Hey guys,
Long time no posts…well, I was just working on putting together one of Burl’s hopper cars.
Here’s a few pics…the last one shows how it compares to an AML hopper.
Very satisfying project!
Enjoy
Sweet!
That looks good.
I’m surprised you could find any covered hoppers. I thought Andy had bought up every single one in the US and Canada…
sure is a looker.
How can I get one of these kits?
I really like that the side panels aren’t flat. they have wrinkles in them just like the real thing.
I was going to offer these as a kit, where I’d sell the resin, photoetch & decals, and the 3d printed parts would be purchased from Shapeways. It was going to be $200 for my parts & about $100 from Shapeways (plus your own trucks and couplers). Unfortunately, Shapeways has revised their pricing structure several times and now the printed parts have tripled in price (and that with me making zero profit on them). I knew my original targeted price would have been considered high by some, but now I feel like, because of the cost of the printed parts, the price is just unreasonable.
You would think the price of printed parts might be coming down? I think they are getting greedy. There will be heavy competition soon enough to probably have them scared. Maybe they are trying to make the money while they can?
I’ve read a lot of speculation on other forums (some even on Shapeways) that I’ll not get into. But, when I shopped around, they were actually undercutting everyone else pretty steeply before the price structure revision. I think they have figured out they can up their prices while still charging slightly less than everyone else, and where are you going to go? They’re still cheaper.
Another thing that killed me on this model was that the end railings were all printed in one large structure - one print for the entire end of the car. This is a very low density print, and they can’t cram a bunch of other stuff in the print job. So I do understand some of their logic behind the change.
Burl,
Have you considered just selling your products and letting the end user construct the rest?
Thanks for chiming in here Burl.
Thanks guys for the compliments.
The price increase is really unfortunate as I was hoping to make a few more.
Have you tried talking to Mark Dashnaw ???
http://www.largescalecentral.com/forums/topic/21677/my-services
I might be able to offer a few of these after all. See: http://www.largescalecentral.com/forums/topic/21033/ps2cd4427/view/page/3
That would be real nice if you could. Please keep us posted.