Death Valley Monorail

[John McGuyer]

That thing is just too strange to believe!

John

[Chuck Doan]

I pretty much finished the design this weekend. Added the Servo-link chains and the balance frame and rollers. Lots of parts to make! Next I'll send some files off to the 3D printer to see what the costs will be.


Servo link chains applied. Now I know exactly how much chain to buy!




The balance frame


The balance rollers. Concept based on one of the patent drawings. The drawings showed castings, but I went with a fabricated design. I think Mr. Wright envisioned fleets of monorails built to his design.


Add the wooden 2x6 side and running boards with the load carrying I-beams


And add it to the loco frame. This is pert near everything I will have to fabricate (or have made).


Then add in the tractor and drives and rail drag brake.


and shove the track up tween its wheels





This concludes the solid modeling portion of our program. (maybe)

[MrBrownstone]

Hey Chuck,

excelent solution for the balancing... looks great

can't wait to see it come together...

Mike

[TRAINS1941]

Chuck

Your drawings are excellent and very safe looking.  As far as video goes that is one hell of a strange machine wobbling down the track.
Better safe to walk.
Hope you do this it will be interesting to say the least.

Jerry

[finescalerr]

Chuck, when you get parts from a 3D printer do they come out ready to install or are there resolution based "steps" that you must file out? I have seen some parts done that way. Some are better than others. Bill Meredith explained that 3D printing is best for parts with compound curves.

Since that technology has been improving over the past decade, I am very interested in how good it is today and what we can expect in the future. I would guess it will become very important to hobby manufacturing down the road, especially if the number of hobbyists continues to drop and if limited run, low production models (out of necessity) replace injection molding.

Russ

[Chuck Doan]

I hope to find out! I am expecting to do some clean-up, hopefully not too much.

[marc_reusser]

Superb drawings Chuck. Thanks for creating and posting them.

There is a small armor parts mfr. (I believe out of Australia)...name escapes me at the moment.....that makes stunning and very complex printed 3-D parts...mostly for Pacific theatre Shemans....even link-by-link tracks. From what I have seen of their parts, there is zero stepping or ridges of any kind.....I will see if I can remember the guys name...he used to post on MIG.......but it might behoove you to talk to him about the process and equipment he uses. From the photos his parts seemed to be translucent, and kind of a pale blueish color/hue.


Marc

[Ray Dunakin]

Your CAD renderings are beautiful! I really need to find out how to do that stuff someday. I tried using TurboCAD but couldn't make any sense of it. Seems to be a lot different from the 3D modeling/animation programs that I'm used to.

[Hauk]

I pretty much finished the design this weekend. Added the Servo-link chains and the balance frame and rollers. Lots of parts to make! Next I'll send some files off to the 3D printer to see what the costs will be.

Please bear with me if this has been adressed before, but what service provider do you plan to use for 3D printing?

I have found three service providers that looks promising:

Print a part

Shapeways

Pacific Locomotive Works

All these companies will accept the business of hobbyists. Seems like PLW can offer the highest resolution wirh their Solidscape printer.

Regards, Håvard H.

[lab-dad]

Man I wish I had the time to learn that CAD stuff.....
Really cool "drawings"?
Guess you'll have to make another radiator?.....lol
-Marty

[marc_reusser]

Guess you'll have to make another radiator?.....lol
-Marty

Should be a breeze for him the second time around  ....besides, after seeing that airplane guy do one out of PE in 1/48.....1/16 should be like putting together Lincoln Logs.

M

[Chuck Doan]

Thanks for those Links, Havard! I have one contact I found on an AFV forum. I hope to hear from him soon. His printer has .001 resolution. I don't mind a little clean up, it will still be miles ahead of time if scratchbuilt (if the cost is tolerable, that is.)

Thanks, Ray! SolidWorks is pretty complicated, but it may pay off for this project. We had a guy at work who could take our "toon colored" models and do photo-realistic rendering. I watched him...and I thought Solidworks was hard to learn!

Yeah, the radiator is no sweat. I thought would be the hardest part of the last one...but Tom's parts made it easy. The hard part will be working with that damn die cast metal again. At least I get to leave a few parts off this time.

 

[chester]

Fabulous drawings Chuck but then you make everything look easy.

This loco reminds me of a motorcycle with really big saddle bags.

[marc_reusser]

Chuck,

The HLJ chainset came today...looks a bit small for your scale...but would work wonders in 1/48 through 1/32. The good thing because you have to build each individual link is, that you can make the width to suit the design/width needed.

The chain link plates caliper out to be .095" long x .040" tall.
The large sprockets are .608" in dia, while the smaller ones are .285" in dia.

Note that the actual PE is much sharper and crisper than the image shows.
(Chainset is for the 1/12 scale Yamaha YZR-M1 '04 by Acu-Stion)


M

[RoughboyModelworks]

Fabulous drawings Chuck... really looking forward to seeing how the 3D printing works for you.

Marc: incredible chain set. Are there actually rollers and pins for each of those links? Can it be built up into a functioning chain?

Paul