Franksville Wisconsin N-scale modutrak module buildout

[SAH]

WOW. 

Jamie,

How is the blade sharpness holding up? Another thought for this thing is to cut shingles out of card (like those offered by Clever Models, Scalescenes, etc...). While their patterns are nice, they could benefit from some surface relief. Scribing styrene or acrylic is one thing, cutting cardstock requires a pretty sharp blade for best results.

Best wishes, Dave

Printing shingles on textured paper works pretty well.  The black ink provides depth.  That's what I used on the NKP Spencer depot for the roof.  Is anyone aware of a textured styrene sheet in the thickness Jamie describes as ideal?  Wouldn't THAT make fabulous bricks!!!

[lashedup]

Jamie,

How is the blade sharpness holding up? Another thought for this thing is to cut shingles out of card (like those offered by Clever Models, Scalescenes, etc...). While their patterns are nice, they could benefit from some surface relief. Scribing styrene or acrylic is one thing, cutting cardstock requires a pretty sharp blade for best results.

Best wishes, Dave

Blade is razor sharp when new and cuts card stock very cleanly. I bought an extra blade but haven't used it yet. So far this one is holding up well. I imagine the clear material is rougher than anything since it is more brittle.

Jason, do you have that freight house illustration in an .eps or illustrator format? A vector file should work. It has nice complexity to it and I can try both scribe and full cuts with .010 material.

- j

[wcfn100]

Jason, do you have that freight house illustration in an .eps or illustrator format? A vector file should work. It has nice complexity to it and I can try both scribe and full cuts with .010 material.

The drawing is done in Illustrator.  This one project alone would be worth the price of the machine so I'm all ears.


Jason

[lashedup]

Can you email it to me?

jamie@model160.com

I probably won't get to it till tomorrow (Sunday) evening, but I'll do a test run and see.

[SkipGear]

An idea for brick at least. I know one of the companies offers a cream color styrene. How about painting it brick color, then scribing the lines. The scribe joint lines should be the cream morter color when done.

I might have to try that one with a dull blade.

[wcfn100]

Can you email it to me?

jamie@model160.com

I probably won't get to it till tomorrow (Sunday) evening, but I'll do a test run and see.

I was going to PM you about sending like 6"x6" section.  I'll have to look at the drawing later.   I don't remember off hand if I completed the whole thing or just made the parts that can be repeated.

Thanks,

Jason

[lashedup]

Either way, I'm just looking to test something different, particularly with the arches.

[wcfn100]

Either way, I'm just looking to test something different, particularly with the arches.

Well in that case, I'll send what I got in a few minutes.


Jason

[lashedup]

Ok, so I ran Jason's brickwork (part of it) as a test. The first try (top) showed me that I need to make sure that there aren't any drawn items hiding behind other elements. Bricks were overlapping arches and in the window as well. The printer comes with three color coded caps that you screw on over the blade holder. Each of these caps allows a longer length of the blade to show, so you choose the cap based on the thickness of the material. Blue for the lightest cuts, yellow for the middle-of-the-line and red for the deepest. On the first try I used the yellow cap and set up two layers in Illustrator, one with the brick detail work and one layer with the cut outs. I told the software to make the brick detail work use the lowest force (1) and on the cutout layer to use the most force (33). When it was done I ended up with thicker brick details than my previous test with the blue cap set to the lowest force. However I had a tough time getting the piece to break free from the styrene sheet cleanly as the yellow cap at the highest force (33) didn't go all the way through the .010 styrene and I ended up tearing/breaking the pieces in three sections.

So I fixed the brick overlaps in the arches (left the window issues alone for now) and decided that for the second try I'd tell the printer to pause in between layers so I could change the caps in between layers. So this time I used the red (deepest) cap set to a force of 33 for the cut outline and used the blue (lowest) with the force set to 2 for the detail work and that turned out nearly perfect. The red cap at highest force nearly cuts all the way through (and in some places it did go all the way through) so it as easy to remove the piece. I was even able to break it free around rows of bricks. The piece will curl a bit due to all the micro cuts on the face, but you're going to want to glue this to a thicker backing piece anyway.

So I brushed on some PollyScale Oxide Red to give it some color. I would airbrush this normally as I don't want that much paint flowing into the mortar lines. I also used an alcohol/india ink wash to the various pieces to bring out some detail. At the bottom of the painted section I took some white pastel chalk and sandpaper and scraped some on top and rubbed it in. So overall you get an idea of how this might look.



I have some more pieces from an ongoing project that I'm testing and working on right now so if I make any decent progress tonight I'll let you know.

So far so good!

[Sokramiketes]

Nice!  But I think that's cut limstone, not brick.  Pretty big blocks or really small doors if brick.

[lashedup]

Whatever it is, you can paint them anyway you like.

[Dave Schneider]

Jamie,

Thanks for doing these tests and posting the results. They look great. My silhouette should arrive in a couple of days and I can't wait to start working with it. What is doing on with the shape of the painted brick/stone? It appears much more rounded and the mortar lines thicker than the unpainted scribed  section to the right. Is this real or the result of doing a quick test?

I have been thinking of other uses for this thing, including cutting tape for complicated paint masks, and producing simple white decals. I am working on rebuilding some offset side hoppers into Milwaukee ribbed side (http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll290/djs_ank_ak/ProtoPhoto/?action=view&current=MILW_94795.jpg). I will test whether it is possible to cut the letters directly from white decal paper (for the large billboard font). The letters need to be applied individually regardless of whether they are printed together on a full sheet or just cut directly. The advantage to using the die cutter is that you don't have to worry about hiding the decal film edge.

Best wishes, Dave

[lashedup]

What is doing on with the shape of the painted brick/stone? It appears much more rounded and the mortar lines thicker than the unpainted scribed  section to the right. Is this real or the result of doing a quick test?

I have been thinking of other uses for this thing, including cutting tape for complicated paint masks, and producing simple white decals. I am working on rebuilding some offset side hoppers into Milwaukee ribbed side (http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll290/djs_ank_ak/ProtoPhoto/?action=view&current=MILW_94795.jpg). I will test whether it is possible to cut the letters directly from white decal paper (for the large billboard font). The letters need to be applied individually regardless of whether they are printed together on a full sheet or just cut directly. The advantage to using the die cutter is that you don't have to worry about hiding the decal film edge.

The mortar lines look thick because I used chalk powder in the lines and pushed it in. I could work to brush it out a bit and lighten it or instead just use a white wash with some alcohol mixed in. Depends on what look you want.

Silhouette has some basic craft vinyl that's pretty thin and would likely work well for the white letters. They will still be raised a bit, so you'd have to decide whether the compromise is worth it.

-jamie

[Dave Schneider]

The mortar lines look thick because I used chalk powder in the lines and pushed it in. I could work to brush it out a bit and lighten it or instead just use a white wash with some alcohol mixed in. Depends on what look you want.

Silhouette has some basic craft vinyl that's pretty thin and would likely work well for the white letters. They will still be raised a bit, so you'd have to decide whether the compromise is worth it.

-jamie

Thanks for the info. This is looking very promising. As for the letters, I was thinking of cutting them directly from white decal paper rather than vinyl. The inside of the R might be challenging, we'll see.

Best wishes, Dave

[lashedup]

I'm running something for Skibbe right now that has prototypical size red brick. The machine sounds like it is hammering out morse code. Should be interesting to see how long it (or I) can take it.