Garden Railway Forum

philipy wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:32 am It's coming on well, Trevor.
I'm looking forward to seeing how that chimney prints. Are you going to do it vertically as a complete item?

Trevor Thompson wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:17 am I have placed a spare capping tile loose on the top, and it is clear that the angle is wrong, and it covers too much of the slate underneath it. However I think that can be fixed easily by shrinking the component to fit.

I did exactly that when I did my "stately home". Printed one and checked it, then tweaked the scale and did another until I was happy, teh printed a long strip. If the angle is wrong, the quickest way I found to change it in Sketchup is to scale up or down in one dimension only.

Yes that is what I am going to try. It will have to be in two sections upper and lower to cater for my 150mm height limit. And I did exactly what you suggested with the ridge (capping ) tile.

Trevor

Jimmyb wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:34 am

Trevor Thompson wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 10:17 am Half of the roof has been printed:

IMG_1767.jpg

I have placed a spare capping tile loose on the top, and it is clear that the angle is wrong, and it covers too much of the slate underneath it. However I think that can be fixed easily by shrinking the component to fit.

Trevor

A beautiful job, and i don't mean to be critical, but roofing slates have almost (if more in some cases) of each slate under the slate above, so maybe its not the capping tile that is in error, but the top two rows, i.e. next to the top row should extend to top of the roof, and the top row done away with. Difficult to explain, but hopefully you understand where I am coming from

You are of course correct. I have noticed that the overlaps are not all exactly the same, and really I should have laid out the roof as a roofer would have - rather than assuming the drawing was "correct". However 24 hours of printing later I think we can live with it! The slates on the other roof are a completely different size - so the ridge tile has to be altered to suite the new roof anyway.

It still looks OK!

Trevor

Trevor Thompson wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 7:33 pm
It still looks OK!

Trevor

Don't do your self down it looks a lot better than just okay, it look great

The roof and ridge tiles are all successfully printed and fitted:
A few words about the printing. I had raised the extruder temperature to 235 degrees while printing the walls in white ABS. It seemed to improve the finish of the planking. However I forgot to reduce it again when I changed to the black filament to print the roof. I am fairly sure that this was the cause of some issues with printing the roof. The first two parts were fine, really nice finish, and clear definition, but the third part was less satisfactory:
This was difficult to photograph, but perhaps you can see that the upper part of the top but one row of slates is missing, and the top half of the bottom two rows is missing. I found a build up of cooled filament suck to the front edge of the extruder, which looked as if it was wiping away the hot abs as it was extruded. Cleaning it off seemed to solve the problem. I think that the raised extruder temperature might have caused this.

Since I primed the bed with the ABS slurry I have had no further problems with adhesion, but I am continuing to use a reft for these large flat prints. The roof was printed without raising the model off the bed, and I was able to separate the model from the raft fairly easily.

The roof tiles were printed as individual tiles, 14 at a time, on end, with the thicker part on the bed.

Trevor

Now the chimney is printing OK. I am printing it in 3 parts lower, upper and the brickwork on the top. The two lower parts as they were printed:
And in position:
I will finish the chimney before updating the files on the forum.

Trevor

The building is now finished. Apart from painting of course.

That includes the ornate valence around the roof and porch, the finials on the ends of the roof, the porch and the urinal tucked behind the building.

The view from the back:
and from the front:
I am particularly pleased with the way the stonework and the brickwork on the chimney has worked out.

I will now update all of the .stl files, and check they are fault free before adding them to the files section.

Trevor

I'm particularly impressed with the female figure, although she does appear to be searching for the lady's facilities and has ventured close to the gents instead!

She was from a file downloaded from Thingiverse, and printed on my resin printer.

I think she is out of luck, as I don't suppose ladies facilities were provided in the 1870's. Well there is no evidence in the photographs.

Trevor

The final files for printing this station building are now in the files section

Thanks Trevor. Thats a lot of hard work to share.

Looks great!

I have been preparing ancillary fixtures to go with the station building. I have noticed that the station name boards which I printed over 2 years ago are looking a bit tired. Not the plastic itself - but the white paint I had used to fill in the background. So I have tried something to see if I can get around that for the future.

I have never tried printing in multiple colours before but this seemed like a valid reason to try it. So most of the sign was printed in white filament, and the embossed lettering and the surround printed in black filament:
That was an easy way to get clear crisp lettering! I think that should avoid paint fading - as long as the filament does not fade.

Trevor

They look excellent Trevor.
I've never tried 2 colour printing, although I bought a 2 head machine deliberately so I could, but never really had a need in reality. Unless it is simple black and white like this, most of the coloured filaments are too bright and garish for reality.

I agree about the filament colours being unsuitable for our needs - but in this very limited way I can see the advantage of a two head machine.

Trevor

Won't the print become brittle with exposure to UV? I thought painting was necessary for that reason?

I don't really know - but we will find out!

I suspect that they will last for quite a while. They are made from ABS which is used for all sorts of outdoor fittings in the commercial world - and it is supposed to have good resistance to UV and vandalism! Well we have lots of slugs and toads so vandalism resistance might be quite important.

Of course at the back of my mind is that if one day they are so bad that I want to replace them, it is just a couple of hours printer time and some filament, rather than ages cleaning and repainting.

Trevor

Sorry Trevor, I missed that you are using ABS. I bought a PTEG or PLA - not sure which - kit from a 'commercial' supplier which came with a warning that the finished model building should be painted before being left exposed in the garden.

Some photos of the finished building now that it has been painted:
and
I don't know what colours the Ffestiniog buildings were painted in the 1870's but some light shade somewhere between white and cream seams likely. The colourised photos in the 16mm association Ffestiniog document look cream. So my Tan-y-bwlch building is white and this one cream. So I cant be that far out!

I am pleased with the plank effect on the walls - perhaps they are too far apart but at least the gaps were not filled up with paint. The chimney represents my first attempt at printing the stone and brick effect within the walls - and that has worked. I think the brickwork on the top of the chimney was particularly successful. Note that the bricks are exactly to scale.

Trevor

That's really lovely! I agree, the chimney is particularly good.

In technology terms, I'm about to head about as far as you can go in the other direction, and attempt to make a station building from mud. Well, clay anyway - my wife's just purchased a kiln...

That looks absolutely brilliant, Trevor. The paint job is really effective.

Rik