Comments on: 3D printed railroad engine model kits made from insanely hi-rez scans

By: electronicnonsense

electronicnonsense — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:21:00 +0000

I was just going to post this. The model train community was one of the first to jump on the 3D printing bandwagon. Their stuff is all over shapeways.

By: Ryan_T_H

Ryan_T_H — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 05:45:00 +0000

Sure they could. But modifying the model to accommodate those, as well as making the aftermarket additions themselves, is hardly less work than modifying the model itself to make them unnecessary.

I’m not saying this isn’t cool. Or useful. Just not a magic bullet that suddenly makes the actual labor disappear.

By: kstop

kstop — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 01:02:00 +0000

(Grr, my last comment got eaten by the Disqus grue.)

3D-printed kits could accommodate fine detail the same way regular kits do, for example with cast metal parts, or folded photo-etch metal. It’s pretty much SOP for advanced modelers, and most kits have some aftermarket PE/metal/resin add-ons available.

By: euansmith

euansmith — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 21:16:00 +0000

”HO, half the size; twice the fun”

By: Katrina van Malksvig

Katrina van Malksvig — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:45:00 +0000

not really a new thing… SO & I have been visiting the Warley Model Rail exhibtion in the UK for 4 or 5 years now, and there’s always been one or two sellers offering v. nice 3D printed HO locomotive parts (much to the disdain of “traditional” modellers)

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:05:00 +0000

There is actually a large group of people who are printing train and other hobby related parts in various materials – not to the detail of actually scanning an actual item but many use plans to create their parts. In modelling a real life item concessions must be made because not everything scales down, and sometimes things like rivits need to be enlarged in order for it to “look” better even though it is not correct in size.

Just take a look at http://www.shapeways.com/gallery/miniatures/model-trains for an example of whats being done – from complete car bodies to stand alone details.

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:48:00 +0000

this data is too precious to lock it up

That’s what I like to hear : D

By: Garymon

Garymon — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:13:00 +0000

This is pretty cool but the era of 3D printing will not be fully here until mid-west moms can easily and discreetly print sex toys.

By: Eric Legg

Eric Legg — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 07:02:00 +0000

Kit bashing will never be the same.

By: anansi133

anansi133 — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 06:10:00 +0000

Just the other day I was thinking I’d like an HO scale version of Giger’s nightmare train from _Species_. Maybe someday they’ll scan that movie prop!

By: NelC

NelC — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 04:15:00 +0000

The ten-year-old inside me who was into Airfix kits and the like forty years ago has just woken from his deep slumber and is squee-ing like a, well, ten-year-old.

By: Ryan_T_H

Ryan_T_H — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 02:43:00 +0000

It’s a neat process, but has some real limitations when it comes to actually scaling down to a physical model. The biggest one is what to do with features that interact with the resolution limits of the printer.

Say you have a railing that, once scaled down, is smaller than the smallest printable feature. Do you just scale up that one railing? Do you scale up similar features to maintain a sense of proportion over absolute accuracy? Just delete it? Create a framework for it and turn a freestanding feature into an embossed detail on a purely aesthetic addition?

And all of the above can be a lot of work, even once you decide on what ‘accurate’ means to your particular a scale model. And the decisions you make can often not work well with different scales. The solutions to fix a 1:50 scale model might look silly and inaccurate if scaled to 1:30 and completely fail when scaled to 1:60.