Yahoo, My daughter gave me a filament 3D printer for Christmas. Absolutely stoked. Now where are all the good N scale wagons and train bodies??? And buildings and..........
Thingiverse! Loads of good stuff on there. Our own Ajkochev and Sumner among others have lots of great files there. I have printed some on my resin printer. https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=n+scale&page=1&type=things&sort=relevant
As Hemi just mentioned maybe start at thingiverse.com ( HERE ). That is a link to my items but you can use the search there to look for more. There is a lot more detail about the items I have up on my site ( HERE ) with the links to the print files on thingiverse. The filament printer can do a lot, love mine, but you probably aren't going to find that it can produce the detail needed for engine shells and rolling stock bodies. Enjoy it as there are a lot of things in N scale that it can print well, Sumner
Gidday Mate! Which brand did you get? Just ìnterested since we are in the same country. Alister (from Wellington) Sent from my SM-A226B using Tapatalk
An Elegoo(?) Neptune 3. I wont have a chance to use it till mid next week due to family Christmas commitments.
Thanks for the heads-up. My brother in Melbourne Australia is into resin printing so I may lean on him for some goodies as well.
Let me see your first item and I'll show you mine!! I see a ballast applicator which may be my first trial item.
@ihmsakiwi First test shot was just a couple of parts, pieces for a local's NTrak project: That opened the floodgates, including - amongst others - a six year old design that I'd never gotten around to printing, a 35 ton car jack: Last print before heading out on the road for the usual two weeks included the first pass at a winterization hatch for a MILW phase 3 GP9, one with the 48" fans. Tried four variants, the completely solid version as I knew it would work, an open version if I could find some sort of fine mesh for the screen and place the hatch over some fans I'd printed a year or two ago, a version with the fan embedded, and finally a version with the grill as a see-through part just to see how far I could push the printer. I now need to go back and revise my fan model to bring it up to the printer's capabilities.
Who knew 3D printing would really be a thing 20-30 years ago, yet, here we are Imagine what the future holds for our hobby and others hobbies.
As a soon to be first time 3D printer owner, what filaments would you recommend I get? (Mfg as well as material types.) There are so many manufactures out there, and such a wide selection of materials, it can be a bit overwhelming. It’s easy enough to look for top manufactures, but I wanted to see what your's recommendations are. PLA is a given, but I’m also considering getting some PETG for more mechanical parts.
I use Hatchbox PLA for just about everything on my FDM printer. I've tried exotic filaments and ABS for special use cases but as you've probably heard already, PLA is reliable, easy to work with and thus keeps printing a "fun" activity. I've yet to try a roll of PETG but eventually I'll get around to it. Two YouTube channels you should be checking out are "CNC Kitchen" and "Thomas Sanladerer" as those guys go in depth of testing and materials. I appreciate their curiosity, technical skills and approach to answering common and less common questions to FDM printing. CHEP's channel is good for basics as well, less engineering on that channel but educational none the less. Cheers -Mike
Second that!! Get PLA down and get familiar with the printer and slicer (I use Cura). PLA will do a lot and actually the only thing I've used so far. I also use Hatchbox and get uniform results with it. I only use the gray now as for me it has been very consistent and I prime items I'm going to paint with a gray primer so if I miss a spot with the primer it doesn't show. Also like the look on non-painted items. Unfortunately these printers aren't just plug-n-play. They are an intricate machine and you will need to learn how to deal with some things to keep them printing well. Not much really but sooner or later clogs and keeping the bed level so that the first layers adhere well to the build plate for a successful print. For the price though amazing tools that if you also want to learn how to use a CAD program the sky is the limit on what you can create. Sumner
hatch box has been the best filament fer me as well very consistent . ive modded mine to the hilt. but it prints very good now. lots of tweaking to get it good is key. first i would recommend is them bed springs get good ones ,stiff is the key. the second is a glass bed if it dont come with one. Third would be two screws for the Z axis one on each side . and i like PI4 with octo print (that takes a few parts by its self but well worth it.) im starting on my second printer now, building it up....i may at a leter date get me one of those resin printers . they look like a mess to deal with..
