Thursday, January 10, 2019

One Right, One Wrong

So yesterday I grabbed a few minutes here and there to have a look at the new prototypes. First up was the revised peat wagon etches


On the left we have the previous OO6.5 gauge prototype that was very awkward to assemble. On the right the new prototype etched cage this time assembled onto a Dundas Models rugga chassis for OO9. The good news is that the new parts are much much easier to assemble, and once assembled are indistinguishable from the previous version, so I'm calling that a success. That means these should hopefully appear as kits in both gauges before too long.

Flushed with success I moved on to having a look at the new etches for the K12 loco. Unfortunately on the very first piece I removed from the fret I've found a mistake; a half etched rebate is on the wrong side of the sheet. Checking the artwork and the mistake is definitely of my own making, which is rather frustrating. In my defence it's on a rather complex part that involves two normal fold lines and an underfold and I simply got confused as to which side ended up where on the folded part. Fortunately with the artwork being digital it's easy to correct; I can't imagine how people stayed sane correcting hand-drawn etch artwork! I'm going to assemble as much of the model as I can to check the rest of the parts, but it's going to need another round of prototyping before it's finished.

4 comments:

  1. Have a look at this Mark.

    FreeCAD UNFOLD

    Not used it myself but I did install it.

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    1. Yes, I keep meaning to try and find the time to play with FreeCAD having seen this extension before. not sure how well it will match up with how I usually work but if it can make unfolding parts easier then I'm all for it.

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  2. I can't begin to imagine how thin those wire sides are.

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    Replies
    1. Thin! They are etched out of 0.25mm thick nickel silver sheet. Each wire is 0.25mm wide, but they are half etched so only 0.125mm thick.

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