Wednesday, March 18, 2015

X-Raying a Lead-Acid Battery

I'm still waiting on the etched parts for the Hudson-Hunslet to arrive but in the interim I've started to prepare the rest of the body. Specifically I've been adding extra weight to the 3D print which will hopefully improve performance of the locomotive from the previous prototype.

The obvious area to hollow out so that I could add more weight was the space above the motor and in to the back of the control panel, but I've also added an area under the seat where more weight can be added. The final area I hollowed out was a new addition to this version of the body; the starter battery. While the location of the starter battery seems to be fairly standard given the drawings and prototype photos I've found the actual battery, or batteries, used seems to vary widely although they all look like car batteries of one form or another. On the scale drawings I've been using it was difficult to figure out the exact size of the battery (other parts obscure some of the dimensions in all the views) so I've based the model on a 030 car battery using dimensions from this useful resource. You can't get much weight into the battery but I couldn't resist the opportunity to stuff a representation of a lead-acid battery with lead (okay so the Liquid Gravity I'm using possibly doesn't contain lead but you all know what I mean).

With all that weight added the model is significantly heavier than the previous prototype although it still doesn't really register on my kitchen scales so I'm not sure exactly how much it weighs. Hopefully it will be heavy enough to provide enough traction to pull a few wagons as well as give nice slow running.

1 comment:

  1. You'll have to create a stronger gravitational field under your model. Now there's a challenge.

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