I need a at least 8 of this styrene part for my hanging bridge project:
Any suggestions how to make it? It will be around 1 mm thick, maybe 40 mm in length and 5-7 mm wide.
Heavy sheet styrene, cut a long rectangle the size of the part. Cut out the sides. Drill holes in the ends, cut and file the ends round.
I’m not sure if Evergreen Styrene is available in your country, but they make strips of styrene. Just choose the thickness and maximum width of your part and order that size.
http://www.evergreenscalemodels.com/Strips.htm
Note the chart gives the sizes in both inches and metric.
These look just like the drawbars for the Walthers MU doublestack cars.
Two ways to go here.
If you can find a source for RTV silicone rubber and some resin casting material, make one master from styrene, then make a mold and cast as many as you want. MicroMark has the stuff, but I don’t know if they’ll ship it to Sweden. You might try a major art/craft supply house there at home. I use the stuff all the time to make multiple copies of parts. It’s very easy to work with and you’ll find all kinds of uses for it.
Or, the hard way, locate the right thickness styrene, either buy or cut it to width (scribe with a sharp tool several times and then snap it off). Now here you can go a couple of ways, make each one individualy or make them in groups of 4.
Individually: print 8 copies of the pattern, cut them out and glue them with white glue to pieces of styrene. AS you siad these parts will only be 1mm or so thick, you could rough cut them out with a pair of scissors and then file or sand (sanding block) them into their final shape. Stack them up, clamp them and drill the holes.
Or copy the shape of the piece onto one of the cut pieces. Make a stack of 4 pieces (with the pattern on top, even better also make a pattern on the bottom piece) and clamp them together at one end. Drill the hole, then use a coping saw or file(s) or a sanding block, create the shape of the pattern. keeping everything lined up with top & bottom patterns. Once you have one half done, move the clamp to the other end and repeat the process. Do the whole process again for the 4 other pieces.
This will take some time and patience, that’s why I prefer the casting method. If you do go the casting route, we’ll be happy to help get you started making your first molds and castings. Good Luck!
Once you find the appropriate thickness in the styrene and rough cut the size, I would reccomend stacking and drilling the holes in all the pieces plus a few spares. Run a brass rod through as a dowel and shape the pieces all at once. File, power sander, drawing accross sandpaper or whatever method suits you. This will give you all the desired pieces and will be virtually identical. Why go though the work on each individual piece having to try to match the origional pattern.
I am going to take a shot in the dark and assume these are the hangars for the Royal Gorge hanging bridge.[;)]
I’d first cut a rectangle and then go at it with a Dremel to shape it. Once you get the hang of it, I like the idea of shaping a bunch at once.
I like the idea of stacking several at a time and filing and drilling them to shape. You may want to make a master in brass to put on the top of your stack to give a template to work to.When drilling the holes after dilling one end I’d drop a rod in to keep all the peices in register while you drill the other end. Casting them sounds good too.
Yup, cut a bunch of pieces to length, and tack glue them together, Drill through them all at the same time, and file the sides all together. Will be faster than making 1 at a time, plus they will be more uniform.
–Randy