Garden Railway Forum

Following my inadvertant misleading on how much of the wagons were actually printed, on a previous thread, plus a couple of exchanges with Jake on his excellent printed wagon bodies, I decided it was time to really get to grips with wagon printing myself.

The chassis I was pretty satisfied with on my previous builds ( although I have tweaked the design by adding angle brackets between the headstocks and solebars, plus bolts ), but bodies have always given me problems. It took me 4 attempts before I managed to get the machine settings right to give me something I'm happy with.
The following pictures show it in grey primer to highlight where some fine fettling is needed, but overall I'm pretty satisfied.

Just for clarity, it is entirely 3D printed, including bolt heads, with 3 exceptions: 1 ) The wheels ( Swift Sixteen), 2) The floor - cutting and scribing a simple piece of flat HIPs is quicker than printing and allows easier access to the inside of the body for cleaning up. 3) The end stantions - because the body and chassis are separate items and they cross the join, it's easier to apply them than try to print them.

The underframe is printed as one item, with axle boxes and coupling blocks printed separately and glued on. The brake gear is printed as: Blocks + v-hanger + lever + support loop, all glued on.

I have a 3-plank version drawn up, with minor improvements to the dropside hinges and catches. Not sure when I'll get around to printing it but I'll show the results one day!

Looking incredible mate! Some very very high quality drafting work there. I'm glad you sorted the issues you were having now you just need a train of them!

You have my attention with that wagon Phil!

I would like to see one as I must admit I am still not 100% with the finish of 3D printed stuff but would like to try and paint one up to convince me otherwise.

How much would you print and post a wagon for (I would need some minor changes like no couplings or wheels as I fit my own, etc).

Looking good Phil.

What 3D printing process are you using?

JMORG wrote: ↑Sat Mar 09, 2019 8:48 am
What 3D printing process are you using?

Using PLA from RigidInk on my QidiTech1. Using Qidi's customised Cura slicer. Not sure which version of Cura it is but it's fairly recent, I suspect 3.5.

Now that really does look good quality. What would you say, £3 - £4's worth of materials?

Rik

ge_rik wrote: ↑Sat Mar 09, 2019 5:29 pm Now that really does look good quality. What would you say, £3 - £4's worth of materials?

Rik

I worked it out yesterday. As it stands it is about £1-96 worth of PLA filament, £1-80 for the Swift Sixteen wheels, a few pence for the axles, a couple of bits of HIPS for the floor, say 5 quid, all up. Plus paint , which is probably the most expensive item!

Back up this thread I promised a look at my 3-plank version when I had done it, so here it is.
Same basic chassis as the 2-planker, but I've changed the way I printed the body. On the first version I was unhappy with the quality of the print of the hinges, which came out a bit 'blobby', so I changed things and printed a set of hinges to stick on to a plain body. Fortunately before printing the body again I realised what the problem had been the first time. I had slowed down the print speed slightly thinking it might reduce to horizontal surface lines, because the lower speed allows the filament to stay soft for a few milli-seconds longer and blend better. The knock-on effect was also to allow the projecting hinges to stay soft and sag, which I didn't want! Anyway, printing the body plain, allowed for much easier surface preparation and it's only a couple of minutes work to stick them on, giving a much better overall finish.



Jake suggested,above, that I should produce a rake of the 2-plankers, and when I looked at my selection of spare bits, I found I had enough almost to build another wagon, so I printed the missing bits and assembled it. This is the three of them together.....

...and this is the three them plus the van and coal wagon that I produced back before Christmas.
Now, over on Peter Butlers thread, I slightly hijacked it talking about painting techniques, which I'm now bringing across here. So the relevant post and starting position is:

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Peter Butler wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:27 pm After a light sanding I spray grey primer and allow to dry. In this instance I have dry brushed with Citadel acrylic paint (Dryad Bark) to show highlights and after drying a wash coat of Agrax Earthshade to settle in the grooves.

Peter, I think I'm in need of a Butler MasterClass.

I've followed your notes, as exactly as I could, but it seems to have come out a very even dark brownish colour all over, not quite the worn wood effect I was after.

Both sprayed with Halfords grey primer.
Both given a rough dry brush of Dryad Bark .
Bottom one given a wash of Agrax Earthshade - used neat from the bottle, should it be diluted?

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What I wanted was a paler, more greyish/brown effect and I tried to mix up a khaki colour to act as the base for dry brushing onto grey undercoat, but that came out too yellow, as can be seen in the pictures of the three plank above.
Then in the wee small hours of this morning, I remembered that years ago I bought pot of Humbrol acrylic in a light brown colour, which I have never used. By some miracle I found it in the cupboard straight away, when I got up! So, I used a flat Stanley knife blade to scrape the original Citadel acrylic back to the grey primer on one of the 2-plankers,

and then dry brushed the Humbrol brown colour on, as before.
When dry, I washed a thin mix of dark grey ( black +white!) on to pick out the joints and grain.


Although not perfect, I'm reasonably happy with the result, so I'll repeat the process with the other two, in due course.

Finally, I came across a packing case drawing on Thingiverse, which fits nicely in these wagons, so I've printed one out and painted it using the same Humbrol paint, with some white in as the base colour and a wash of the same brown, neat, to find the gaps and grain.

Well I think you've cracked it! The grain effect is now more pronounced and the dry-brush highlights have picked out the raised surface. As I said in my previous reply, the finished colour is entirely your choice and representative of the local conditions and workload of the vehicle.