I teach high school CAD. The 4th quarter assignment is to research and draw in Inventor a railroad car. They had the option of drawing from their research or backward engineering one of my existing cars. I supplied the trucks. This is the first completed car minus the side graphics. Stay tuned I've got 17 more to come.
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Super learning project!
All of these materials are PLA plastic. They are encouraged to use other materials to enhance the details.
Wishing I was in your class right about now. I made some bridge railing stanchions in CAD at my school, but a freight car would have been better! I could tell you right now it would be a corrugated gondola...
I like this project. By the way, Some of the railcar manufacturers have pretty good drawings of their products on their websites. You could check with them and I'm sure they'd give you permission to reverse-engineer the drawings for a 3D print.
Would the paint scheme be the 1970's era NW Norfolk and Western on these three-bay, open-top hoppers?
Andrew
you could upload the plans to this web site and anyone could print the car.
Give us some "tech specs" on that print Kevin.
What printer did you use? How many microns is the print resolution? What program did you model it in? how long did it take to print?
richtrow posted:Give us some "tech specs" on that print Kevin.
What printer did you use? How many microns is the print resolution? What program did you model it in? how long did it take to print?
and how many pieces had to be glued together?
Autdesk Inventor program.
MakerBot Z18 printer
Standard Resolution
15 Hour 30 minute print for red, another 1 1/2 for yellow
4 total pieces glued together
How cool!! Wish I was young again and in school to learn all this newfangled stuff!
Pretty cool! 
Printing seems to take longer than I would have thought.
I'm curious as to what the cost would be for the filament for a project like this?
Jim
Kevin is a great resource for the Central ILLIINOIS TINNERS Club!
stan
How "rough" or otherwise is the car?
Since the plastic is red you can put white, green & black CHICAGO CENTRAL & Pacific decals on the open-top hopper.
Andrew
jd-train posted:Pretty cool!
Printing seems to take longer than I would have thought.
I'm curious as to what the cost would be for the filament for a project like this?
Jim
The original intent for 3D printers was prototyping an item. They were never meant to do mass production. I don't recall it being stated how much it cost to print this item.
FINALLY my 3D laser printer is coming next week, The resolution with the laser on the FormLabs2 resin (25 microns) will be much greater than my MAKERBOT produces and this one(100-200 microns) with its heated spout of PLA plastic. A MakerBot is really a 2D "layer" printer which is why at lower res/faster prints you have sand-able layer lines across the printed object.
That said, this hopper is incredible considering the limitations in detail.
There will come a time when COLOR 3D printers are as common as color laser printers are now. There will come a time that when you need a replacement part for your toaster or washing machine or lawnmower or a chair or train engine you'll find the part on-line to 3D print as easily as we do now for color product manuals.
I hope I"m still around when that happens,
Is there a less expensive printer you would recommend?
RideTheRails posted:jd-train posted:Pretty cool!
Printing seems to take longer than I would have thought.
I'm curious as to what the cost would be for the filament for a project like this?
Jim
The original intent for 3D printers was prototyping an item. They were never meant to do mass production. I don't recall it being stated how much it cost to print this item.
6 Hugely Successful Products Originally Invented for Something Else...
One of the original uses I remember was the Jay Leno Garage making a mold for an antique auto part so they could make more of them with investment castings. I guess that would be a prototype.
My 3D printer is a couple of years old. When I bought it all I could print with it was plastic. Without a single HARDWARE change I can now print with bronze, brass, stainless steel, carbon fiber and oh yeah 5 other kinds of plastic! 
Printing speed is relative as far as I'm concerned. Unlike other power tools in my shop the 3D printer runs pretty much unattended. That means during a print job of a couple of hours I am doing other things in my shop. Resolution is also not an issue as far as I'm concerned as most of the things I am printing are detail parts to accent a scene on a layout that is 20x40 feet! A few lines on the side of boxcar is NOT going to ruin that scene. 
Russ
3d printing is currently used for prototypes and such, but it is still a very, very new technology, I would use as an analogy that 3d printers today are technologically where pc's were in the late 70's, had become cheap enough to own at home but were not at the point where they are all that useful (and that is a rough analogy). There is a lot of work being done with 3d printing and it is advancing (the fact that you can buy a 3d printer at Home Depot says something), and advancing rapidly, and I have seen predictions that within 10 years it may well be the basis for a good percentage of production.I can't say if we will get to the point where we could produce our own engines at home at will, might be more like you order something from a manufacturer and have it a couple of weeks later printed on demand, rather than waiting a year for it to ship from China (given how few people it takes to run this kind of operation, having scores of cheap labor will be outweighed by the cost of shipping it from China and all the other issues).
I would love someone to print out a prr g39 gondola. I have the plans
I think this is a wonderful new product. But, considering how much rolling stock I already have, waiting until a 3D printer can be had for a couple hundred bucks is the way to go. If the PC market is any indicator that should be in around five or six tears.
For those of you that would like to follow along the development path of 3D printing and 3D scanning there is a news site that reports daily the headlines in the industry. They post about 300 posts a month and each one is a MAJOR announcement for the industry. Some are hardware, some are software, and some are the changes to the filaments we all use to print with. It is fascinating to see how QUICKLY it changes and advances (DAILY).
Enjoy.
but it is still a very, very new technology Not exactly, the reason there is this explosion of new machines is that the technology is so OLD that ALL of the patents have EXPIRED!
BTW the cheapest 3D printer right now is $150 and one was announced shipping later this summer that will be $99! Russ
prrhorseshoecurve posted:I would love someone to print out a prr g39 gondola. I have the plans
put it on the site I posted above and maybe someone will print it.
My class assignment was completed this week. Here's a video of the final project.
#1 Caudill Coal car
#2 Amtrak Full Observation
#3 Milwaukee Road Dome
#4 Flat w/ Jeep load
#5 Coal Car
#6 Koenigs Tanker
#7 Traveling Skate Park
#8 Racecar Display Car
#9 Flat w/humvee load
#10 Nr. 51 "I Marszalek"
#11 Flat w/ guarded missle
#12 Boxcar w/ Guard
#13 Flat w/boat load
#14 Lumber Car
#15 Tankcar
#16 Tankcar
I had 2 that didn't get finished. A 21" ribbed passenger car and another boxcar.
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