Early Risers.

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

Given the size of it, it would have to be printed in so many sections that it would be the equivalent of a highly complex Airfix kit...

 

@monkeysarefun  Assuming you printed it out as a kit of parts, what solvents/adhesives would be needed to glue it together?

 

 

 

I don't tend to print out complete architectural models - ie with roofs, windows, doors etc in place.  This is for two reasons.  one - if a printing glitch occurs in one area of the print such as a mangled roof section I only need to reprint that part rather than have the whole model go to waste. Also I cant paint neatly to save myself so I print walls and roofs separately to simplify painting, as well as doing windows and doors separately, then paint  them and fix them together after that.

 

 I print the main shell in one piece (assuming it fits on the printer bed in some orientation or other) in order to eliminate the main problem I see with scratchbuilding models - getting neat/ invisible corner joints. 

 

Superglue works really well with the resin I use, I use both the runny stuff and the gooey stuff depending on what I'm sticking together. The resin also takes paint very well once primed, in that regard its no different to a plastic kit. 

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, PupCam said:

By the way, you've probably mentioned this before(but I've forgotten, what software do you use?

 

 

 

For buildings I've found Sketchup to be the easiest and most convenient. In its current release form you get the choice of  subscription models of various levels or a "free" cloud-based one which is very limited.

 

Fortunately the 2017 version of Sketchup make is still available "out there" from sites like CNET, for free. This runs as a standalone local programme on your PC and unlike the new cloud-based free version allows you to install and run any number of "extensions",  which are available from both the Sketchup Extension Warehouse or sites like Sketchucation.

 

These extensions are written by various people and add functionality not provided in native Sketchup -  like finding and fixing issues in the 3D mesh that can affect printing, extra export formats and various other ones to make the drawing process simpler. 

 

Sketchup would also work fine for modelling  locos and rolling stock given they are basically just simple  geometric shapes.

 

For motor vehicles I use Blender - its much more suited for modelling items that have a more organic shape. Blender can also be used in place of Sketchup above, and I am slowly swapping over to it for architectural modelling purely to reduce the need to retain skills on two programmes, but it is a much steeper learning curve and unless you specifically need to model something that simpler CAD programmes like Sketchup, FreeCad and so on can't cope with, or you just want to learn it to see what the fuss is about, it isn't necessary.

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, Hroth said:

Even at my young age, I couldn't see the point.

It is annoying to adults. Plenty of scope there.

[Erichill16]

4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

For motor vehicles I use Blender - its much more suited for modelling items that have a more organic shape

My friend, the one Neil knows, does a bit of 3D printing and says designing is a bit like adding and taking away simple 3D shapes to create the final shape. I understand that with say ‘boxy’ items such as building and to some extent railway vehicles but  motor cars have very few straight lines. How do you ‘design’ these shapes? As I’m not compute literate, a simple answer will suffice if at all possible!

 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

9 hours ago, petethemole said:

It was called a Tinkle Roller.  Dad made me one (c 1950) out of an empty paint tin and some old nuts and bolts.  I remember it but not the sound; it was probably more of a Clatter Roller.

 

8 hours ago, Hroth said:

I must admit that on reflection, "tune" might have been an exaggeration even for the commercial version! Tuned* rods or little bells to make a random noise in either direction would be more likely...

 

This sort of thing is more common today:

My youngest had a much older version (from 30 years ago). They are for the very young (one to two). The balls noisily pop like popcorn proportionally to the velocity with which it is pushed. This is delightful to very small children who quickly observe how annoying they can be playing with their toy as it was intended running around as fast as they can.

 

My son loved it. Of course they grow out of it quickly, but if it is irksome to granny and gramps they might keep at it longer.

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, Erichill16 said:

My friend, the one Neil knows, does a bit of 3D printing and says designing is a bit like adding and taking away simple 3D shapes to create the final shape. I understand that with say ‘boxy’ items such as building and to some extent railway vehicles but  motor cars have very few straight lines. How do you ‘design’ these shapes? As I’m not compute literate, a simple answer will suffice if at all possible!

 

 

 

Pretty much the same way  -  if you think  of a car body as basically a series of curvy  planes.

 

There are many techniques and you can find many tutorials on youtube, but basically you first need a blueprint. It doesnt have to be engineering quality -  there are plenty like this lying around the internet that are suitable:

 

 

 

 

It is first imported into Blender and scaled to suit and then copied, rotated and placed in all three planes - top, side and one each for front and back,. They are aligned with each other:

 

 

 

 

 

I start with the top down view and draw a plane that covers the bonnet. The beauty of cars is that they are symmetrical down the  centre. Blender has a mirroring ability meaning that I only need to design on one side of the centreline;  the software automatically adds it to the other side.

 

I first line up the four corner points:

 

 

 

 

I then go to the front view and line up the corner points in that view

 

 

 

And then in the side view.

 

 

 

I then add intermediate points where required and line them up with the three views in turn.

 

 

 

 

 

Additional lines are added where the bonnet has creases or bulges:

 

 

 

The rest of the body is done the same way:

 

 

 

The raw result is very blocky and low poly but Blender has a sub-division algorithm that interpolates between the raw lines and creates a smooth surface:

 

Edited July 26 by monkeysarefun

[Erichill16]

Thanks for that, very interesting.

Presumably the more  ‘intermediate’ points you put in the move accurate the shape.

Roughly how long would it take you to create the file for something like say the Capri you illustrated? I know it will depend on how much detail, door handle, wipes etc ,5 hours, 10, 20, 100?

[monkeysarefun]

24 minutes ago, Erichill16 said:

Thanks for that, very interesting.

Presumably the more  ‘intermediate’ points you put in the move accurate the shape.

Roughly how long would it take you to create the file for something like say the Capri you illustrated? I know it will depend on how much detail, door handle, wipes etc ,5 hours, 10, 20, 100?

If you put in too many points you can start to introduce bulges and depressions due to the difficulty of getting them accurately aligned. I try to use as few as  I can get away with  - primarily  just enough to depict any change in  the flow of the cars lines. For instance in the side view of the bonnet above,I only placed them where they were needed to follow the curve,  so there's few towards the rear of the bonnet where its flatter, they are mainly at the front where the curve increases.

 

The sub-division algorithm can be tuned to be denser or sparser,  the denser it is the smoother and less "blocky" the mesh will be, although increasing density comes with a penalty of creating massive files that can take a long time to process and use up more space.   However, the beauty of Blender is that many of their modifiers are "virtual" so don't actually change the mesh unless you choose to physically apply them, thus saving disk space and allowing you to change parameters easily. 

 

With increasing practice  I can now knock out a car that is 3D printable  in about 25-30 hours or so. 

Edited July 26 by monkeysarefun

[polybear]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

Pretty much the same way  -  if you think  of a car body as basically a series of curvy  planes.

 

There are many techniques and you can find many tutorials on youtube, but basically you first need a blueprint. It doesnt have to be engineering quality -  there are plenty like this lying around the internet that are suitable:

 

 

 

 

It is first imported into Blender and scaled to suit and then copied, rotated and placed in all three planes - top, side and one each for front and back,. They are aligned with each other:

 

 

 

 

 

I start with the top down view and draw a plane that covers the bonnet. The beauty of cars is that they are symmetrical down the  centre. Blender has a mirroring ability meaning that I only need to design on one side of the centreline;  the software automatically adds it to the other side.

 

I first line up the four corner points:

 

 

 

 

I then go to the front view and line up the corner points in that view

 

 

 

And then in the side view.

 

 

 

I then add intermediate points where required and line them up with the three views in turn.

 

 

 

 

 

Additional lines are added where the bonnet has creases or bulges:

 

 

 

The rest of the body is done the same way:

 

 

 

The raw result is very blocky and low poly but Blender has a sub-division algorithm that interpolates between the raw lines and creates a smooth surface:

 

 

Bear has a snooze until the feeling goes away.....

[polybear]

Bear here.....

 

MIUABGAD - I am promised a delivery of something that runs on parallel rails at some point today - hopefully sooner rather than later (bought s/h at a good price from one of the "names" in the muddlin' hobby); I've still to properly examine & test my previous, long sought-after acquisition that arrived earlier in the week as well.

 

I also plan to take another look at Harry's "issue" today as well; I've no idea if NNND is working from home today or not, but to be honest I really don't give a f*** anymore.  Homes are, well, homes - they're not office blocks; if NNND wants a tippy-toe quiet office environment then they'll achieve that just 2 miles down the road.  Big Rant, by the way.

 

ION....

 

A problem continues to circulate round the Beary Bonce that just won't switch off...I wish I could find a way to make it p1ss off permanently....

 

Time to wriggle.

 

BG

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

Another day of.. well nothing planned..as yet..

 

Although I do need to check out a couple of wires which refuse to be strangled and I need to go for a walk....

 

I can hear the sound of a grass cutting machine.. they aren't suppose to start until after 8am.. .....

 

I used something like blendervyears ago to develop a building model to go into the simulated world in the Precision Gunnery Training Equipment (PGTE) for Challenger 1 and 2. The team named it "Bazes burger box"... its still on the latest software version apparently..

 

Have a great day!

 

Baz

[iL Dottore]

10 hours ago, PupCam said:

 

…..whittled from original Slaters Plasticard cut with a scawker fashioned from an old Junior Hacksaw blade

You like your new-fangled toys and the easy life, doncha Puppers?

What’s wrong with old cereal packets and teddy bear fur?

[iL Dottore]

11 hours ago, The White Rabbit said:

 

And on the 'distaff' side (!), if @iL Dottore had a cat ... 

 

 

 

 

I’m afraid not. As much as I like cats, I’m definitely a dog person.

 

In culinary terms I despair of my dogs: Schotty will eat anything, and I mean anything - preferably in large quantities (he makes PB look like the very model of a refined gourmet), whilst Lucy is so fussy about her food that she makes Hollywood food faddists look positively Rabelaisian in comparison. One trick she has perfected is to decide that she’s only going to eat “X” (whatever “X” might be) and then, when you’ve got in stocks of “X” she then decides “No, I don’t like “X” anymore” and refuses to eat “X” at all.

 

Can I interest anyone in a couple of cases of very high quality, nutritionally-balanced-for-the-older-dog tins of dog food? Might go well with curly fries!🤣

[Hroth]

1 minute ago, iL Dottore said:

I’m afraid not. As much as I like cats, I’m definitely a dog person.

 

In culinary terms I despair of my dogs: Schotty will eat anything, and I mean anything - preferably in large quantities (he makes PB look like the very model of a refined gourmet), whilst Lucy is so fussy about her food that she makes Hollywood food faddists look positively Rabelaisian in comparison. One trick she has perfected is to decide that she’s only going to eat “X” (whatever “X” might be) and then, when you’ve got in stocks of “X” she then decides “No, I don’t like “X” anymore” and refuses to eat “X” at all.

 

Can I interest anyone in a couple of cases of very high quality, nutritionally-balanced-for-the-older-dog tins of dog food? Might go well with curly fries!🤣

 

Why not use it as a pie filling? 🤔

 

 

[TheQ]

Grass cutting machine? The big one has been busy since 06:00 as they work their way round the fields in the area cutting the corn.

 

Mooring Awl,

3.5 hours sleep looong awake, 1.5 hours sleep...

 

I must admit, I can't get enthusiastic about designing for 3 D printer, too many years sat in front of a computer for work.

 

Yesterday, I cut and shut 6 bridge sections, so today they will go to the radar museum with me because a little filler will be needed at the joins, and I have 20 plus switches that require filling now the broken outer has been lined inside with tubing . 

 

Most of the packing for regatta week is done, just wash kit and drugs to be packed. Oh and this gadget.

Weather is still looking good, for the week but I'll be taking waterproofs, cos you know what will happen if I don't.

 

My grandparents had a very similar terraced house 2 up 2 down but the garden was only about thirty ft long. That passed to the eldest of my uncles, who was a civilian tank mechanic for the army. Hence that rear garden spent many years with old cars being rebuilt on it. I suspect the amount of leaked oil on it means it's highly flammable.

 

Right time to get suited and booted for the Radar Museum.

 

 

 

[iL Dottore]

8 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Why not use it as a pie filling? 🤔

Not a bad suggestion actually. For a number of reasons:

• Pet food nowadays is produced under the highest standards of hygiene and sanitation, sometimes more so than in human food production.
• The meats going into dogfood are definitely edible to humans, although some of those ingredients (like lungs and heart) are no longer eaten to any great extent by humans.
• The biggest problem with dog food, at least in terms of human consumption is that of texture and seasoning. Many dog foods are processed so they are akin to a pâté and such dog foods, with a little seasoning, can certainly pass muster as a made-for-human pâté. And all of them are definitely unseasoned.

Knowing that,  you are now better equipped to survive the zombie apocalypse. Whilst the other survivors are fighting and killing each other over the last tins of baked beans to be found in the ashes of the looted and burnt out supermarkets; you - as a savvy,dog loving survivalist - just stroll into the pet shop, pick up a couple of cases of dogfood and head back to your safe and secure, zombie proof, lair to watch the chaos unfold around you as you and Fido have a pretty decent dinner…..

.

 

 

[iL Dottore]

I find what Chimpey ( @monkeysarefun) can do with 3D printing to be absolutely jawdropping. And I really enjoy his tutorials.

 

I certainly could have used 3-D printing, when I was building the Georgian Terrace houses, Even using a carefully constructed master, silicone rubber moulds and resin casting, too often the cast items had unacceptable artefacts and flaws or failures in the casting. I don’t exactly recall what the failure rate was, but roughly when all went well (good days), one out of every two castings was okay and when it didn’t (bad days) only one in every four or five was okay.

 

A 3D printer to create the components of the Georgian terrace house would’ve saved on a lot of frustration and annoyance, and would’ve had the added benefit of not having to fill up the “swear box”.

 

And now that the purchase of the new house (complete with huge underground workshop and cellar) is on the cards, the purchase of a 3D printer, looms large.

 

 

[polybear]

44 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

What’s wrong with old cereal packets and teddy bear fur?

 

Bear and @Grizz will be en-route** to iD's lair to explain in great detail just what's so wrong with that approach.....

 

**You won't know when - or at what time; it will be when you least expect it though.....

[polybear]

1 minute ago, iL Dottore said:

A 3D printer to create the components of the Georgian terrace house would’ve saved on a lot of frustration and annoyance, and would’ve had the added benefit of not having to fill up the “swear box”.

 

From the minute amount a Bear knows about 3D Printing I very much suspect that Chimpy has a very wide vocabulary of naughty words.

[PupCam]

Morning

 

I'm a bit of an ER today as I'm off Up the Smoke for the next consultation.

 

Back later, be good, play nicely 🤣

 

 

[Winslow Boy]

13 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

From the minute amount a Bear knows about 3D Printing I very much suspect that Chimpy has a very wide vocabulary of naughty words.

Something tells me the our Antipodean cousin already possessed a very wide and varied selection of 'colourful language' prior to the acquisition of a 3 D printer my Dear Bear. The purchase just meant he had more of a reason to use them.

Edited July 26 by Winslow Boy

[Winslow Boy]

48 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

Can I interest anyone in a couple of cases of very high quality, nutritionally-balanced-for-the-older-dog tins of dog food? Might go well with curly fries!

I'm afraid that's a female attribute.

[polybear]

3 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

Something tells me the our Antipodean cousin already possessed a very wide and varied selection of 'colourful language' prior to the acquisition of a 3 D printer my Dear Bear. The purchase just meant he had more of a reason to use them.

 

It never actually crossed Bear's Bonce that an Aussie needs a reason to use a naughty word - just so long as the day of the week ends with a "y", that is.

[Winslow Boy]

3 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

Thanks for that, very interesting.

Presumably the more  ‘intermediate’ points you put in the move accurate the shape.

Roughly how long would it take you to create the file for something like say the Capri you illustrated? I know it will depend on how much detail, door handle, wipes etc ,5 hours, 10, 20, 100?

I would suspect it takes a bit longer when they design the 'real thing'.

[The White Rabbit]

Morning all,

 

Fingers crossed Puppers. 

 

I am a dog person too. Unfortunately the picture was of a cat... I have known some I like/liked but find it easier to get on with dogs. Yesterday a friend stopped by, he has a new dog, a sprocker puppy. It's at that 'lively' stage - no photos posted as it was just a brown blur in the camera's memory. Into everything - including my trouser leg and round my neck when I was sitting down. At one stage I thought it was a bit confused as to what animal it was and at the vets was going to be insisting on identifying as a parrot... 

 

3D printing (and laser cutting) is something I'm keeping an eye on. Too much to deal with at the moment but I have half promised myself that when things calm down (!) I'll get one (or more, are they like panniers and the ideal number to own is always one more than you already have...?) and learn how to use it. One early query for @monkeysarefun - are there versions which would produce weatherproof garden ornaments/items for outside? I'm thinking for either larger unmentionable objects to leave out all year round or at least over the better weather - or for minor mouldings to help with the gardening. 

 

Fine and sunny at the moment but I notice Saturday is shown as having a 50% chance of showers for the afternoon. Just when the village show is due to be held! Anyway, the refreshment and beer tents might do well out of it if it does sprinkle. 

 

Up a bit earlier than usual - two deliveries due, one of some bits for the garden and one of some muddlin' bits. One has just knocked, TTFN......