Heywood Wheel... picking your own nits!

[W.P. Rayner]

While working on the lettering for the Heywood Coupler drawings, I discovered that I had used an incorrect font on the lettering for the Heywood wheel. With all the photo references and revisions I had previously completed on the wheel, somehow I had missed a rather obvious error, at least to my eyes. The font I used previously wasn't designed until 1908, and while the difference is not something most people would notice, especially in the finished product, I thought it worth correcting. After all there is no point in going to all this trouble if you're not going to make it as right as possible - such is the curse of perfectionism. Fortunately I discovered the error just prior to confirming the rapid prototyping order. Otherwise it would have been an expensive and dramatically more annoying mistake. Thankfully I at least spelt everything correctly...  At any rate here is the rendering of the corrected wheel center.



Paul

[Chuck Doan]

I was going to say something, but I didn't want to be overly critical.

Seriously though, good catch, might as well be as right as possible.

[artizen]

You spelt centre incorrectly!!! 

[W.P. Rayner]

You're right Ian... and I'm Canadian to boot! This is what happens after 30 years in this country. Now I'm going to have to wear my beaver hair shorts in penance... 

Paul

[artizen]

But good to see you are sufficiently motivated to actually check WHEN the font was first designed! Most people would have no clue at all about that sort of detail. I really hope this doesn't put you into the league of rivet counters! The beaver hair shorts thing - are there matching accessories such as Ugg boots? 

[W.P. Rayner]

No Ugg boots Ian. We go with the original - mukluks...

Paul

[W.P. Rayner]

Here are a couple of renderings of the complete Heywood wheel, tire included. The centre in the rendering posted earlier is being prototyped minus the tire as the client is having them cast inside machined tires for 1:6 scale.



And a cutaway view...



Paul

[finescalerr]

Adequate. -- Russ

[Ken Hamilton]

Geez....I flabbergasted by this whole process.  Great stuff, Paul.

[W.P. Rayner]

Received the 1:6 scale prototype from Fineline Prototyping this week and they did a beautiful job. Photos below are of the part as received from them. For reference, the wheel is just over 2.5 inches in diameter, a fairly substantial part. I photographed the part in direct sunlight, so the texture appears more pronounced than it actually is. A little light sanding before molding will blend the curves yet still leave enough texture to represent the cast iron original. Sir Arthur's cast parts were actually very coarse in comparison.

Paul

[Hauk]

Received the 1:6 scale prototype from Fineline Prototyping this week and they did a beautiful job. Photos below are of the part as received from them. For reference, the wheel is just over 2.5 inches in diameter, a fairly substantial part. I photographed the part in direct sunlight, so the texture appears more pronounced than it actually is. A little light sanding before molding will blend the curves yet still leave enough texture to represent the cast iron original. Sir Arthur's cast parts were actually very coarse in comparison.

Looking really good!
How much was the part, by the way?

[Frederic Testard]

Very interesting to see the real thing after the computer-generated one. The print looks very fine in this apparently twice bigger screen image.

[finescalerr]

Not one whit less adequate than I expected, Paul. I gather you are happy. -- Russ

[dandy97]

Received the 1:6 scale prototype from Fineline Prototyping this week and they did a beautiful job. Photos below are of the part as received from them. For reference, the wheel is just over 2.5 inches in diameter, a fairly substantial part. I photographed the part in direct sunlight, so the texture appears more pronounced than it actually is. A little light sanding before molding will blend the curves yet still leave enough texture to represent the cast iron original. Sir Arthur's cast parts were actually very coarse in comparison.

Paul

New guy here with a few questions regarding the parts. I'm assuming these are FDM pieces. The faceting appears to be quite a bit larger on the large radii then I would expect. Does Fineline run the parts from STL files that you generate from your CAD geometry and provide to them, or do you provide CAD data and they generate and optimize the STL files? If you are generating the STL files, what CAD software are you using to generate them? Hope you don't mind the questions.

Dan

[W.P. Rayner]

Welcome to the forum Dan and ask away. Questions are always welcome here. I generate my own STL files in my 3D CAD application, proof them with MiniMagics by Materialise, then Fineline double-checks the files before running them. I use MiniMagics as a proofing viewer because Fineline uses the full program Magics to proof the STL files prior to prototyping. They've found the Materialise applications to be the best at finding any tiny gaps or errors in the STL file which will result in an incorrect or deformed prototype. The CAD software I use is Ashlar-Vellum Cobalt, running on my old coal-fired MAC.

The facets on the curve look more pronounced in the photo than they appear in real life. A light sanding of the contour with the wheel spinning in the lathe will serve to fair the surface prior to molding. The reason behind the appearance of facets on that surface alone, is because that curve was generated in Autocad on another computer, then imported into my 3D application. All the other curves on the part were created by my 3D software and have no evidence of faceting. I now use Autocad curves as only a template and recreate all curves in my 3D software to avoid any odd resolution problems with the imported Autocad data.

Paul