R&D Findings

I've been very busy lately designing some new models and testing out decorating ideas and techniques...  I mentioned several of the projects previously so lets get into some of the results!

Trailers:  53' foot dry van trailers are very common in North America "over the road" and the 45's were a very common TOFC trailer.  The trailers turned out well from the printer--details are rendered nicely.  I designed the 45's on a sprue so they can be produced en-masse more easily and safely--although Shapeways has been extremely good about making some of the smaller items and I have not experienced any broken items recently (knock on wood!)   Here they are after a wash with some warm soapy water, a couple brushed on coats of Future, a bit of light sanding, then a couple coats of Tamiya white primer.  And some more sanding as you can see.


The home-made decals for the trailer are turning out to be much harder to produce than the 3D design actually.  Finding the "sweet spot" on my Epson printer can be a design-by-design thing.  Bleeding ink on the decal paper is my nemesis--any color causes bleeding.  It may be due to the secondary market inks I'm using though.. I'll have to try genuine Epson inks and see if that makes a difference.  The ink works fine on glossy photo paper, just not on the standard clear decal paper.  

RDC model update:  Using the 23M chassis available from T-Gauge.com, the trusty RDC can be powered with a visually "ok" truck (bogie) placement.  Technically, the 23M trucks are too closely spaced at about 54 scale feet, but it looks acceptable at arm's length.  I will try correcting it to prototype length, which will require some surgery on the chassis, but as this is the longest powered chassis available "off the shelf" I figured it would be good to show how it looks.

Also note the coupler design.  I wanted a more prototypical US coupler so I designed this in "professional plastic".  Yes it is way too big, but compared to the stock couplers and the models are a bit "fuzzy" but I think it's ok.  It's strong enough but still needs some tweaking to couple/uncouple reliably.  And I'm reducing the size a bit.  Oh, and here's a look at the horn mounted on the RDC.  Of course they had to be made a little too large for prototype as well, but again--a good representation at arm's length.  

So, now it's on to some painting and decorating!  Check back soon.