Double Track Tunnel Portals: When I put the single track tunnel portals up ( HERE ) I had also designed double track portals. I'm finally getting around to putting them up and I'll also try and get the print files up soon, so check back for those. I did about 12 designs (not all shown here) at the time and might come back to this at some point. . . . . . . ..... The print files for the 'U.P' style portals are ( HERE ). The print files for the 'Stepped Top' portals are ( HERE ). The print files for the 'Stone Arch' portals are ( HERE ). You can find the single track portal print files and over 100 items for your railroad ( HERE ). Sumner
Hi Sumner you are doing a great job!! Congratulations! I would like to do the same in HO scale as you are doing in N-scale. Can you give a few pointers where to start and some sort of "operating procedure"? I got my own 3d-printer (Anycubic Viper) but have not unboxed it yet; you can imagine at what stage of the learning curve I am I did download a few programs for 3d (OpenScad, FreeCAD, Sketchup, ...) but i am in, let's say, embryonical stage So please let us know "how to start building tunnel portals for noobs" Thanks! Erik
The portals are a pretty basic item to design and print with the exception of patterning the bricks, blocks and stones over and over again. Not hard to do but one should start with a few simpler items first. I'd for sure use Fusion 360. Very powerful, I think relatively easy to use as you don't need to understand how to use very many features of it to design the types of items we are interested in. It is free to use if you use it under their hobby license and aren't using it to design items for resale..... you can get it ( HERE ). There are so many YouTube's up that it wouldn't make much sense for me to make one also and I'm swamped with current projects so please pursue those. This is the one I used to get started. Watch it and then do the same steps one at a time as he does them The video covers most of the commands you need to design a lot of items. I just re-watched and learned some tips I forgot but that will help me now. Look at his other videos. 'Extrude' is what I use over and over again in designing objects. You can take a 2 dimensional drawing and extrude it into a body. You can extrude things together to combine them or to cut them away. I'll use extrude to quickly make windows from a rectangular body from a 2 dimensional sketch of a rectangle. Then use extrude to cut the panes out. Then use extrude to make the trim a different thickness than the molding around the panes and so forth. Then I can take a wall of a building and Extrude a rectangular body the with the same dimensions as the window through the building wall everywhere I want a window. Then take the window and place it into the openings and combine them with the walls. All of that in a few minutes once you get the hang of it. Take your time, start with simple designs (even simpler than his example) and design away. Also I don't do it but you can probably take my portals and re-scale them up to HO with the slicer you use to print with, I use Cura. Sumner
Thank you Sumner, this is more than good enough for me: you giving this kind of kickstarters is very helpful. By the way, this is new to me: being able to upscale from N to HO or whatever different scaling is required. Great! But as you advise, I will take it a step at the time.
There can be problems scaling up and down though. For instance I don't design any feature under about .015" (.4 mm) as it won't print (a resin printer will print detail under that). So the mortar joints in my brick faces and such are about .015" wide and deep. That is a about 2 inches in N scale. Wide for a mortar joint but since the printer can't print under that it almost closes the joint between the bricks and doesn't look all that bad.... https://1fatgmc.com/RailRoad/3D-Printer-2/page-26.html ... Now if you scale the print up to HO the mortar joint is probably not going to look good as it is going to scale up also. If I designed the print with HO in mind I would still used the .o15" width and depth for the mortar joint. At about an inch wide for the mortar joint it would still be twice as wide as a real one but would probably look good. So scaling some things up or down might work keep in mind that all the features are being scaled. Sumner
Really nice job. I taught at ASU after I retired. We had a huge array of 3D printers for the students- filament, resin, metal and plastic powder and mixed materials... I wonder about doing some of this in the powder plastic system.
