3D power transformer printing and associated transport wagon

[Zerogee]

Thank you for your post Jon.

With your eagle eyes you have seen someting I did not noticed !
Even I don't understand what it means !!

Does this mean in other words : do not bump ! ... ?

Sorry, just my immature and childish (ie: British) sense of humour....!

The sign actually means that the wagon is not to be "hump shunted", which is a form of gravity shunting: Classification yard - Wikipedia

But "hump" can have another, slightly rude meaning to English speakers (something that two people do, or a male dog does to someone's leg), hence finding the sign funny....

Jon.

 

[ARIA31]

As announced there is some fun with the manufacturing of required parts..... !!

Have a look at this video .

Yes this is still modelling as 3D printing is.

 

[ARIA31]

As stated before, the rolling tests shown the detrimental effects of free plays in the 2 bogies assembly.

Accordingly special care was put in the fulcrum design and ball bearings are widely used.

The screws connecting each bogie to the common chassis are installed with a ball bearing at the chassis level.

Then for the fulcrum a large cylinder is created to counter act the base plate rocking sidewise.



This large cylinder is fitted with 2 ball bearings around the fulcrum screw and is installed on the common chassis (one ball bearing at the top, one ball bearing at the bottom).



The base plate has been machined ( see video of the previous post ) as per the following 3D design.






When assembled with the cylinder we get this :







Now we have to create the 8 ribs ( twice four for each chassis ) which will be fixed onto the base plate.

Joël started to machine the ribs with the same material as the one used for the base plate ( plexiglas) but it appeared this is more difficult and also very long lasting. (several hours of machining per rib). So we looked for different material.

At the end, Joël decided to evaluate if these parts might be done with 3D printing.
So he created a new 3D file and started the printing.

The result is quite promising and the assembly of the 4 ribs onto the base plate much easier than with the previous design and parts acquisition.
However for the complete wagon 24 printing hours are required for the 8 ribs !!



When assembled



The following picture shows the slot which allows this rib to be connected to the base plate side



Like that:





Then an inner rib will close this complete rib assembly.

This is where we are today.

The next major assembly of the wagon will be the cradle placed in between the 2 half wagons and carrying the transformer. The design is currently underway. It will be made of 3D printed parts as well, but being quite long, reinforced with 2 aluminium U shaped rails.

Later on we intend to put details features (cabinet, hand rail, pumps,... etc) on this skeleton to make it more real.

 

[ARIA31]

Pieces parts production continued





It's time for assembly, very first try....

 

[ARIA31]

Progress is made by gluing the ribs onto the chassis








this configurationn occurs when the heavy load has been delivered as on following pictures

 

[ARIA31]

3D printing is going on. the 4 ribs are now available



We are keen to get the wagon rolling on a railroad



We are looking for the grids.
From below:




The cradle design is now underway. 2 aluminium rails are forecasted for re-inforcement.
My friend is considering a machining process to get it as shown in post 22.

 

[ARIA31]

After some trade-off the grids design is frozen with some reinforcements and printing started.





The white chassis will be painted black.

On the last pict you can notice the white rails that my friend printed as well

Then we decide to increase the length of this wagon by adding another bogie on each side leading the wagon be now a 6 bogies assembly !!

The first issue is to link the added bogie to the other ones. Accordingly , a special rod is designed and printed.

 

[mike]

Wow

 

[ARIA31]

We made some progress on this wagon construction.

It is time now for a first rolling test on my railroad which is R1 evrywhere.
We had some concern about hook and loop coupling between a GP38-2 that will be used to drive the future consist and the first small car. (We call it additional wagon)

Here is a video of this first test run.

We concluded that some weight must be added on the additional wagon. (250 grams)

 

[JGDURAND]

Impressionnant, bravo

 

[ARIA31]

The wagon next steps are :
a) the craddle design and manufacturing,
b) the supplemental braking system installation on the 2 additional wagons
c) all additionnal details

For the supplemental braking system I decided to step away a little bit from the initial design guideline (the MTH schnabel car-see post 13)
and look at the LGB transformer wagon PN 4058 braking.



However I did not understood how it works, so I placed a question on this forum and got an immediate response ( thank you TonyMP52)

https://www.gscalecentral.net/threads/how-the-lgb-4058-works.315927/

and with my friend Joël this is what we will implement on the additional wagon. The draft is as follows:



As said before , we need to add some weight on this car .
We are considering to take benefit of the reservoirs to hide the lead or steel weight.

The craddle will add around 25 cm and at the end the complete wagon will be around 115 cm long.

You possibly noticed the white barriers.
They are made with a 1 mm diameter rod slid into a 2 mm sheath., that can be found both in radio controlled airplane shop.
For sure a small tooling muust be created to bend the rod.

 

[ARIA31]

The two additional wagons, the front one and the rear one, turned out to be a little light and sometimes derailed.

I did some tests with a weight of 200 grams per wagon and it works much better.

The frame designed and produced in 3D by my friend has 4 locations to install lead weights.



I made a wooden mold to obtain ingots roughly the size I wanted, providing a handle to hold the "mold".



Then I melted the 8 weights with lead using my portable C Gas torch.




Despite the color they are not made of gold .....

Although the thicknesses are quite variable, I have two batches of very close mass: 260 and 290 grams.

As we forgotten the space neede for the wheels, it was necessary to machine the 4 weights to allow them to be inserted in the chassis.

 

[ARIA31]

The additional braking system has been printed





The reservoirs as well



Then everything is installe don the wagons



For "safety reasons" we are adding manual brakes

 

[ARIA31]

As the new schnabel car might require 2 diesel engines to move it , the South West Indoor Railroad procured a new USA trains Gp9.
As I am not familiar to drive two engines on the same railroad I tested my hability to do it with my DC control.
Here is a video I made several weeks ago:

Now the schnabel car is shipped to my railroad with a dedicated casing due to the length.



The beast has indeed arrived and is circulating very well on my circuit. (not everywhere !!)

The railroad has been modified (no more tunnel, no more station, .... etc) ... !!

 

[ARIA31]

EPILOGUE :
This month MRH includes an article about this Schnabel Car .
This article is included into the Running Extra part.
It includes most of what is on this thread.