If you had a 3D printer, what would you make?
Sorry my thing posted twice.
I would probably make some brick warehouses or some NYC cabooses.
shell for your favorate steam locomotive because it’s never been in production
I’d make passenger car interiors. The basic unit would be one side of a coach, maybe 10 inches long in HO, with passengers in most of the seats. Another model would be tables in a dining car, complete with placesettings and passengers on chairs. Scale the models down for N, or up for O.
I see two problems right now with 3D printing. First, there’s a lot of “setup” to make a model, I would guess. It’s not a practical way to make something you only need one of. Second, the resolution isn’t quite what we’ve come to expect for our details, so you’ve either got a lot of sanding and smoothing to do, or you’ve got to hide it somehow.
Passenger car interiors are something you could sell for a few dollars online, or at a train show, and since they’d be inside a car, the lack of detail would be less of a problem.
“Second, the resolution isn’t quite what we’ve come to expect for our details, so you’ve either got a lot of sanding and smoothing to do, or you’ve got to hide it somehow.”
This may be true for the lower end printers, but the highend production 3D printers such as the ones that can make items with interlocking movable parts, such as cresent wrenches, working gear units and now printers that can use more then one type of material at a time.
The future of 3D printing for our hobby is getting much closer. Seems every few months, a new level of sophistication in the printers, comes out.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25878078
Here are a couple of things that my guy at Razor Hobbies printed with his 3D printer.
Another 3D printer so I had two.
Tom
Greg says a shell for a favorite steam locomotive (presumably including tender). I’d agree, but I’d add certain diesels. Am I correct in assuming this would be most practical for units that would have a limited market, and wouldn’t justify traditional mass production? I would suggest a Lima-Hamilton diesel switcher, or a Fairbanks-Morse H20-44 2000 h.p. road switcher. The L-H unit should fit on a Bowser Baldwin switcher chassis, since I think L-H used the same wheelbase. I don’t know about the relative strength of the material, but I wonder about the feasibility of producing bridges. I’m thinking about truss bridges of relatively rare and/or unique designs, especially the pin-connected ones.
When you visit historical sites, you’ll sometimes find scale models for sale at their gift shops. Last time I was at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum (a long, long time ago) they were selling scale models of some of their exhibit items. I can envision sales of such items at historical sites. There might not be a big enough market to justify the tooling for traditional kits for some specialized items; but there might be enough sales to justify production of a 3-D model. These could include buildings, covered bridges, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if these could just happen to be produced in N, or HO, or S, or O scale?
Z scale, my new wishfull thinking mini layout scale is lacking in cabooses of any type, so I’d want a good caboose to come out in Z scale! Like a B&O one!
Ihave a few other wishes for RR items, too.
Supposedly STAPLES is supposed to equip { at least some} stores with 3D printers to print off items for customers.
And I get “stock alerts” to buy buy buy the stock of the makers of the 3D “INK” s as they will make a fortune in supplies for the 3D industry!
Maybe i can dream of having one…[:-^]
[8-|]
Are you talking to me? Tom
LOL!!! [(-D][tup]
why are you lol
nobody needs smart remarks bubba
Calm down, we don’t need fighting; save that for war. We all love trains here, no need to fight.
You’re right. I just tried to post something that I thought was a pretty good idea and felt like it was being made fun of. Sorry.
I think that they (I know I did) liked the things from the hobby store. I think that they were “lol-ing” at the fact that the printers are expensice so they would print another printer. That is all.
The article I read said that they will have printers that build up models using sheets of paper. Not really suitable for most of our needs. Might work for a tunnel portal or abutment.
Steve S
WheelSet2,
I wasn’t making fun of your post at all. It was merely a comedic interjection to an absurd idea of making a 3D printer…from another 3D printer…so you could then have two 3D printers. That’s all I meant by it.
FWIW, I do like the cat.
Tom