I had a breakthrough on the mail room in the M70B. I was trying to solve the dilemma of the letter holes and I think I just got it. The sorting table was built up with the pigeon holes just being a blank wall, and then I used the Plastruct chain link fence kit to make it look like rectangular pockets. I will probably do a black wash in each cell to give it some depth after I paint the rest of the car. I also added those bulkheads at the end of the car to hide some steel nuts I used as car weights.
The B60B is done. I got it clear-coated and installed the windows today. The decals look kind of thick, but I think I can deal with them. Also, I might need to switch out the couplers for some scale head underset couplers. Right now, it has those weird Kadee #7 couplers.
Here are car sides for the PS6L cut from .010” styrene. I used a Cricut Explore and the software Inkscape to design and cut it. For anybody else out there wondering about the settings to cut styrene, I used the “stencil .04” setting in the plastic category. Here is the link if you want to cut your own: https://design.cricut.com/landing/project-detail/5e1226e4a8d77506a7244ec2. Unless you have a Cricut account, you probably cannot view the file.
You are making some great progress on your projects Trainiac. That Cricut system sounds like a great tool. Is it a laser?
The Cricut has a head that goes back and forth like a printer but with a knife blade in it instead of ink. There is a roller that moves the sheet forward and back, which gives you your X and Y axis cutting. I am pretty pumped because this is intended to be the jumping off point for the Green Diamond. I just keep starting over until I get it right and the Cricut is my best bet for cutting out the rounded windows. The PS6L was the perfect test. It is both a proof of concept and another car for my Gotham Limited consist. Some limitations with Cricut include the fact that it can only cut relatively thin styrene. .040” is probably too thick already. I consider myself to be pretty decent at Autodesk Inventor, at least for the things I need to use if for, and figuring out Inkscape was a minor inconvenience considering that I already had a software that can make objects and technical drawings of them. Cricut runs on SVG vector files, and converting Inventor DWG or PDF to that file type lowers the quality right away, so vector softwares like Illustrator, Inkscape, or CorelDraw are the only ways to go. I am used to the measurement and constraint tools of Inventor, but Inkscape doesn’t have those same tools and works differently, so I had to get creative on how to be precise and make accurate drawings of the car. I do enjoy the curve tools in Inkscape though. Making the curves around the trucks was easy because you can click and drag the lines at any point to change them, not just on nodes like in Inventor. Overall, my main interest with Cricut is car sides. Smoothside cars seem easy to make and I have my eye on the Green Diamond or the Amtrak Cascades Talgo set next.
A knife blade huh? Like a #11 exacto? I suppose that would be too simple. Even if , 040 is too thick, A couple (or more) layers of .030 laminated can make up for that. I as always look FWD to your projects. Has there been any more interest in that drop deck flat? I am disappointed that it didnt do a lot better, But I appreciate all your efforts. And wish you the best on this and your Green Diamond and other projects.
We've used the Cricut Maker to make storefronts but it has definite thickness limitations. Where I love the Cricut is in making stencils, like road markings for example. We used a sticky back (peel and stick type) paper, it worked fabulously.
Thanks Mike. My apologies for not paying more attention.. Can the cutter cut grooves, like fluted car sides? What has been your max thickness for good results on this machine? And what happens to the shavings? Pardon my questions but I am curious.
I think 020 is a stretch. We used 010 and I layered three of them to get the rigidity I was after. I'll check with my buddy to see about the grooves. There were no shavings, it cuts the styrene in the exact shape out of a larger piece.
There are different attachments like a scribing tool, a pen, a blade for cutting thicker objects, and I think a few others. Cutting car fluting would require a tool to make the curved contours. Right now, all the tools cut on one dimensional lines, making an object where the cut has a width and a curved depth is out of the capabilities of the tooling. Maybe if you drew a bunch of lines close together and managed to design a scoop-like blade to cut them out, it could be done. The one issues is that the blade is a proprietary design. It looks like a very small #11 blade, but it comes in a cylinder casing that mounts in the Cricut cutting head. It is not like an Exacto blade just snaps in. You need to buy Cricut replacements for new blades, which limits your options and basically lets them set their own price. Regarding the maximum material thickness, I could cut through .010” styrene in two passes. There are a lot of different material setting which change the pressure and number of passes, so there is room for experimenting. I tried it on .020” thick sheet with one pass and of course it didn’t go through. I wasn’t thinking and took it out of the machine before I did another pass which misaligned it and messed it up. You might need to do 3 or 4 passes to get through .020” sheet.
Cool intro! Pics and video of build, I remember Piggly Wiggly stores. Looks like you are off to a great build.
There will be some welding going on soon at Word Industries. They just secured a big contract for drilling platforms.
Hi, brand new here, and fairly new to the hobby. Just trying to figure out posting pictures. I was at a model train show recently, and picked up a pile of DPM modular kits for practically nothing ($1 each, got 30 of 'em). I just built this city hall with them.
