- Location
- West of the Severn UK
- Info
@Derek
Hi Derek,
Thanks for your thoughts. Certainly not writing out of turn -- that's what Templot Club is here for. It's everyone's turn!
At the moment I'm walking a tightrope between letting folks know what I'm doing (so that I can get some feedback), but not letting anyone run away with the idea that it's all ready to be used now, or likely to be any time soon. At present you can build plain track with REA chairs, but that's all. The rest is still just experimental tinkering about, which might or might not ever see the light of day.
My interest in all this is threefold:
1. to discover just what can be done with the latest home machines, which are bringing industrial tech to home workshops. And also what can't be done -- the Cameo cutter was a big disappointment, and there's a reason the small CNC millers are described as for wood-carving, not metal-working.
2. to see if my 73-year-old brain can get into 3D programming enough to kludge some of it into the ancient and creaking Templot code.
3. to find out if enough folks are interested in the result for me to spend time working it up into a usable function and interface for everyone. At present it's clear that only a minority of Templot users have 3D printers, but when you realise that they can now be obtained for much the same cost as an RTR locomotive, or not much more than a 2D printer, it's obvious that 3D printing will eventually be an everyday part of the hobby. You can see that already on some of the forums.
As to how much Templot can be expected to do by itself, and how much users will have to do themselves, it's too early to say. Until I've made enough progress with the code to see where it falls down, and whether I can fix it in my lifetime, I can't make that split. There are some aspects of track design where only a human eye is good enough, as in the timber shoving for example. I can see something similar being needed for the chairing of check rails -- be ready to add "chair heaving" to the Templot lexicon.
Short that is, of a crack team of AI programmers turning up in my shed.
cheers,
Martin.
Hi Derek,
Thanks for your thoughts. Certainly not writing out of turn -- that's what Templot Club is here for. It's everyone's turn!
At the moment I'm walking a tightrope between letting folks know what I'm doing (so that I can get some feedback), but not letting anyone run away with the idea that it's all ready to be used now, or likely to be any time soon. At present you can build plain track with REA chairs, but that's all. The rest is still just experimental tinkering about, which might or might not ever see the light of day.
My interest in all this is threefold:
1. to discover just what can be done with the latest home machines, which are bringing industrial tech to home workshops. And also what can't be done -- the Cameo cutter was a big disappointment, and there's a reason the small CNC millers are described as for wood-carving, not metal-working.
2. to see if my 73-year-old brain can get into 3D programming enough to kludge some of it into the ancient and creaking Templot code.
3. to find out if enough folks are interested in the result for me to spend time working it up into a usable function and interface for everyone. At present it's clear that only a minority of Templot users have 3D printers, but when you realise that they can now be obtained for much the same cost as an RTR locomotive, or not much more than a 2D printer, it's obvious that 3D printing will eventually be an everyday part of the hobby. You can see that already on some of the forums.
As to how much Templot can be expected to do by itself, and how much users will have to do themselves, it's too early to say. Until I've made enough progress with the code to see where it falls down, and whether I can fix it in my lifetime, I can't make that split. There are some aspects of track design where only a human eye is good enough, as in the timber shoving for example. I can see something similar being needed for the chairing of check rails -- be ready to add "chair heaving" to the Templot lexicon.
Short that is, of a crack team of AI programmers turning up in my shed.
cheers,
Martin.
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