Large Scale Central

USAT GP9 to Kadee 830 adapters

Given the interest in these in the thread in the Technical Modeling forum, I plan to have a run of these made. Cost would be $9/pair (a pair does one engine), plus postage. Let’s call it $12 for the first pair, and $9 for additional pairs.

PM me if you would like some. I’ll get the printer started on them.

Photos of the prototype (production run will be black):

Looks great Eric, have you an example on how the kadee gauge matches up?

Greg

I can shoot a photo tomorrow. I had to shim the prototype, but have adjusted the model. I’m having him print another pair before doing the whole run so I can check them.

Here’s what it looks like unshimmed. At first glance, it seems to line up, but the coupler on the engine is a little high. I added 1 mm to the thickness of the adapter to drop it slightly in the next print.

Ha ha, at first glance to me it was obviously high!

Thanks for the attention to detail.

Have you noticed if this will fit other locos, like F3’s, GP38, etc? I have more locos!

Greg

Definitely won’t fit the F3 or GP30. I don’t have a GP38 to try. Dan Gilchrist is going to print one and try it on a NW2.

cool, I have a couple of those too!

It would be great to have these for the entire USAT line… and also Aristo… (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)

Greg

Greg Elmassian said:

Ha ha, at first glance to me it was obviously high!

Thanks for the attention to detail.

Have you noticed if this will fit other locos, like F3’s, GP38, etc? I have more locos!

Greg

But is it too high or too low when you replace the USAT wheels with NWSL wheels? Sharing the .stl file would be nice as one could always get it printed via Shapeways

Here’s a link to the file if you want to play with it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e19ktin6y56whny/GP9_Kadee.stl?dl=0

Eric’s adapter is 12mm high for the GP9. I printed at 10mm and I’d say it fits the NW2 damn near perfect! I think at 8.5mm it will fit the GP38. Trying that now.

So here is the 8.5mm adapter in the USAT GP38-2. It looks good to me but I think maybe I’ve been staring at these too long. I’m looking to match the center mold marks. Is that correct? Or should I be matching center top to bottom? Time for bed.

Awesome! I’ve created a monster.

The other way you could test them is to leave the coupler off and see if the anvil-shaped end of the gauge matches the height at the bottom of the adapter. That’s supposed to be the height of the top of the gearbox.

I want to add here that the prices I posted above were based on me having to farm out the printing. Dan tells me that the material cost is pennies. So if you guys want to have them printed locally, I have absolutely no problem with that. I consider this open source.

We should try to put together a library of these files.

Eric,

Great idea. A very nice solution to the problem of offset couplers which I intensely dislike. Bill

Eric Reuter said:

Definitely won’t fit the F3 or GP30. I don’t have a GP38 to try. Dan Gilchrist is going to print one and try it on a NW2.

Pretty sure the 9 and 38 are the same

Nice work

Eric Reuter said:

I want to add here that the prices I posted above were based on me having to farm out the printing. Dan tells me that the material cost is pennies. So if you guys want to have them printed locally, I have absolutely no problem with that. I consider this open source.

We should try to put together a library of these files.

Eric, that is a good idea. For now, until Bob can get a round tuit, post it in **tricks-recycling **on the General page.

or Re****ferances

Ken,

You mean the Reference forum I take it.

Yea, that one too…(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)