Pushing the Limits of 3D Printing.

Long time no post.  Hopfully this is the start of more posts and updates as some personal things get wrapped up and there is more time for model railroading. Im still working on my Valley History Project but It was nice to be able to break up the work by having different things to focus on. 

The latest thing that has grabbed my attention is another request from fellow modelers and the project will and still is pushing the limits of my 3D Printer.

The request came in a few weeks ago. Looking for a replacement part for a Atlas S-1 diesel locomotive. Specifically for the ones used on the New Haven (For the DEY-3).

Hard to see but the grill in question is located under that metal walkway and above a large fan unit.  The Atlas models come with a metal grid, almost fence like, detail piece to simulate the grill. On the NH these grills were actually a series of shutters, very similar to the one found on the side of the locomotive's hoods.

The bad news for the project was that there was little to no reference photos to help base a model after. The good news is that we had a small team working together to discuss and develop the model based on small bits of information we all had/could find.  As one put it " it took a village" to design a part no bigger than 13mm square.

By far the best tool we had to design this model was the locomotive itself. This allowed us to get the base outer dimensions which is arguably the most important needed to start designing. The other tools were reference photos and a bit of guess and checking. From photos I was able to make a guess that there were about 22 shutters in total. 

Using this I started to create my first model using 0.015 thick fins and reducing the shutter count to 20 in an attempt to have prototypical gaps between fins. They were also angled at about 45 degrees to simulate that the fan is running but not at full throttle.

The 2 grills on the right were the first print attempts and while looked nice and prototypical count wise, were too small for my printer to actually provide gaps in-between them. Of course we could have planted a flag and called it done, but that urge to find a way to have both elements pushed me further. Which in tern lead the the examples on the left. Same size shutters but reduced to only 16 count.This allowed the gaps to be viable but looked more like a storm drain rather than a series of shutters. 

 

Here are the same two with a quick black wash and placed on the actual model. Notice how much nicer the one on the right looks compared the left. However what was found next really pushed me to create a happier mix of the two.

Above is a picture of an actual grill we are trying to create. This photo helped answer so many unknowns that it pushed me to create one more version (V5.0 by this point). 

Which brings the story to the present. Above is the latest test prints and as you can see they are closer together and have better gaps. The lower right one had some errors but one can argue that its seen a bit of weathering like the prototypes. Im sure we are not complete with these grills so stay tooned for more updates and future project.!