I am afraid that my eyes are past making track using individual keys
@ralphrobertson
Hi Ralph,
Many thanks for your feedback, and for making the test prints.
Just to clarify, even I am not mad enough to suggest individual
keys in 4mm/ft scale, to be inserted between a fixed chair jaw and the rail. These are a complete jaw+key, and come with a longish pin by means of which to hold them and insert them into a slot.
Knowing how fast misunderstandings can propagate on the web, never to be removed, I just hope this isn't another one that I have to correct on various forums, over and over again, forever.
But I agree they are small. What I would really like to know is -- as printed on your setup
*, do they actually fit in the slot? You may need a magnifying glass to find out.
There is a third option, which I have been wondering about, to have a complete plug-in part chair:
This would differ from the split chairs I have done for the switches, in that it doesn't slide on the rail. They would need to be fitted individually after the rail is in place. It can't be a bash-fit, because the key couldn't then pass under the rail head (for the loose jaws the pin flexes, and the key clips back under the rail head). The plug would need to be a loose fit in the socket, to be secured by some other means, such as a gap-filling adhesive. It's bigger to handle than the loose jaws, at the expense of a lot more faff in the fitting.
On balance I think the loose jaws are the better option, IF folks can arrange some form of magnification to see them, and IF they can actually print them.
Other than that, it is back to the split chairs, as on the switches, for the special crossing chairs. Which makes preparing and fitting the rails a lot more fiddly.
I have to make a decision on this before I can go any further with the special crossing chairs. Other options could come later, but unlike for the ordinary chairs, it's not possible to make the options interchangeable in the same timbering base. So it would be a lot of additional work to add the options.
*If your slicer uses the
Image Blur option, as on the Mars/Chitubox, it almost certainly needs to be switched off in order to print small parts which fit together.
Many thanks for your kind words.
cheers,
Martin.