Containers

Well, after having seen the price of containers to fill my measly 10 well cars, I decided to trade money for time and design and 3d print all my containers. Plus, I get to have fun modeling and 3D printing stuff, so much better than just spending money on overpriced little boxes of plastic

I started with the standard 40' standard container. I've just finished printing a prototype and it works just fine...



It's not just a box though, that would be really simple I guess, they're actually made to be in two pieces, the shell and bottom plate...



In the above picture we can just see the seam where the bottom plate fits into the container shell. It would be really so much simpler if I just made the whole think a simple box, but the thing is that I wanted to add some magnets. Here's a cross section of how it fits together...



The divots inside can accept a press fitted 5mm x 1.5mm magnet. Well, actually, in the bottom I put TWO magnets. Turns out that a single magnet wasn't strong enough through the plastic to hold the containers together.

So far I did print one, well, I printed four iterations until I figured out how to deal with warpage and work out a working container that I liked.



Sorry for the terrible picture, and well, the thing is dusty and a little beat up. Had a bubble on the roof as well, but hey, this is just a first printing. I'm switching resins to Anycubic standard green for the "production" containers. Will also be much better once I spray these down with primer. The green containers are just two Walthers high-cube containers I bought to check clearances on my tunnels.

So now I'll just make a copy of my container model file, and make a 20 foot container, a 40' high-cube, and a 48' high cube.

So they won't look as sexy or crisp as commercial containers from Walthers or Kato, but I also won't be spending the equivalent of a sound equipped diesel on plastic boxes with no electronics or moving parts.

The only thing that I really didn't realize is that the magnets are useless for keeping the containers in the well cars - the Walthers well cars I have are metal, but non-magnetic, doh!

I also designed the box to be exactly scale size, but due to resin shrinkage, they're a tiny bit off (i.e. the Walthers containers are 76.30mm long (scale is 76.20), but my 3d prints are 75.85mm. After I switch resin I'll just do a quick scaling by whatever tiny factor I need to compensate I guess.

 

there are some already done on thingyverse. ive printed a few from there.

 

These look great! I'm actually designing a Intermodal Crane to lift these but you got me rethinking it. My design of the lifter is based around the narrower ones and yours is the cubed variety. How popular is the narrow over the cubed? I might have to try and see if I can make something to accommodate both.

 

Very nice. Consider adding bracing or other internal structure for holding weights. When I did some early 20’ containers, I put brackets in to secure steel rod for weight as they’d end up on flatcars. You may want to stretch the gooseneck tunnel back a bit as it’s 3.3m from the front of the container to the end of the tunnel.

 

Honestly, I did look at thingiverse, but I didn't quite like the ones available. Plus, having made my own, they are simple to change into different sizes... for example:



Now I have 20' standard, 40' standard, and 40' high-cube! Next on my list is the 48' high cube.

I'm not sure what are narrow or cubed? Do you mean standard and high-cube? They're actually the same width in both cases, it's just the height that changes.

This from a spreadsheet I made to convert the sizes to n-scale for designing:



oh, I think I see what you mean, the 48 and 53' containers are in fact wider. I took the original numbers from Wikipedia, and there is says that the 48 and 53 foot containers are not standard. I really have no idea how they stack (or if they can stack) the wider containers on the narrow ones.

I'm already happy with the weight of the empty well cars I have (I only own two sets of Walthers 5-unit double stack cars), so I'll not be adding any more weight. Even empty my 10 wells go around my small layout nicely without any issues. Though, right now, weighting my first container, it's currently at 9 grams. That's basically adding 18 grams to each well.

I didn't know that was called the goose neck tunnel, wasn't sure what it was. But it was a conscious decision to make them only 5mm deep. I think scale would be 20mm deep, but I cut them back because no one will be looking under the containers, and it makes the magnet location easier to deal with. One thing about the magnet locations is that they are keyed so that two 20 foot containers will have the same magnet locations for the 40 foot container.

 

Thank you for the info. My intermodal crane can accommodate different length and height size containers but not width. Sounds like two odd balls are not that common. There is about 1mm of play on the width of my lifter and only 1mm width difference in your chart so maybe it will fit.

Please post your designs to Thingverse when done they look great.

 

I understand. The mass of the Walthers cars makes things easier. My era used flatcars of various lengths and ensuring a good weight is essential (as is the center of gravity height...). Good call on the tunnel with your design priorities. It's also nice to see Fusion 360 in use. If you've not visited Matt's Place (The Intermodal Container Web Page (matts-place.com)) you might consider checking it out. Lots of interesting ideas there.

If you are designing a large overhead gantry crane, using ISO dimensions should be OK... if it's designed for domestic US/Canadian terminals, it might be worth considering using the wider domestic container width (102") as the base. Or just have two different attach mechanisms.

 

Oh look, found this...



From that matts-place website. Clearly shows a wider container sitting on top of the narrow (standard) ISO container.

I'll make sure to make my 48 feet container the correct width!

 

A good thing… As far as I know, all the non-ISO cans in US/Canada (principally the now little seen 48’ and ubiquitous 53’) have their castings inset to be compatible with ISO standards. One limitation with the larger cans is they do not have the same stacking capabilities and are usually constrained to three high or less versus the ISO cans which can be more than double that.

You’d have to check prototype images for your walthers cars to see how they are loaded; on some cars with five platforms, the outer two and center may have 53’ atop 40’ or paired 20’ and the remaining two will have 40’ in the upper position to provide clearance. I usually only see this on wells that are 40’ long. The end result is like this:

53 40 53 40 53
40 40 40 40 40

 

You got me looking at railfanning youtube videos of CN intermodal trains around Montreal. True enough, I can't find a single example of a 48' long container! So I'm going to skip that size and make a few 53' instead.

Though I'm currently stuck for now. I printed eight 40' shells, and then my printer failed on the eight bottom plates. Looks to be a screen failure unfortunately. I ran a few test exposures and it looks like whenever any pixel lights up, all other pixels in the same column are also lighting up at about quarter to half power or something. Obviously that's causing some incredibly bad prints. I tried disconnecting and reseating the ribbon cable in the hopes that may correct the problem, but no luck, the screen must be toast.

So now I'm debating what to do. I can order a replacement screen for 200-250$ CAD (depending on whether I get hit with duties), or change the printer. The Elegoo Saturn has much cheaper screen replacements for the next time this inevitably happens (99$ sold by Elegoo on Amazon Canada). Or I could go to the Mono X 6K, but that's a major expense, that may be offset a little by selling this printer as-is for parts, or if someone wants to do the screen replacement.

Rather sucks that this happened so quickly, I've only had this printer since December 26, 2020, and I'm not even close to having 2000 hours on the LCD. I doubt I have even 500 hours printing time.

 

Sorry to hear about the printer. Do you still have your original one that you can use for a bit?

Not sure this is the right one ( HERE ) or not and shipping and duties to you but $110 to U.S. with free shipping and looks like it would be here in about a month. I've ordered Arduino stuff and other electronics from them with no bad experiences, but who knows?

Sumner

 

Stephane,

Sorry to hear about your printer. Technology is great, right up until it stops working. I’ve considered the Elegoo line but not yet pulled the trigger, principally as I am so fortunate as to have a first class maker space nearby with multiple printers (and
lasers, mills, etc…)

So far as I know, the most common use stateside of 48’ are for garbage trains. Last time I saw one was north of Seattle late last year. I don’t know if there are comparable trains in Canada.

Sam

 

whew!

This container was more difficult than I first anticipated. I thought the 53' would just be a slightly wider and longer version, but then I started seeing so many more differences in the bottom edge and the doors, and well, it might have been easier to just start from scratch instead of copy/pasting the 40' high cube and making adjustments. But it's done now, so all's good! There appears to be a lot of different 53' containers out there, but I just had to make this one based on Canadian Tire photos It's not exact for the rivet counters, but it's good enough for what I need it for. Now if I could only find some Canadian Tire decals! I know they exist in HO scale, but haven't found any yet for n-scale.

For my printer, I decided to not buy a new replacement screen, and instead I took the opportunity to upgrade, and pre-ordered the Elegoo Saturn 2. It's a bigger printer, with a lot more resolution (28 microns vs the 50 microns for the Mono X). Plus, when the inevitable comes and I need a replacement screen, they're available from Amazon Canada for slightly more than 100$ CAD (vs 250$ CAD or more) for the Anycubic screens. Downside is I need to wait for this this new printer, but that's alright, it'll be worth the wait I think!

 

I got the Elegoo Mars 3 it would seem right about the time the 8K printers started coming out. So far, at standard layer height the only thing of my HO steam locomotive that hasn't resolved to my satisfaction has been the build plate - at normal viewing distances it looks like a build plate, but get in close and the letters are just clumps of resin. I'm hoping that'll improve when I crank the layer height down to 0.02mm for the "gold" parts, but the 4K horizontal resolution will still be there... So, what, pray for a FEP leak?

 

Just make your own... If you don't have a commercial product like Adobe Illustrator, use Inkscape as a reasonable alternative. Stateside, I've used Circus City but it may be cheaper to talk to Bill at pdc.ca.

 

I've made my own in the past, but in this case, I'd need to print white

 

Here's an example of some artwork I did a couple of years ago:



It does require a commercial printer like Circus City or PDC.ca, but you'll get white as a result.

Sam

 

This past week I received my new Elegoo Saturn 2 printer, got it calibrated to the resin I use, and been busy printing containers! Should have pictures soon.

In the meantime, I need to fix the issue where I've been adding magnets to all my containers, but the Walthers well cars are made of non magnetic metal! Yeah, ooops!

I'm looking for advice, I've been looking for ways to add either a thin metal plate to the wells, but can't find anything thin enough. However, anyone think it a bad idea to chuck a milling bit (i.e. this) in my drill press, carefully make a small depression in the bottom of the well car and glue in a thin 5mm x 1mm round magnet? A dab of yellow paint and it should look fine, no?

 

Just a couple pictures...



The 40' standard height containers, I only have six of them in primer so far. The eight in the back are assembled together and ready for primer; but it's raining today.



So in the meantime I cleaned up the twenty 20' containers, sanded away the supports and installed the magnets. Now these are ready for assembly. I just glue the bottom plate to the shell. Also, eight more 40 foot standard height containers on the white board. Those are awaiting base plates that are now printing on the Elegoo Saturn 2. I had forgotten about those, they were the last thing that printed on my Mono X before the screen died (the screen died on printing the base plates, which were a disaster).

Next print will be 40' hi-cubes. With the Elegoo Saturn 2, I can comfortably print ten 40' containers, or twenty 20' containers. However I print the shells and base plates separately. Trying to do both just ends up with uneven pull lines appearing on the sides of the containers.

Reminds me, I need to order those decals!

The cost in resin? well, for the twenty 20' containers, Lychee Slicer estimates about 5.25 CAD, or about 26 cents per container. Lets not talk about the cost of the machine though