Finished this a while ago. Been sitting outside for about 2 months now. So far it’s doing well. I was having poor luck with wood no matter how much I painted and water proofed so I went with .060 styrene sheet with .125 for the deck. With the exception of the wood supports on the deck, it’s all cut out on my probotix 3d router and painted with rustoleum camo flats.
Looks great.
Very nice Martin. I’ve shied away from wood for the same reason. I takes so much time to build and detail a model and I don’t want it to fall apart in a few seasons. Based on the moss and all of the trees in the photos, I’m guessing that your railroad area stays fairly moist which would lead to early demise of wooden structures as opposed to some layouts that don’t have cover and “dry out” in the sun.
That’s a very classic looking station. I really like the feel of it. Are the windows blacked out? I think it works well if they are. Was there a big adjustment moving from wood to styrene on the router?
Thanks guys. Yes, very moist, I’m in Appalachia, foot of the Blueridge Mtns. It’s mostly oak in those shots.
The windows are frosted although there is a bit of an interior in there, walls and doors but no details. Eventually I will light it but for now it’s blank. The roof is removable and it’s sitting on a base of green insulation foam painted to look like concrete.
There was a bit of a learning curve for the styrene but I find I much prefer working with it. Wood flings sawdust all over the place- the vac catches about 80% but it’s still messy. With styrene, the router runs at only 7500 rpm so it’s pretty quiet. I get real fine ‘chips’ which are kinda static ‘sticky’ but clean up well with the shop vac. I’m using 1/32 inch bits and doing two passes at .030 or so per pass. Just purrs right through it.
looks nice.
there is one thing to say in favour of plastic. when you cut it, it is seldom splintering apart when you are almost done.
Martin
Very nice. Nice setting as well
Bob
Great looking build(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif), fits right in.
Beautiful work Martin.
Very nice depot, Martin.
Great looking depot Martin. What kind of feed rate are you cutting at. I have several 4’ x 8’,.080 thick sheets of styrene I purchased several years ago for future projects. My CNC Router is sitting ready for a new project.
Chuck
Beautiful!
Wow!!! That looks amazing!
Very nice depot, Martin. Ya get my seal of approval. I’m wondering, though, didn’t your router want to melt the styrene? I bought a skill saw to cut windows and found if you go to fast, the styrene will melt, which is why I now scribe and cut the wall into pieces, leaving out the window openings and reassembling the whole thin like a jigsaw puzzle. With MEK as the bonding agent, the pieces all “glue” together nicely and are quite strong, especially if you cover them with Precision Plastic sheet. BTWE, your windows look good, too.
Hey guys, thanks so much for the kind words. I’m still learning but I think I’m getting the hang of it more or less. It is a fun machine.
Oh yes, I’ve melted my share of sheet, makes a huge mess, breaks bits, yuck.
But I have found that if I throttle my router back to 7500 rpm, (I have a ‘super PID’ which lets me dial in the speed) and then run the feed rate at about 20 ips I get good results. I also make a couple of passes if the material is more than say .030. So the depot was, for the most part, two passes. You want to see really fine little ‘chips’ and then you get a nice clean edge. I use 1/32 inch bits from PreciseBits: MM208-0313-013F which is a two flute fish tail end mill which seem to work quite well:
http://www.precisebits.com/products/carbidebits/precisebit-soft.asp?tsPT=!!!2Flute_EndMill_FishTail!!!
Also, one other thing that was throwing me for the longest time is a G code command that CamBam puts into the generated machine file - G64 which means ‘constant velocity mode’. This was rounding all the corners in the windows and driving me nuts. If you instead change that one command to G61, which means ‘exact stop mode’, the router feed will come to a stop if it needs to so the corners are sharp. You can only get the inside corners so sharp since the bit is round after all but the difference is quite noticeable.
Martin Sant said:
That is soooo something right out of a railroad photography book. Cool.
Thanks for the information Martin. I have the same “Super PID” on my router, it sure makes it simple to adjust the RPM on the router head. How are you holding your styrene down on your spoil board? I’ve cut a few painting temples for the “Cradle Master” work stations I make and sell. I used double-sided carpet tape to hold it down.
Chuck
Hey Chuck. I’m using double sided foam tape. I’ve tried the carpet tape and it works well, really sticky, but the foam gives me a bit of vertical ‘mistake’ room. I can go just a tad deeper than the plastic is thick for a nice edge without having to worry about breaking the bit.
But the foam stuff is rather expensive- and I hate throwing it all out every time.
I would like to try a vacuum table. They don’t look too difficult to make.
