I will put this here since it isn’t really a scale-specific question, but how do you cut out windows for car sides? It would be easy if they were square, but these have rounded corners and gaskets. You guys may have seen my Green Diamond project in the HO section, so obviously the question is for that. On the prototype, the car body had square holes, and then it looks like the window units were put inside them. They are square sheets with the window with rounded corners cut in them and a matching stainless steel trim piece on top. So technically it is two pieces of metal thick on top of the car side, but I would be reluctant to do so many layers, as any thickness of styrene is already out of scale. Here are my options/ideas so far: 1. The prototypical plan above 2. Cut the rounded windows directly in the car side, add the trim cut from .005” styrene, and scribe the square outline 3. Cut the rounded windows and wrap a .02” or such square stock around the inside of it for the trim 4. Anything you guys come up with I am worried about cutting 110 windows on all these cars and having them not look the same. How do you recommend I get these rounded corners? Once I have a design, I need a way to manufacture all of them. Should I get a template or something? Should I get a place to machine a die and stamp them out? Laser cut them? If I can do it with hand tool I will, but I was also considering buying a Cricut Explore and cutting them that way. Any other ideas? This is a photo of the drawing in Model Railroader May 1990 to show the windows and what I was trying to explain above:
Two things come to mind for me - being a tech geek and all - 1) Possibly a computer controlled cutter like the Cricut - I don't know if it could cut the thickness of what you'd need though. Or 2) have them 3D printed. I've experimented with that to some degree of success however I really didn't put forth a full effort in perfecting the process. For example, passenger car windows are going to be flat on both sides so those could easily be polished up really nice to make a near perfect mini window. Here's an example of some windows I printed for my nscale San Diego Trolly cab (Siemens U2) - it was a quick and dirty print just to see what I'd get, so there's dust mucking up the optics and I didn't do much post processing at all. Still though - lots of potential here: Cheers -Mike Edit - looking more closely, I'm thinking the Cricut is probably where the money's at? - you'd have consistent sheet metal squares and consistent gaskets at the right thickness to do your layers and plop that on top of clear transparency paper for the glass.
I'd say you might consider doing a clear strip for the entire side (at least to the height of the windows) and then a very thin plastic overlay (veneer?) to get the shapes and curves right. The plus I can see here is that it would be easier for the cutting, the downside potentially being time.
The only way I would want to cut all these openings would be to use the right size endmill to get the corner radius and use a mill with a digital readout. If you had to cut them by cranking dials, it's a given that somewhere in the process, Murphy would kick in and you would botch the math, scrap the part, waste a lot of work, etc. Trying to get a good looking result cutting them by hand would be an even bigger nightmare. On the other hand, consider that both of these pieces (the windows and the veneer) could readily be 3D printed. Just pay attention to minimum wall thickness for the material you use and get the CAD model right. You should be good to go.
