smallish sprue thereafter (the cost relates to the weight of metal). You can get a fair number of buffers on a smallish sprue and they don't need to the be the same buffer (but you would then have the task of sorting them out).

This is who I go to - http://www.plataurumdesign.com/gc.html - the pictures on the front will be bigger than "a smallish sprue" but you get the gist
Mark Tatlow

williambarter
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby williambarter » Thu Aug 20, 2015 7:56 am

Shapeways will print in wax and use that to cast in brass for you, but according to their website the various minimum widths and thicknesses are coarser so it may not be possible to obtain the same refinement as by printing in FUD. I drew up and had printed some torpedo vents (which was about as cheap and quick as sending off for some on-the-market castings by mail order). They came out OK but do not stick down very securely (just superglue, there may be a better option), so I looked to see if they could do them in brass, but it appears possible only if I thickened up some of the edges.

William

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Guy Rixon
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Guy Rixon » Thu Aug 20, 2015 8:30 am

I've made up some of the test batch of buffers and find that the depth of bore is acceptable but perhaps not optimal. The force to get the ram fully home, tested on the 12" guides, is a bit higher than I was hoping for. It may be useful to deepen the bore by 0.25mm. More than that would probably remove the pre-load in the spring and then the ram would not return fully.

I understand that MJT get their buffer head/ram turnings from AG and both firms used to get the springs from the same factory in Switzerland which no longer wishes to play. There is a famine of buffer steelwork, but the gents at MJT expect it to be resolved in a few weeks. Anyway, what works with AG parts should work identically with MJT parts.

I paint my FUD parts with Halfords primer followed by brushed enamels. Nothing bad has happened to any of them yet. I haven't tried airbrushing enamel directly onto the resin; it's possible that the enamel thinners might cause a problem. I blacken the heads and rams with Casey Gun Blue.

Robustness: I don't see a problem with the buffer guides. I think that if one printed a non-sprung buffer with head and ram included then the ram might break due to the high leverage at the narrowest part. Nothing in the guides has the same level of vulnerability. I did think that the "ears" on the LNWR buffers - the seats for the fixing bolts that stick out - might be damaged during handling; but no casualties so far, and I've been quite rough with them. I expect the printed guides to be as least as strong as polystyrene ones adapted from kit parts. If anybody does find that they break in service, please let me know.

billbedford

Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby billbedford » Thu Aug 20, 2015 5:38 pm

Just a few corrections to some recent replies:

Despite what you can read on the Shapeways forum no spirit based solvent should be allowed anywhere near FUD/FXD. At best the solvent will destroy the surface finish and at worst it will dissolve the plastic. This material should be cleaned with water and detergent and painted with acrylics.

Shapeways has refused to produce small items made up into sprues and cast in brass.

However I have had some made by iMaterialize. They were relatively expensive at around £50 for 30 wagon buffer guides, and because of the way this company prices the brass, casting fewer guide will raise the unit price.

The holes in these casings did not cast cleanly and they need to be drill out, and since the brass is a lot harder than white metal this has to be done on a lathe.

dal-t
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby dal-t » Tue Sep 08, 2015 12:53 pm

I was so pleased with my original purchase of Guy's buffers that a couple of weeks ago I decided to stock up with a few more - foolishly forgetting the UPS experience. This time, after a couple of days when I thought I might just have had a phone call (but didn't), their 'tracking' site started saying 'recipient name incomplete or incorrect'. It wasn't, and I told Shapeways customer services so. To be fair, they were extremely helpful, and after a few e-mails to and fro from New York, Shapeways had passed on to UPS all possible information that we could provide to assist delivery (including lat/long ref for my residence, and a blow-by-blow driving guide to get here). But all it seemed to provoke was a real-life 'pass the parcel' between the UPS depot outside Bordeaux and their office in the city! Finally, today, when I had effectively given up hope, there was a phone call from a UPS driver, followed by the usual agreement to meet outside the local Post Office. The upshot is I now have the goods - and the castings/printings are, again, exquisite. I really do have to get on and put more wagon kits together to do them justice. Meanwhile, I'm trying to offset the frustration of UPS's pathetic failure to do their job by amusement that midway through their charade they sent me a 'missed delivery' postcard - addressed with exactly the detail they had on the parcel! Of course, the local Poste delivered it to my postbox without the slightest difficulty ...
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Guy Rixon
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Guy Rixon » Thu Aug 10, 2017 10:05 am

On the virtual bench at present is a complete underframe for a wagon.

D1327-underframe-render.png


This is for the poshed-up versions of SER/SECR wagons with coach-style running-gear. The SER built quite a lot of round-end opens like this and also some vans. I will be printing the body of the open wagon (became SR D1327) later. I might also do an underframe version with low-speed fittings.

This is an underframe kit, with some of the fittings sprued for separate fitting. I've done this firstly to get the printing angle right - the fittings need to face up in Shapeways' printer for the best finish - and also to make final assembly easier. The sprung buffers are best assembled off the wagon. Separate axleboxes help with rocking axleguards (which I shan't use myself but this print will be available to others). And the brake hanger need to be separate so that it can be adjusted to get the right clearance of the shoe from the wheels.

It turns out that modelling the frame itself with its ironwork is easy. The fittings are the hard part, particularly the springs. I now have a code library to model springs. If anybody is interested, I can share the library on this forum.
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Guy Rixon
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Re: Printed buffers for wagons

Postby Guy Rixon » Thu Aug 10, 2017 10:13 am

Also in development, but still at the profanity-driven stage, is a set of fittings for GER 6-wheeled coaches. This print will contain axleboxes, buffers, lamps and springs/shackles/hangers for one coach, and it's the latter item that is currently being hacked into existence.

GER-coach-spring.png


The buffers and lamps are already done. The hangers are almost done (I have to check my notes for exact dimensions and adjust), but as you can see the spring leaves are not right yet. When I can find my notes from the site visit to the EARM then it will be easy and quick to fix these. I then have a boss fight to win with the axleboxes...
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