Fordson tugger hoist

[Lawton Maner]

Sorry to nit pick on such a beautiful set of renderings, but you left the throttle (?) rod in the second picture out.  And, in same picture note that the tractor on the skidder in the background still has at least one headlight.

[Chuck Doan]

And don't forget the hocked up wads of snoose on the foot board.

[1-32]

hi chuck.
it is going to look amazing.

[Barney]

Its looking good - great drawings - the bit I don't understand is why 2 winding drums how where they used
Barney

[Chuck Doan]

The rear drum did the hoisting, and the forward drum was the haulback line for pulling the main line back out to the load point. I'm sure there were other uses as well for different rigging setups.

I pretty much finished it up, and should be ready to build:

[TRAINS1941]

Looks good Chuck.

Is the Fordson one from the Franklin Mint?

Jerry

[Chuck Doan]

Danbury Mint. Yep, another diecast conversion.

[Ray Dunakin]

How long did it take you to draw that? Did you use Sketchup or some other CAD program?

[finescalerr]

SketchUp probably couldn't produce as clean an image of such a complex subject. You use SolidWorks daily, right? Given your expertise, I'm curious how long it took you to crank out that drawing. -- Russ

[Chuck Doan]

Yes, Solidworks. It's hard to say about the time. A lot of it was spent looking for and at pictures for research. That part is the same regardless of the build method. If I knew the size of the parts and what they looked like at the start, it would probably take me two work days or less to model the items (less the Fordson that was done a couple of years ago.)  There aren't any really hard shapes to figure out on this one.

One cool thing was the chain. SW has a fairly new chain pattern feature that lets you make a rotatable model really fast. I modeled the inner and outer chain links. Then I drew a sketch of the chain path and mated the two links to it, then it automatically fills the path with all the links.

To figure the chain, I used a motorcycle sprocket calculator I found online. I knew the pitch (distance between the chain pins) and I knew the number of sprocket teeth from a Skagit factory spec someone found for me on the Yahoo logging group.  The calculator showed me the pitch diameter for each sprocket and the centers between sprockets for an even number of links. Easy!

[Bill Gill]

"Easy!"
Oh, yeah...easy...

This will be another good one.

[5thwheel]

Beautiful rendering, can't wait to see it in model form.  One suggestion, there should be a slight slack in the chains.

[finescalerr]

Only two days of actual drawing? At my current level of incompetence that would take me two months!!

Incidentally, I've drawn chain in both AutoCAD and SketchUp ... link by link. Not fun at all.

Russ

[lab-dad]

Very cool subject!
I'm sure we will all be impressed and dismayed at the same time.
The weathering on top of the engineering will likely push the envelope again....
-Marty

[Chuck Doan]

John Geigle of J and S Technologies invited me to send a file of one of my parts to try on one of his printers. My first impression after receiving it was that it was injection molded. I gave it a quick coat of primer to see how it looked. I used Mr. Surfacer 1500 black, which I have found to be the least forgiving and most revealing primer for finding print lines. This part has the least amount of visible print lines I have ever seen on a part. On most surfaces, there are no visible lines at all, even on the curved sections, which is usually where the lines are most prominent. The lettering came out perfect, it is .06" tall .008 wide and .010 high. The material is grey in color and seems stronger than Shapeways FUD/FXD parts, though I am not inclined to test it. Best of all, there is no wax residue to remove. I can't gauge the cost difference yet; I have more parts in for quote so I will soon find out, but the time saving in cleanup will be a factor.

After seven years of working with 3D printed parts, I am finally seeing some of the better quality prints becoming available to modelers. And just in time for my new project!





Grey primer after clean-up. I spent less than 10 minutes on it as opposed to 2-3 hours (or more) on a Shapeways parts.