I appreciate your efforts in making these. They are exceptional. I do not have the drawing skills and are too ancient to learn a new skill. So would you consider sharing your STL files either through Thingiverse or elsewhere where you could charge a small fee.
I don’t think I’ve ever considered adding anything to the well cars to retain containers in them… unless you make a habit of parking the cars upside down, I’d not worry about the lower ones not being attached to the car. The upper ones are a bit of a different matter. Nice work on the different cans; have you considered making a reefer variant?
I 2nd the request to ask if you would be willing to share these out. They could even be put into this forum's resource area. Outstanding work
Sure, when I finish printing them, I'll share the STLs. I don't know how it is for Kato or other brands, but in the Walthers, the well cars are wider than the containers (even Walthers containers have a gap all around). The containers shift easily around the well, even with tiny pegs on the Walthers containers. Not before this I hadn't I'll have to see, I have so many already, not sure if I want yet another variant. I have so many projects and the layout to work on, I may be too "containered out" to do more.
Stephane, that is very generous of you and we really appreciate it. I for one will look eagerly for these to be shared.
Those look great! Great design work and prints look very good. How about a review about the new printer now that you have used it some? Sumner
It's slightly bigger, prints a tiny bit slower than the mono X (2.5 sec layers vs 1.8 sec for the same resin), and printing containers won't showcase the higher resolution much Honestly, I can't add much that hasn't been already said on YouTube so far! I do really like it though, it prints flawlessly. In term of higher resolution, I didn't see any more details on the containers, but then there are no curves. This review does show how the light is properly parallel as it hits the screen, really neat! I suppose this is why the print takes slightly longer per exposure. Though even 1 second per layer makes little difference to full print time, especially on a print with only 400 layers.
This one is the standard anycubic transparent green. It's one of the very best resins I've ever used for detail and almost no bloom. But, it's like glass, incredibly brittle, parts have almost no flex before they shatter. Great for things like containers with no details to break. The phrozen rapid black water washable is similarly very good for details, little bloom. Still fragile but with a bit more flex. That's usually my go to resin (my gondolas and RS-18 were printed in this. I can't quite remember why I bought the anycubic green instead of sticking with the rapid black. especially since I have two bottles of the black! Turns out I currently have four or five different bottles of resin. I need to make a properly exposed test print (a real model) with each to figure out which is really best!
I've been using Elegoo's plant-based resin, black, and it's quite flexible. I recently printed steam locomotive floorboards at 0.02" thick with it, and they flex like plastic soda straws. Good detail, too. Not at all good for mechanical stuff, though...
Right. So some of you wanna download these things to print eh? Well okay, but here's the thing, I don't design for sharing or selling to others, I design for me Other designers make all their prints all user friendly and some such things. You won't get that, ha! Still, I don't want you to fail, so I'll start posting how I go about with this, with pictures, and then you can either run away screaming at the sheer amount of work, or buckle down and get your hands dirty! I've started taking pictures of the process only yesterday, so the whole process is gonna be over several posts, (and days). When done, I'll upload the files. So, right, first things first, what's it gonna look like? All my container models are gonna look like the above. The shell, and the base plate; all dressed up in a nice skirt! Actually, this is the first time I ever try the skirt method of printing a shell, and it works great! It's more work but the whole thing doesn't go banana warpage on me. So, import the models into your favourite slicer. I strongly suggest you print only shells, or, only base plates in a single run. If you don't, your containers will have horizontal lines through them. However, you're going to have to add a few more supports. Lychee exports STLs, but looking at the files, the supports look weird (too polygonal) So just add them yourself, super easy, look: Just two rows of supports for the roof, and a circle of supports around the magnet pockets. Using Lychee, I turn on Y-axis mirroring, and then add them along one side, and it automatically copied the same support on the other side. Then click the bracings button, and I'm done. Actually, I then duplicate the model (supported) nine times and rearrange them on the build plate for a total of ten models each print. So now they've printed! Below shows how I remove the skirts. after cleaning the extra resin off, just slice down both sides, and rip off the bottom, the supports inside will rip right off. Be careful with this, watch where your fingers are, I sliced myself good on my first container a few weeks ago. At this point, I clean them up under tap water with a paint brush and dry them off. Off to the UV light for two minutes.. just to get them a little cured and not so soft... After, what you want to do is tape some fine sandpaper to your workspace (or like me, maybe a board). Then carefully sand the remains of the skirt off until the bottom is smooth. But don't take too much off, just enough to remove the little bit of skirt left.. Under the sink they go again for a nice wash to get that fine dust off. Dry everything, and time to install some magnets! The magnets you'll need are just 5mm diameter x 1mm thick, you can find them easily enough on Amazon. A pack of 280 cost me $15 CAD. On the bottom plate I put two magnets, and in the shell I use only one magnet. That seems to give just the right amount of stick. I use a dab of thin CA glue with a disposable micro brush to make sure they stay in place. Also, make sure the polarity is correct!!! Just assemble one container, and then use that as a 'jig' (up in the picture, that was my first prototype). Put the bottom plate on top, and the magnets will fall right into the hole with the correct side up! The shell is prepared in exactly the same way, but I don't have any pictures of that; by the time I decided to take pictures of the work, the shells were already ready with magnets. So the next post will my method of assembling the plates and shells together; that's a bit of a chore timewise.
An update on the previous post... As I mentioned, I don't have any pictures of working on the shell, but really it's pretty much the same. Still have to remove the skirt, sand the bottom of the shell, etc. Well, the biggest difference here is that you need to be really careful on sanding off the remains of the skirt.... The bottom edge of the shell is very thin! It's super easy to sand right through and break it. So go slowly, and sand only the minimum to get the bottom cleaned up! The first batch of containers I did I lost four of the ten to overzealous sanding before I realized what I was doing wrong. This one I decided to keep, I'll just add more rust at that edge In other news... I had a batch of ten high-cube containers printing today.... Wow, I don't think I've ever had this bad of a failure before! sheesh! I think maybe two or three of the containers are actually good, the rest, even though are still on the build plate, are gutted (look at the top shells, you can see the failures of the ends). I have no idea what happened, really weird. I mean I successfully printed four batches of base plates, and three batches of shells (twenty 40' and twenty 20' containers) without a hitch. I'll have to see what might be different in this shell.
So, part 2! This will show how I assemble the shell and base plate together. However, I took these photos yesterday, and this was when I was working on the 20' containers. But still, it's the same process I use for the 40' containers. Also, the lighting is much different in the pictures. The power company cut off our electricity all day for some work on the power grid in the neighborhood, and had only a small battery powered lamp to work with. First thing I start with is to apply a bead of thick CA to the inner sides of the shell, just barely visible in the above picture. Then pop the bottom plate into place, and... Clamp down the container within a vice! Here we see that I just use some tongue depressors to prevent damage to the container from the metal jaws. Don't need to clamp real tight here, just enough to keep it firmly in place. If any CA oozes out, just wipe off with a little lint free towel real quick. To speed things a long, I spritz some CA accelerator into a small cup, and use a micro brush on the glue joints. Start applying glue to the next shell, and when done, take this one out and replace with newly assembled shell, wipe CA, apply accelerator.. repeat 18 more times Oh, for the 40' containers, the base plate aligns with the notch on the container shell, so difficult to screw that up. But there's no throat on the 20' containers. So note that the magnet in the shell part is centred, but is slightly offset in the base plate. The "short" end of the base plate goes towards the container doors. Honestly, I doubt it makes any difference at all, the offset is so tiny (can't even see it in the below picture) Once all of the twenty containers were done, I clamped each one again, lengthwise. I use thin CA at the ends of each seam (applied with a micro brush). Wipe off the excess that didn't seep into the crack, and apply accelerator, wait 10 seconds or so, and go on to the next. Finally, I do clean up the bottom edge one last time on the sanding plane, just a tiny amount! Just to get rid on any little roughness from the glue. And that's it, another quick rinse in the sink, set to dry, and it's ready for painting! Now, tomorrow I need to figure out what's wrong with the high cubes!
Whew, isn't easy to do! Okay, so I uploaded the 20' and the 40' standard containers to the 3D printed resources: Containers - 20' standard height Containers - 40' standard height The 40' high cube and 53' containers will follow once I've printed them successfully. enjoy!
Could you glue a thin strip of steel in the bottom of the well for the magnets to attach to? Painted black or yellow, at normal distances would probably be nearly invisible.
Maybe, but for now I'm just going to try without, just like samusi01 mentioned. Maybe I was over thinking it
Just wanted to thank you again for these. I just finished my 1st batch of 40' and they are a breeze to assemble. I did forget to double the magnets in the bottom, even though only one in the bottom and top they seem to hold well together. Next run I will remember to try two (total of 4) for the bottom and 2 for the top. Hope you work the issue out with the High Cubes and that you will share like the standards. Again Thank you
Super glad it worked out! Go ahead and post some pictures once you have them painted, would like to see! So the story with the high cubes is that my exposure time was likely on the verge of being too low, and that caused the split. I increased the time ever so slightly and it looked good until my vat ran out of resin 90% of the way through the roof. Doh! I had no more green resin, so switched to another. That took most of a morning to test, but in the end, the resin warped too much. So switched resins again. I also noticed a bad line through the side caused by the magnet holes. I redesigned the magnet hole to be thinner and without the fillet to deal with the suction forces. Anyway I've got ten now sitting on the workbench, ready for final assembly (sanded and with magnets glued in). Should be finished tonight. I'll see about posting the model today after work or over the weekend. Sorry for the delay!
