Experimental Plug Track: 3D-printed, CNC-milled, laser-cut

[Steve_Cornford]

Hi Michael,
By the way what resin are you using for the chairs?
Steve

 

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Michael,
By the way what resin are you using for the chairs?
Steve

Hi Steve,

From Michael's slicer screenshot on RMweb:

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/topic/16833...-the-computer/?do=findComment&comment=5157869

the resin is Elegoo Water-Washable Green.

It seems to be very translucent, which might explain why I can't see the seats in the photo, despite their being present in the screenshot.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

@Phil G

I'm hoping to release 238a today in time for the Zoom meeting tonight.

It's going to be a close shave because I have other things on the go today. But if I don't make it there will be no point in talking about plug track in the Zoom meeting today because there are a lot of changes coming in 238a to fix the pig's ear I made of 237c.

Phil, I'm going to take your advice and throw 238a out of the door as-is, for everyone else to find the bugs. I'm sure there are some, but I just don't have time at present to test everything exhaustively myself, and until it is out of the door I can't get on with the crossing chairs.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Tony W]

If its good enough for SpaceX!
Regards
Tony.

 

[Martin Wynne]

.
Program update 238a is now on the server.

Restart Templot to update.

Martin.

 

[Phil G]

Hi Martin,
I am sorry I could not make it to todays Zoom. (work got in he way)
238a looks very interesting.
Cheers
phil,

 

[Martin Wynne]

.
The first part of the recording from last night's Zoom meeting is now online. It lasts 110 minutes:

https://85a.uk/templot/club/index.php?threads/zoom-meetings-recordings.621/post-6489

It covers the latest changes to the 3D chairing settings in Templot update 238a.

Apologies for my coughing and spluttering, which is left over from the cold I had a couple of weeks ago.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

@Terry Downes

Hi Terry,

In the Zoom meeting you wanted the wrong chairs to run through the crossing?

You can do that if you change to the all L1 bridge chairs option:

That option is of course intended only for plain track on waybeams, and it's a bug that it works on a turnout and plain sleepers. Or at least it is at present, it wouldn't be a bug if I make it apply only to replacing S1 and S1J chairs, and only on timbers, through a turnout. Not that I can see any reason why anyone would want such a thing, but they might do.
edit: I have seen pointwork using bridge chairs on waybeams adjacent to a water column, so that drains can be provided between the rails for any overflows. Would be an interesting detail to model.

You can do the same thing using the all SC fictional chairs option, but in that case another bug means you don't get any chair jaws, just the chair bases. But you do get longer sockets more suited to the location.

To make practical use of this you would need to create several partial templates, with timbers shortened so that the sockets don't conflict:

For some reason the check rail chairs aren't being replaced, so that's another bug.

These are the sort of bugs I would have found if I had delayed 238a to do more testing. No doubt there are more.

I can't see any practical use for the above, even the sockets will conflict through the crossing and not draw properly into the timbers, but it's what you asked for.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

.
There was some talk in the Zoom meeting about cutting the chairs from the raft. Here is the diagram I mentioned (I was referring to the raft as a "skate" at the time I posted it):

The edge rebate along the underside of the raft is intended to aid prising it from the build plate.

It's very advisable to have only 2 rows of chairs on a raft. On the left above you can see where I have broken a raft in half in order to get at the middle chairs with the cutters. Multiple rafts can easily be cloned on the printer build plate, using the slicer software.

If the plug doesn't cut cleanly from the support pyramid, the chair can be dropped into a loose-fitting socket on a spare timber, and given a rub across the underside with a file, to ensure it won't bottom in its destination socket before it is fully home.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Steve_Cornford]

In that diagram the rebate at the top of the pyramid looks quite pronounce, very similar to the base plate overhang above the plug. When I printed some Check chairs it did not seem so pronounced. Is it possible that the default parameter has the wrong value?

 

[Steve_Cornford]

I will try printing some more chairs with the latest version.

 

[Martin Wynne]

In that diagram the rebate at the top of the pyramid looks quite pronounce, very similar to the base plate overhang above the plug. When I printed some Check chairs it did not seem so pronounced. Is it possible that the default parameter has the wrong value?

@Steve_Cornford

Hi Steve,

Here are the current sizes, for the 3P (switch) and CCL/CCR (check rail) chairs:

I made the pyramid top wider than before in order to accommodate the slot for the loose pin, in the situation where the slot is skewed in the chair, and may be very significantly skewed. If it isn't much skewed, or you are not using loose jaws, you can change the settings:

and/or make the plug deeper and wider at the bottom by being less tapered:

which results in this:

That's the default check rail end chair, and the slot looks to be fine with the gentle 1:18 REA flare angle. But the numbers don't quite add up, so I need to check what the mesh fixer makes of it. Probably it's fine.

Another option (so many things to try before we arrive at the final design!) would be to make the pyramid top wider than the plug, and use the cutters the other way up? We could then make the pyramid a lot shorter (lower) to avoid wasting so much resin. But there might be an adverse effect on wash flow.

I'm sorry I didn't explain all this when you asked about it in the Zoom meeting. It's getting a bit beyond me to explain everything, and I don't know what to do about it.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Steve_Cornford]

Hi Martin,
Thanks for explaining this in detail, and especially for the suggeston of having a loose fitting timber base as a filing jig.
Snipping the chairs off the raft (or would you prefer us to call it a skate?) is not an exact science so there will always be the odd chair that needs the bottom of the plug tidying up.
I would not worry too much about resin consumption, as we seem to be able to get 120 S1 chairs on the build plate of the Mars for a resin cost of 37p.
As long as you are happy to let me dabble & try this out I will continue to play experiment.
ps Hope you manage to get to a bluebell wood before they disappear.for the year.

 

[Phil G]

Hi Martin,
Just a quick question,
when you go into the part of the program that allows pyramid dimension adjustment, as you have shown above.
Does that then act the same on all the chairs that have been selected in the new chair options? IE if I understood the zoom meeting correctly, (which by the way was very informative, thanks for posting it so soon) we now have the option by the radio buttons, to select which chairs and what type of jaws we can export out of Templot, thus creating a mixed raft of chairs for exact requirements.
Cheers
Phil,
PS please can we still keep calling it a (raft) As I have my head around that.

 

[Martin Wynne]

or would you prefer us to call it a skate?

@Steve_Cornford

I'm happy with raft. I called it a skate because I saw that term being used on several 3D printing web sites. It's not a good term because it suggests something which slides about -- which is the opposite of what we want. A raft can float about too, but presumably can be moored. The most obvious term is slab, but we are already using that for rectangles within the timbering bricks.

Words, words -- it has always been the words. Within the code a stored template is still called a keep, and the storage box is still called the keeps box. I was persuaded to change the public name by Brian Lewis of C&L, and have always regretted it. Templot itself was very nearly changed to Platelayer, logo created, but I'm glad now that I never quite got round to doing it. It's important nowadays to use a word which isn't in the dictionary, so that you get top of the Google results without even trying.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Martin,
Just a quick question,
when you go into the part of the program that allows pyramid dimension adjustment, as you have shown above.
Does that then act the same on all the chairs that have been selected in the new chair options? IE if I understood the zoom meeting correctly, (which by the way was very informative, thanks for posting it so soon) we now have the option by the radio buttons, to select which chairs and what type of jaws we can export out of Templot, thus creating a mixed raft of chairs for exact requirements.
Cheers
Phil,
PS please can we still keep calling it a (raft) As I have my head around that.

@Phil G

Hi Phil,

At present those settings are global across the entire exported file. Not all of them are even included in the custom settings file. I just can't do everything at once.

It's my intention that eventually everything will be template-specific and applicable to individual chairs, as now done in 238a for some* of the chair jaws. I didn't start off doing it that way because I didn't actually know what settings would be needed -- and I still don't. Adding extra settings into the BOX file is far more work than temporary global settings. I put that list of buttons on the DXF dialog primarily for my own use to find out what the default values should be.

At some stage we are going to need a new file format, for the custom chairs, which might then include some of these settings. But that's a lot of work, so will have to wait for now.

By now I should be working on the crossing chairs. But yet again I have been distracted -- I'm currently working on the pyramid tops to make the width dynamic, and only widened for chairs where it needs to be for skewed pin slots.

*I forgot to include the SC fictional chairs in the list. Consequently they are now without any jaws at all.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Michael Woods]

Martin - Firstly thank you for the zoom call.

I have now loaded the new version of Templot

Thank you

Quick question at the risk of making myself look very foolish. When I export the 3D sleeper file, here my file name is black track as I want to print in black, I am getting the following error. It appears a colon is being inserted after the .STL.

 

[Martin Wynne]

@Michael Woods

Hi Michael,

Good to see you at the Zoom meeting.

That's very odd. The colon isn't being added by Templot, I just exported an STL to check:

So it must be something in your Meshmixer program. Presumably you can edit the file name in the File > Open dialog?

Maybe when you edited the file name to black_track you accidentally added a colon?

Have you tried using the online mesh fixer service instead:

https://www.formware.co/onlinestlrepair

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

It's my intention that eventually everything will be template-specific and applicable to individual chairs, as now done in 238a for some* of the chair jaws. I didn't start off doing it that way because I didn't actually know what settings would be needed -- and I still don't. Adding extra settings into the BOX file is far more work than temporary global settings. I put that list of buttons on the DXF dialog primarily for my own use to find out what the default values should be.

I've looked back through all my plug track posts and I think perhaps there is something I have never properly explained.

I keep saying that the project is an experiment. What that means is that the present user interface for plug track is a complete kludge from start to finish. I simply tied everything needed to conduct the experiment onto the existing dialogs with string, as a temporary expedient to avoid needing to write everything from scratch. For example I re-used the existing background shapes as a quick means of adding some non-track components into the 3D export. I put all those extra buttons and tick boxes on the existing 2D DXF dialog (which I hadn't looked at for years) as a convenient place to put them for now, so that I can change the settings and see what happens.

It's not intended to stay that way in the finish. Or at least, it wasn't my intention originally and it still isn't if I keep going long enough. The idea is that when the experiment is over, when we know what works and what doesn't and what is wanted, a completely new set of dialogs and file formats will be created to support the new 3D functions. The existing background shapes and DXF dialog can then revert to what they were before plug track.

I've made a start on that with the new chairing options dialog in 238a, but I've done it in isolation from anything else, and I'm fairly sure it will need some changes before we are finished.

It's dawned on me that a lot of folks just haven't grasped all this. That the current plug track stuff has been bodged into Templot simply as a temporary means to find out if it works. You are not seeing the final implementation of this function, so there is no point in learning where everything is, or expecting it to be in the same place twice running. Or even to exist in the end.

The thing I need to know most is -- does it actually work? Are you able to make track which is fit to be used on a model railway and which trains will run on? The exact details of which button does what and why can come later when we know if the whole thing is worth doing in the first place.

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Michael Woods]

@Michael Woods

Hi Michael,

Good to see you at the Zoom meeting.

That's very odd. The colon isn't being added by Templot, I just exported an STL to check:

View attachment 5608

So it must be something in your Meshmixer program. Presumably you can edit the file name in the File > Open dialog?

Maybe when you edited the file name to black_track you accidentally added a colon?

Have you tried using the online mesh fixer service instead:

https://www.formware.co/onlinestlrepair

cheers,

Martin.

Tried everything - including the online formware - I must be doing something silly.....tried to see if I can attach it here....now called usual market_square etc.....