- Location
- West of the Severn UK
- Info
I have now added some brick clip-connectors, which at present look like this, buried in the ballast:
It's called a T-clip or Tommy-clip. The clearance between the tommy-bar and housing is adjustable. It will need some trial and error to allow for polymer shrinkage, etc., and make a close fit without any play. Also some careful Z-adjustment on the printer to avoid an "elephant-foot" against the build plate. Some manual fettling of the clips is likely to be needed.
The clips are quite small, sometimes needing to fit between the timbers as above. But where possible it would be better to have them in the six-foot, attached to the timber webs using short splints. As with the splints, the clip positions are set manually, in this case by adding target mark shapes in the background shapes:
You can add up to 20 clips per brick, but will usually need only a few. Clips on the left and/or bottom of a brick will be the left-facing housing part. Clips on the right and/or top of a brick will be the right-facing tommy-bar part.
Sometimes the clip will need to be at angle, to fit between the timbers -- how to set the angle is not yet decided. Sliding the template fixing peg might be one way to set a clip for both position and angle.
Hopefully it will work. If not, an alternative idea is to print some separate connector plates to link the sockets -- a plate with some plugs on it. To be removed after gluing the bricks to the trackbed.
cheers,
Martin.
It's called a T-clip or Tommy-clip. The clearance between the tommy-bar and housing is adjustable. It will need some trial and error to allow for polymer shrinkage, etc., and make a close fit without any play. Also some careful Z-adjustment on the printer to avoid an "elephant-foot" against the build plate. Some manual fettling of the clips is likely to be needed.
The clips are quite small, sometimes needing to fit between the timbers as above. But where possible it would be better to have them in the six-foot, attached to the timber webs using short splints. As with the splints, the clip positions are set manually, in this case by adding target mark shapes in the background shapes:
You can add up to 20 clips per brick, but will usually need only a few. Clips on the left and/or bottom of a brick will be the left-facing housing part. Clips on the right and/or top of a brick will be the right-facing tommy-bar part.
Sometimes the clip will need to be at angle, to fit between the timbers -- how to set the angle is not yet decided. Sliding the template fixing peg might be one way to set a clip for both position and angle.
Hopefully it will work. If not, an alternative idea is to print some separate connector plates to link the sockets -- a plate with some plugs on it. To be removed after gluing the bricks to the trackbed.
cheers,
Martin.
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