Quiet earth (was: Exercise module for Plettenberg railroad in 1/22.5 scale)

[Design-HSB]

Volker, If you take "Quiet earth" literally, the pressure gauge shouldn't actually indicate pressure, right?

Why, Helmut? This rather adds to the forlomness of humans.

Hello Volker, your works are really uniquely beautiful, only I lack something to live in it. It looks like abandoned to me and reminds me of Lost Places. In the practice module there is a picture of you, only where are you in the model. Yes the earth is quiet and so it seems to me like a Lost Places.

[1-32]

Hi Volker.
very cool love the portrait fits the scene really well.

[WP Rayner]

The Book to have for all your construction methods - mine is the 1904 edition - there seems to be plenty of them out there (later editions as well) and at good prices mine was £6:00 through EBAY
And the best bit is it keeps  the Rivet counters and in this case the brick & mortar counters at bay !!
Barney

Good resource Barney. The 1888 edition of this book is available as a free PDF download from Google Books at https://books.google.ca/books?id=6mVBAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=charles+mitchell+building+construction&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjC9vja_oDvAhWhFVkFHQl7DnEQ6AEwAnoECAgQAg#v=onepage&q=charles%20mitchell%20building%20construction&f=false. Another good reference is Ramsey/Sleeper's Traditional Details, though it is expensive. It is on Google Books, but not available for download. However, Ramsey/Sleeper's Architectural Graphic Standards, 1947 edition (the edition from which much of the material in Traditional Details was taken) is available in downloadable PDF from Library Genesis http://libgen.rs/.

[Hydrostat]

I'm using a lot of CAD for my work, but I can't say that I like that more than building things manually. So mostly rather singular items originate from CAD, but never a complete scene. This lead to an interesting mistake I wasn't aware of at all:




The crane beam and crane trolley were CAD based, but the fixtures are hand made. The beam with the trolley worked, and the beam with the fixtures worked, but not if mounted  
Luckily Frithjof had a remaining piece from Oesterbrücke milling in stock. Former I-beam was 4x8 mm, this one is 4x10 mm. I think this dimension even looks better than the former one.




As Narayan mentioned corrosion must have been a topic in those pickling shops.













Cheers,
Volker

[Hauk]

Excellent finish on the beam!

[Hydrostat]

Boiler carcass is a piece of aluminum tube with boreholes for positioning the attachment parts, which all got a rear trunnion for that purpose.




I didn't want to scratch the surface with the scriber and so made an unrolling of the boiler hull in CAD and printed that on paper. This way only a punch mark was necessary.




Many thanks to Uwe, who printed a lot of parts for the boiler and the electrical installation to come.


Picture courtesy of Uwe Wettin



Some other parts like taps, water gauge glass and safety valve I had brass made by Shapeways. Combining parts leads to a reasonable cost-benefit-ratio.













The printed head and base boiler parts didn't fit to well according to a CAD mistake.
 






After puttying the parts were air brushed ...




... and mounted.










I'm not glad with the weldseams, especially the upper one. The lower one may be a bit smoothened and less exaggerated, but the upper one clearly shows, that the parts didn't fit that well. Any suggestion how to sand that without destroying the rounded shape of the lid?







Test fitting to the building:







Cheers,
Volker

[Barney]

WOW - Im speechless
Barney

[finescalerr]

Can you say "MASTER MODELER"?

The work above demonstrates a satisfactory level craftsmanship and artistry for the Modelers' Forum.

Russ

[Bernhard]

Great job! Did you design the casting onm for the brass fittings yourself ?

Bernhard

[Hydrostat]

Bernhard,

yes, I do all the CAD work myself.

[Bernhard]

I'm particularly interested in this because you then need to know exactly where and how the molten metal flows into the mold, and how it is distributed.

Bernhard

[Hydrostat]

Bernhard,

you need to distinguish brass casting at Shapeways and at an usual jewelry investment caster.

Shapeways (and I guess all the other consumer providers) does wax print the item 'as is' and cast it via the lost wax process. There's no mould involved, which means it gets expensive if you need an item more often than once, because they would wax print every item again and again, but cheap, if you need only one part or an assembly of parts, which is counted as one part. My guess: When doing assemblies you have to be aware that they 1.) put all the cast parts into a tumbler, which means loss of sharpness and detail, and 2.) their limitations of 0.6 mm wall thickness is not a limitation of the casting process but rather of the tumbling they are not willing to relinquish and 3.) their wax printers don't run on highest resolution.



The valve turning handles' 'wire' have ~0.6 mm diameter (0.5x0.7), but you can see, that the sprues are even thinner; well, obviously they thought it would work and it did. All items need to be connected with a sprue of at least 0.8, better 1mm diameter to allow brass to flow in: at the valves for example to the thickest part; the other sprues rather serve to make it stable for the following tumbling. You don't need to think too much about geometry, because brass seems to flow nearly everywhere in vacuum centrifugal casting process.

This is another assembly for Shapeways:



Constructing or assembling parts for brass casting via a mould is another deal, because you have to think about where the mould can be devided later on. This is going to be quite difficult with rather complex parts. It's to complex to discuss here (at least for my limited expressive powers), but if you like you may contact me by phone or skype; just send me a p.m.

Cheers,
volker

[Bernhard]

Thanks for the explanation, Volker. I am familiar with the wax printing process. However, a kind of mold is made around the wax, into which the liquid metal is poured after melting out the wax.
Do you have to provide sprues and risers for such multi-part structures, or does Shapeways do that itself?

Bernhard

[Hydrostat]

You have to do that yourself. You get what you deliver. Shapeways only chooses a position to connect to the model, which is removed by them afterwards.

[Bill Gill]

Volker, That is someterrific work, from the corrosion on the beams to the modeling of the valves and piping.

You asked about suggestions for "sanding" the joint where the lid connects to the boiler without damaging the curved shape. This is beyond my level, but perhaps, if the lid is soft and the piping and exhaust stack can be removed from the top of the lid, would it be possible to make a shaped scraper blade that matches the curve of the lid edge for the cutting profile and the tail end fits into the opening for the exhaust? That would give you a tool that would maintain a constant shape and distance as you carefully rotate the blade around the lip of the lid, like turning a drawing compass.