Paul,
What are you thinking about having printed? Parts? Shell?
I might be able to help if you just want parts.
Craig,
I would basically need the whole works minus the truck side frames. The Aristo SD45 motor block and sideframes are correct for the SD9, not correct for most SD45’s.
Humm, I think you might be better of scratch building the sides and adding details aka Cannon and Co in HO. First, you are going to have a hard time finding a print bed that will print the shell in big enough pieces at a high enough quality. I’m more than willing to help with detail parts, as I think you would be better off.
Even if you broke the shell into say 3 or 4 pieces; front section, cab, front half of long hood, back half of long hood that is still a pretty penny in printing. Yes, you can go cheaper, but the quality is going down.
Nothing against Mark, but his designs need a lot of filing and smoothing to get anywhere close. The layers are to rough.
Do you have drawings?
Humm, I think you might be better of scratch building the sides and adding details aka Cannon and Co in HO. First, you are going to have a hard time finding a print bed that will print the shell in big enough pieces at a high enough quality. I’m more than willing to help with detail parts, as I think you would be better off.
Even if you broke the shell into say 3 or 4 pieces; front section, cab, front half of long hood, back half of long hood that is still a pretty penny in printing. Yes, you can go cheaper, but the quality is going down.
Nothing against Mark, but his designs need a lot of filing and smoothing to get anywhere close. The layers are to rough.
Do you have drawings?
Paul,
How much information do you have on the SD-9? Might be interested in helping out, but it won’t be a fast process.
Chris
Chris,
I’m just getting started on this. First thing is to get the drawings. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be interested in having an SD9 or two.
Paul,
This is what I could see happening that would be more economical, and having a larger audience than just SD9’s
3D print hood doors/latchs (well Burl already has that part covered), then you can mix and match doors and latches on a sheet of .060" styrene. EMD hood doors are pretty much all the same.
3D print other details as needed.
I’m willing to help as well, but as Chris pointed out, it would be a slow process.
Step 1 would be securing some quality drawings.
Step 2 would be designing the CAD.
I think the approach Craig has outlined to be the best way to achieve a high quality model by 3d printing the details. I recently printed scale hinges in 1:20.3 that work with a .020 hinge pin. only had to thicken the model I downloaded from McMaster. you can even see a hint of the screw detail. have to find the picture.
Al P.
For example, here are Burl’s latches. I believe these are really expensive for two reasons; 1st they are separate parts and shapeways charges per part. 2nd, I think I remember Burl saying this was a master for a mold. He might even be able to make some resin copies as I think he made some for Dirk years ago.
https://www.shapeways.com/product/J2S7PH2KK/paddlelatch?optionId=55973235
Doors would be pretty easy to draw up as they are pretty standard sizes. You could either draw the doors with latches, or have them printed with holes for latches to be inserted into once they are one the model.
As a side note, I’m working on developing replacement EMD radiator and dynamic brake fans that are built using a combination of photo etch and 3D printing.
I would approach it as two types of 3D printed material combined with laser cut lexan or styrene.
Chris Kieffer said:
I would approach it as two types of 3D printed material combined with laser cut lexan or styrene.
Yes, that is what I was thinking as well. You could laser cut the sides, and then any surface details would be 3D printed/resin copies. If you designed the parts right, you could ‘plug’ the 3d parts into the laser cutouts for said part for 100% accurate locating.
LSC SD9 group build? 
Count me in for an SP SD9!
I find the comments on this subject of 3D printing, to be interesting. While most of the people commenting seem to “talk” the “theory” of what can and cannot be done in 3D printing, I have been doing this for the past three years as I produce parts and LARGE sand castings in aluminum for “one of a kind” parts for my 1-1/2 inch scale P.E. Baldwin electric locomotives and even for my rolling stock. None of the parts I have had made are available ANYWHERE on the planet. You can’t get much more small “niche” than that :). The nice thing is that you can do most anything you want in 3D printing now. One prime example of a one-of-a-kind part was the scale model door panels with louvers for the hoods front and rear of my P.E. electrics. I had no prints and didn’t have access to the prototype to measure and do my own drawings in MasterCam. We actually used a very nice photograph that a friend of mine took at Orange Empire Trolley Museum in Perris, CA. I used a great photo software program and enhanced the photograph and made the details of the door panels and louvers really stand out. That photo was then exported to Fusion 360 and geometry data was produced. We then “tweaked” the drawing to get to the proper prototype scale and then scaled down to 1/8th scale. My foundry guy in Kent, Ohio (FairWeather Foundry) then used that data to 3D print the “pattern” for the sand casting. He shipped the pattern to me and I “proofed it out” on my actual locomotives and I approved the pattern for the sand casting. Two weeks later, I had 28 individual aluminum castings in my hand ready for machining and installed on my engines and five others located in Northern California. All of the photos of this process and the subsequent mounting on the locomotives is in my “build” on my thread about the building of my Baldwin electrics in the “Other scales” forum.
Another item we made was some sand covers used on the hoods. I drew them in MasterCam scaling off an actual Pacific Electric, Torrance, CA blueprint from 1922. This was a two casting part. The sand cover body and the lid including a working hinge. The pattern was finished in PEG. The printing was done in fine resolution so NO hand work was needed1 You do have to weigh compromises when doing parts…high resolution equals relatively high cost, but better looking parts and no time consuming hand work. OR lower resolution, significantly lower cost, but much more time consuming handwork.
I have been using high end (about $15K per station) cad/cam software for about 25-30 years and I am comfortable with it. I have also been using Fusion 360 for a little over a year now. Very nice software and you can’t beat the price of “FREE” for the hobbyist and start-ups making less than $100K/year. You just renew the subscription once a year. Nice thing is that I can transfer drawing files back and forth between the two programs. I like the idea that I can store my drawings in the Cloud because the foundry guy and I can work on the same drawings and when either of us makes ANY change in a particular part, we each get emails that a “change” was made and that drawing AUTOMATICALLY become the proprietary drawing.
With these tools available now, there is literally and virtually np part which cannot be produced. I designed parts for the space programs (Apollo and the Space Shuttle) and virtually every American fighter since 1970 and every airliner for Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed and a few Airbus planes. Parts is parts and they all can be drawn and produced. Don’t be afraid to just start drawing. Hands on is the only way to learn these drawing programs. You WILL make mistakes, but you WILL learn eventually. Don’t get frustrated, just keep moving forward. Sorry for the long winded post. 
And your age doesn’t matter…computers make it a level playing field. I’m 76 and still learning :).
Before everyone gets excited and puts their orders in, there are a few things you should consider. (If this moves forward)
#1…This would be a kit, not a ready to run. You will have to be able to assemble it and do the finish work yourself including painting. Some parts may take minor adjustments for a perfect fit.
#2…You would have to provide your own motor blocks and electronics.
#3…COST!!! Taking a short look into it and deciding how I would break it down, I’m estimating you are going to be in the $500 range pretty quickly. And that doesn’t include what is in #2. I would have to dig deeper to get a more accurate estimate. The good thing would be that you could buy it in pieces, to spread the cost out over time.
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Exactly what I was thinking Chris.
Without drawings/photos the project is dead already.
Not to derail too much but I always wanted to do a styrene sheet/3d model approach for this fellow:
http://www.tractivepowercorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/TP56_SPECS_01.pdf
If you size it up just right it fits a single USAT 3 axle motor block.
Martin Sant said:
Not to derail too much but I always wanted to do a styrene sheet/3d model approach for this fellow:
http://www.tractivepowercorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/TP56_SPECS_01.pdf
Martin, What an excellent one to test the concepts with! Start small.
That also looks like a good candidate for laser flat parts and 3D detail parts.
THIS has been mentioned elsewhere, but I also wanted to mention it in here. I had NOT been doing much lately with 3D as I had switched from Windows to a Mac and was dealing with a few paradigms that needed changing. Anyway, back into it recently and “discovered” OnShape. It does store stuff in the cloud (which suddenly seems OK 
) but it works right in the browser, so pretty much any computer that uses a browser is OK. It IS free as long as you don’t mind sharing your design with the rest of the world - otherwise, it’s a tad pricey. Anyway, it SEEMS OK.
A TAD pricey? $1500/Yr for single user. I didn’t look hard but couldn’t find the Free on-line version. Is that the Student/Educator version?
I’d like to try my hand at 3D CAD again. I played with SketchUp for a while but never got good at it. For years I’ve been using the 2000 version of MS Visio for my 1D CAD needs, but a recent upgrade to the current version kind of killed that. MS took away a lot of the more advanced CAD tools (like easy free rotation) as the software is more focused on charting and simple designs like floor plans.