Vic Smith said:
Gary Armitstead said:
Ok, don’t believe it. I really don’t care to argue the point. YOU might want to take a look at Shapeways and see what they are doing in various materials. You seem to be an expert in the field of stereo-lithography. I have been doing STL cad work in various materials, for the past 20-25 years in industry.
http://www.shapeways.com/materials
http://www.ponoko.com/make-and-sell/show-material/239-3d-printed-stainless-steel
Who’s argueing? (hence the wink emotocon 
) I just wonder how well those printed parts hold up compared to cast or tooled parts, thats what I was trying to say.
Its one thing to make sculptural objects or locomotive detail parts, but its a whole other ballgame to make a Differential gearbox out of this stuff. WHat someone needs to do, and I don’t know who as none of use has access to one of these babies, would be to create and print parts (like a gearbox for example) and test it to detruction, which would reveal alot of how durable these will be.
Locomotive detail parts can already be done using plastic 3D printers, but where the real woe is in LS is drive parts (or lack thereof) , if they can crack that nut with printers then the day when all we need to do to fix or trains would be to download a 3D cad file feed it into the printer and hit start, we could probaly print the entire locomotives parts, assemble them, and just add a motor and the electronics boards. Imaging being able to print out replacement wheels and axles for stuff that are IN proper gauge and will never go out of gauge because they are cast one-piece, but I think we are at least 15-20 years away from that level of sophistication yet. Its still cool stuff but it still limited and fairly expensive. (again lots of winkies, so no arguement is intended)
OK, OK, OK I see the winks!!! Even with my one eye. Seriously the capability to do the drive gear parts is here NOW. If you had noticed the intricate gear that was printed in 3D, was capable of being turned and machined. If it’s strong enough to be machined, it’s strong to be used in a model locomotive. I think I would agree with you that this is done on more industry capable 3D printers than home use printers for the hobbyist.
If you personally would like a real “eye-opener” to the very sophisticated manufacturing processes (3D printing included), you should attend the WESTEC show usually held in Los Angeles Convention Center in late March. Some of the manufacturing processes being done are just like “science fiction”. Also, the accuracy and complexity of what your talking about (a cast wheelset, with NO machining involved and permenantly hold its gauge)all that comes with a price! I never said EVERYONE could afford this. Just that it can be done NOW.
In my previous life before retirement, I was a die sinker. I made forging dies for aerospace. I started in 1965. At that time, forgings for airplanes were bulky aluminum parts and they still had to be machined. In the early 1970’s, we were doing No Draft precision dies, meaning there were absolutely straight walls for ribs and features in the parts forged. AND we had to hold tolerances in making these dies of plus/minus .002-.003 of an inch. This tolerance does not come without a substantial cost to make the dies. In the 70’s dies like this cost about $100K to $300K each to produce a part that might weigh a pound or two. These dies might have 6 to over a dozen separate parts in each die, just to be able to forge the part and remove from the dies. 99% of the previous machining was eliminated from the part. Maybe drill and tap some holes and the part could literally be assembled to the plane. This after heat treat of course.
It’s great to see 3D printing being used in the hobby now, BUT I saw this technology being used at Cal State LA in the machine technology classroom over 25 years ago. This is not by any means new technology. The stuff they are doing now in exotic steels with high speed machining, is mind boggling. Many aerospace parts now are composites-a whole other world.
