One of my older designs I decided to post on Cults today. A Free N Scale Track Cleaning Car for FDM printers. It works really well for me. Happy Holidays! Free STL file N Scale Track Cleaning Car ・3D printable model to download・Cults (cults3d.com)
Thanks for the post.......but can't really see very well. It appears to have a cleaning roller? What is the roller?
The roller is part of the print. If you click the link, it has better photos of the design than the low res GIF.
i have about three or four of these they work well. ive converted the rollers to square drags and glue the track pads to the bottom of those. this seemed to work much better for me. before i run my trains i put one of those cars in front then run the loco around once or twice on each track. Then remove the cars and every train seems to run just great....
How are you gluing them? Would double sided tape work? Since the cleaning pad is being pushed on I'd think it wouldn't take much. Do you have cleaning fluid in the part above the pad? I'm wondering if it could be filled and then the flow controlled with a simple valve made with a screw or something that you could control the flow with a screw driver used when you run the car. Last questions, whose car did you modify, ajkochev's ? Do you have the modified file up someplace? Sumner
I like this idea. I think it would clean the track better. I might have to design a rocker as an option over the roller. You could still wrap a paper towel strip around it and just tape it to the top of the block.
Thanks again sidney for this idea. It works so much better than the roller did. The rocker is in the design now, same link as the top post, and shows a paper towel from just 5 mins of use. I gave TrainBoard forums credit but if you like I'll put on your handle if you want just did not want to go that far without your approval.
The roller type cars are similar to the Aztec track cleaner and I have several and they work well (but he mounted the roller at a slight angle so the roller would be dragging more on the track. The pad type cleaner is similar (in a most general way) to the old HO homasote cleaners (square block of homasote mounted below a freight car to drag on the tracks). Both work well and I always use both since they each have their pluses and minuses. Bottom line, huge THANKS for making and releasing these. On small thought: The Aztec (long unavailable since John passed several years ago) car also had a small magnet and brush mounted to the bottom of the car to sweep things out of the way and pick up the magnet things that might be there.
