albergman

Seems churlish not to comment on this master class of 3D design and printing capabilities but it gets repetitive saying "Fantastic" every day LOL. Having barely skimmed the surface of Fusion 360 myself I'm very impressed with the skills you've acquired ... and all self taught!! Keep going Nick!

Nick ... I think you should get yourself body-scanned and printed at the same scale to be seen assembling this masterpiece!

Now you're just showing off (LOL) ... but I love it!! Just mind blowing accuracy.

These drawings are so cool that I almost wish I had something to design in Fusion again ... almost! Nice work Nick.

Really enjoying watching you progress in this "hobby" Nick. How exciting to be involved in designing a replacement Ferrari manifold for the real-world. Myself, I'm about to give my filament printer to my son as I haven't printed anything in over a month and he's desperate to start printing stuff. I'm finally assembling my latest steam locomotive that is 95% printed! By far though, the most fun of the whole project was learning and designing with Fusion 360. The whole project has been fun and very satisfying but I can't wait to return to actually fabricating all parts of a model by hand. How old-fashioned eh?? Eternally grateful to you for nudging me into learning Fusion. PS I'll be 83 next week so all you younger modellers can learn it!

Geez Louise ... that is outstanding, realistic weathering! Ever consider doing a tutorial on the topic.

Yes, of course, not suitable for the original poster. I just thought that since the topic was moulds then I would mention that it can be done through a slicer. My son prints them and pours some kind of urethane(?) parts into them.

I use a slicer called CURA for most of my prints and interestingly it has the ability to create a mold from whatever part you give it. So, design your part in Fusion 360 or whatever software you like then give it to CURA and it will "reverse" it and generate the Gcode to make a mold. Under Preferences/Settings/Special modes. The usual caveat here ... I've never used it so I can't vouch for the results.

Thanks for looking in on my progress and once again offering meaningful criticisms. I don't want to sound ungrateful but fine details aren't all that important to me. As I've often stated in my scratch builds of cars, boats and other steam engines on these forums I'm more interested in the process ... how am I going to make this part. This project falls into the same category as I'm mainly doing it to learn new techniques such as Fusion 360, Slicers and 3D printing and I've been rather handicapped by a dearth of photographs or drawings for this particular subject. I've only built 2 plastic kits back in the 70's and, when I took up scratch building in 2002 I only scratch build subjects that mean a lot to me. My steam engines: Scotsman, Union of South Africa and now a P2 were all engines I train-spotted as a lad in the 1940's in Scotland (I'm 82 now) and my models are just for my own pleasure and will no doubt have obvious flaws to knowledgeable observers.

Switched my attention to the tender for a while. Now that I have the 4 sides made to my satisfaction I played with several methods of sticking them together ... none of which worked very well. I settled for cutting a block of Renshape (a composite pattern-making material) of which I have a good supply into a size to which I could glue the sides. Like this ... http:// Fixed up the platform at the front with Formica panels (Gawd ... look at that dust!) http:// I didn't take any pictures of fitting out the interior of the tender but fabricated most of this from Renshape, aluminium sheet and more Formica sample panels. The filling orifice I turned from scrap aluminium on my lathe and made a little wire handle for that. Finally I airbrushed on a coat of Vallejo primer just to tie it all together. There's a major flaw here that someone is going to spot. http:// Now, before anyone takes me to task about a corridor tender never being used on a P2 which was dedicated to the Edinburgh-Aberdeen route, let me just say ... I don't care!! LOL. I like the corridor tender and NO, I wasn't able to find a picture of one in use with a P2 but they did do trial runs from London to Edinburgh with the P2's and just might have used a corridor. Maybe?? Decided to do the engine too ... http:// Today I'm printing new sides for the cab as it's becoming tricky to fit the cab onto the boiler. I've made a new curved roof out of aluminium sheet as the printed one was causing me trouble and now I'm trying to fit that to the cab and boiler at the right height. Thanks for looking in. Frank

I have no doubts that resin is the superior way to go Nick but I couldn't possibly bring that into my house. I have no basement or attic or even a garage so it's a non-starter. My FDM will do me just fine for what I have in mind and it resides in a cabinet in the bedroom and can run all night without disturbing us. Actually I don't see myself doing much more in the modelling line with it after the loco but I have quite a few ideas for things around the house. Truth be told I get more enjoyment just playing with Fusion than printing LOL! Best of luck with your own plans.

I knew someone would take me up on that. That chimney had to be printed that way to support the taper. The slicer program inserted a flimsy plastic structure there which I have since sanded down to the taper ... in fact, I've printed several iterations of it since then. Thanks for the keen observation though. If you look at my earlier Fusion 360 "drawing" on page 1 you'll see that the taper is there too.

Wonderful news Nick! I'm sure you'll have lots of enthusiasts lining up for your output. I have to thank you again for encouraging me to pursue this Fusion 360/3Dprinting adventure. I referred to that sheet of basic instructions you wrote out for me and soon found I was drawing pretty nice parts. Eventually I decided I wanted to build yet another steam locomotive but was hesitating at having to hand-fabricate all the motion again as that's about 6 months work. So I thought maybe I'll see if I can design them for printing and get my local library to make them as they have 3D printers. Learned enough about Fusion to get those parts made and 3 weeks ago I decided to buy my own printer ... a filament one (BiQu B1). My skills with Fusion improved to the point where I decided to print the entire locomotive! I now have everything printed and have been assembling it and it's all thanks to you! Frank

Fully understand. Mind you, I've been retired for 27 years and the internet wasn't even around in my IT days! However, IF you do want to look into it there's an excellent 16 part series (all easy lessons) given by one of your countrymen so you'll have no problem with the foreign language. You can install Fusion 360 for free and follow along and see what you think.

Can't tell you how much fun this has been Steve. Sort of regretting that this project is coming to an end soon as far as designing and making parts, Now I just have to glue them all together and paint them. Let me assure you that if I can learn enough about Fusion 360 at my age to draw all these components then anybody can. I found it very challenging but satisfying to work out "How am I going to make this?". You have to accept the fact that you'll have to learn to operate something like Fusion if you want to build something specific. I think many people are just downloading some of the millions of parts available on the Net and printing them ... fantasy figures for some reason. As for the printer side of the equation you'll have to decide whether filament or resin is for you. No question that resin is far superior for being able to reproduce amazing detail and I was convinced that was the way to go ... for a while. There's a dark side to operating with resins that not many people talk about and I wasn't prepared to deal with that. My filament printer works at a level that suits me and I have no regrets. It's even set up in my bedroom, runs long into the night and there's no cleanup, chemicals, smell etc to worry about. Be glad to chat with anybody about my (brief) experiences with filament printing.

Moving right along ... the boiler parts have been attached to the nose and some final shaping of the A4-style nose has taken place. Plastic is NOT a nice material to work with! Any mechanical/electrical device I apply to it just rolls up a "wave" of molten plastic which cools, hardens and breaks off. Then I'm finding that the model only has a surface skin and it's shallow. Lurking under the surface is nothing but fine honeycomb "filler" with which nothing can be done. Fortunately the nose of the engine is likely the only place which needs this extra fettling and a generous application of automotive body filler (Bondo in Canada) seals the freshly opened wounds. I've painted on some of that Mr Surfacer here so there's still a lot of smoothing to be done. Smoothed out, spray on some old blue paint and set the Kylchap on top ... The streamlined P2 is a strange beast being an cross-breeding of an A4 and an A3. Next I moved along the boiler to the cab. Something nice about designing parts in Fusion is that you can bring existing parts into the drawing area and draw the new parts around them. Being a novice at Fusion I wasn't initially aware I could do that. This means that every part that's been drawn around an existing one will fit like a glove. An example of that was for the firebox extensions. Just a little fairing compound to smooth them in. I've got a major F-up here that will take some fixing and maybe re-printing. Here's a screen capture of several parts I imported when building up the cab area. When I drew the first firebox extension there's a "Mirror" command in Fusion which instantly gives you the part for the opposite side ... magic. You may notice that I drew up a crude replica of the apparatus (gauges, levers etc) on the end of the boiler. This won't be seen from outside (well, barely) and totally unnecessary but it's just fun to do. Why I was tempted was I found a perfect drawing for Flying Scotsman's cab which I brought in , sized it to my scale then "drew" the most essential lines on top of it. My Fusion drawing my printed version ... That's about as far as I've got. A few more tender parts finished, a tiny plumbing fitting that attaches to the end of the steam pipe from the cab (I really should learn something about steam engines) ... This about 3/16 long so its details won't come out this good. Oh, one more thing. I re-drew the plate thingy that slides onto the rails as too many were breaking off. This one's not as pretty but is very strong and will look just fine. I printed up a single sheet with 8 rails on it then duplicated the "holders" (someone please tell me what they're called) and have printed about 100. OK thanks for looking in whoever you are! Frank

Thanks for that L/M. Since I wrote my last comment a shipment of materials I ordered a while ago arrived and in there was a bottle of Mr Surfacer 500 which is just wonderful. I brushed it on the boiler sections and it dries in a minute. Wet-sanded it off and it completely filled all tiny grooves and it's now smooth as the proverbial baby's you-know-what. I've glued up the 3 parts of the boiler and attached the nose so the build has begun.

Thanks for that L/M. Since I wrote my last comment a shipment of materials I ordered a while ago arrived and in there was a bottle of Mr Surfacer 500 which is just wonderful. I brushed it on the boiler sections and it dries in a minute. Wet-sanded it off and it completely filled all tiny grooves and it's now smooth as the proverbial baby's you-know-what. I've glued up the 3 parts of the boiler and attached the nose so the build has begun.

Back again. I had intended to fabricate the boiler from my usual composite material (Renshape) but suddenly thought ... "why not print it?". It was too long at 210 mm to do in one pass ... well, I was afraid of a print failure after 9 hours so, I broke it into 3 designs. The middle of the boiler is larger diameter than the ends which taper down. I drew in a small flange on the 2 ends so that they'll slide right into the middle piece ... worked a charm. The sides have come out with very little markings so they'll be easy enough to fair in. Next comes the tender. I found some excellent drawings and used them to draw up the front and back panels for it. Lots of details built in and I'll still hand-make some more. Here's the front panel. The camera certainly exaggerates the print lines but they're not really so pronounced and will fill easily. The back panel. I just noticed one of the steps has broken off! Also have roof for cab and both sides printed ... no pictures yet. So most of the big parts are done and assembly will be starting soon. Thanks for looking in.

Hi there Locomotion Glad to have another tagging along. Yes, this is an ambitious project for me as I'm such a rookie in the 3D printing field and with Fusion 360. Having said that, I'm now over 90% done printing all parts of this P2 I reckon!! I'm actually designing and printing parts faster than I can document the process. I guess the moment of truth will occur when I start to assemble this box of parts I've made. Smoothing the parts? Can you do that? I hadn't really given it any thought and frankly, the surface look pretty good as is. I probably would airbrush on a few coats of light filler material and wet sand them. What do you know about smoothing? Fill me in too! Frank

Sorry, I'm a Canadian (Scottish born) so I don't understand the reference to Railtrack. I know the head (is that what the top is called?) is quite flat but at 3.5 mm width it's not really noticeable. I just want my wheels to sit securely on them ... flat on flat! My progress since the last posting has really accelerated too so I think I'll beat the P2 guys. Pictures soon.

Well now, things are moving a lot more quickly since I got my own filament printer. Assembly and setup was a breeze and it just worked from the minute I plugged it in. For those interested in these things I bought a BiQu B1 model. I know, I'd never heard of it either till I saw it at the top of a "Best of" list ... right behind a $1000 (Can) Prusa. Since then I've been reprinting a lot of parts that my library made for me after I added back details that they couldn't print. Here's a sampler of what I've made ... So what you see are driver wheels, front bogie and cab wheels for both sides. The 3 rods that connect all four wheels became just too flimsy to connect in the correct way so I "cheated" and drew up a single piece that looks the same. Also working on the tender and have printed the frames that mount the springs and wheels. All parts are straight out of the printer and have had no clean-up so far ... no doubt, you can see that I printed a lot in white filament (came free with the printer) then my own black spool. Here's a closer look at the nameplate. Robert the Bruce is well known in Scotland and is also buried in the abbey of my old home town ... Dunfermline. Since all P2 locos were given Scottish historic names I've chosen him for mine. Wish the camera didn't make things look so clumsy. Here's a better look at that 3-into-1 set of rods. Next up is the one-piece springs and axle box for under the cab. Amazing that the printer can produce "rivet" heads. Early on I drew the Kylchap dual exhaust chimney but had to remove the louvers. I've since replaced them. For my previous 2 locomotives I used old stock rails made, I think, for Lionel trains. They are about the same scale but have a round top to the rail surface and the engines don't sit well on them. Rather than buy more of that stock I decided ... why not print my own track? Why not eh? I can only manage a 10" strip at a time but there's no hurry. Now I could easily just glue the rail to my sleepers but why not design my own retainers? I don't know what they're called ... sorry. Anyway, a few minutes on Fusion 360 and I can print them. They take 4 minutes each to print but I'll make up a tray of them and do a lot at once. This one needs a cleanup. Slides right on to the rail and looks just fine to me. Just for fun I drew one of the period lanterns they used and printed a couple. Going to revisit that but they're cool. That's it for now. Thanks for looking in.

Wow, what a cool machine to build. I never knew there was such a thing. Looks like you're off to a good start on it.

It never fails ... for years I was scouring the internet for good details on my Scotsman and today I found them! At the same time I found wonderful detailed drawings for a certain Hogwarts locomotive too! Just in case you feel like doing another one. Frank

Hi again ... I've been following both groups since their inception and I don't know why the Cock o the North group didn't just join forces. You're right though, early on they accumulated enough money to build the frames (a loco chassis) and toted them all over to show they were serious. But that was 7 years ago and they haven't produced another part. The P2 society is only 2 years away from firing theirs up and ... they have their third engine in the design stage! Frank