I scaled an N Scale house I am working on to Z Scale, and made this: I even cut acetate for the windows, and I had to use cardstock for the walls on the Z Scale structure because basswood is too fragile at that size. [ 28. March 2003, 02:38: Message edited by: pray59 ]
Hmm. That Z scale might come in handy. If you decide to use some forced perspective in your scenery? Boxcab E50
Hmmm.... Next time your "testing" the laser I got a couple Z scale Skyscrapers I need. I'll even compensate for the materials. Just a thought. By the way... Your building does look awesome!
That is the first Z scratchbuilt structure I have seen. Very impressive! What is this about a laser cutter?
I lay out the drawing in Corel, but you can use Autocad, or any of the other Vector based drawing programs for cutting, and any Raster based program for engraving. The .jpg, .bmp, .tiff, ect. type files are made of dots or pixels, to the laser would operate as an inkjet printer operates, fireing the laser as it scans and incounters a pixel, and adjusting the power based on the color of the pixel. The .dwx, .cdr, ext. type files are considered drawings, that can have vector and raster information in them. If a Raster componet is encountered, the laser operates first to print those componets, scaning and fireing like an Inkjet, but when the Vector components are incountered, the laser acts like a pen plotter, turning on the laser, and drawing the lines in the order and direction drawn, at the power and speed settings set for the specific color. So to sum it up, cutting and drawing lines and shapes is done with vectors, while pictures and photos are done with rasters. Vectors are done fast, and rasters are very slow. Also, if you were to draw a picture in say, Microsoft Paint that comes included in Windows, the lines there would be treated as rasters, and you would have a degree of charcoal on the edges of the wood, where if a vector cut was made, it would be clean, completely vaporizing the material into a gas. When you cut garnet sandpaper gritside up, it looks like a disco mirror ball inside with beams of light illuminating the smoke! It's loud too, because the little garnte pieces explode with millions of little pops!
Go ahead and tell them about nearly cutting off the dog's leg with it! It's a bad story for the dog but I have to admit it had me chuckling inside because the story was comical... something right out of an episode of Tom & Jerry or something. Jas
I have my wood decks for the flatcars done by laser cutting, but these are done for me, so I dont have anything to do with the production. Several years ago I had 10 passenger cars done in gauge three (2.5" gauge). They were cut from thin plywood, 1mm thick for the outer skin and 1.6mm for the inner, spacers allowed the glazing to slip between the layers after painting. I did not actually see these being cut, but did watch the same machine cutting half-inch thick stainless steel sheet I was told that although they were cutting several sheets at one pass, the laser was travelling so fast, all you could see were the window openings dropping out!
