Sawmill Design/Build – Part 10 ...My plan was to get the log lift at the mill pond, the chain to the debarker and the chain to and into the mill finished and then put the project aside. Well I guess I have to admit that I'm somewhat addicted to it and couldn't quite stop there.
I decide to move forward and try and finish most (the difficult part) of the interior for the north end of the mill building. I wanted to get the equipment designed and printed that is needed to get the log from the mill pond to the bandsaw.
What follows on this page is the path I took.....
Above we can see the north wall although due to the height of the bandsaw I'm raising the top (above the end opening) an additional 7-8 scale feet and adding a footer to the bottom of the wall. Of course that means I also had to go back and do the same for all the other walls of the mill. That is done but not shown above.
The equipment shown above is mostly my interpretation of looking at the equipment that Hull-Oakes has now or had back into I believe the 60's or before. I'm not quite anal enough to want to duplicate it exactly and that would be hard to do in N scale and the space restraints of the scene on the layout. As it is it will occupy about 3' x 6.5' at the end of the layout on the upper level. So compromises were taken in the design of what you see above. Big shout out to Autodesk for putting a free non-commercial version of Fusion for us that don't have $600 a year to spend on the real thing.
I probably wouldn't of been able to of designed these parts a year or so ago but did design them with most of the tools I used then. I use less that 20 tools in Fusion to do my design work and I'll bet that is less than 5% of what Fusion is capable of. I mentioned this for anyone looking for a CAD program. Personally I don't think it can be beat for what is out there free. Take a look and try it out. There are good videos out there on getting started like the one
( HERE ). That one got me started and if you can master it you will be off to designing yourself.
The track off to the left has four round-tables on it (one shown) and the track is used to transport air dried lumber that is brought from the yard to a dock on the side of the mill where it is put on carts that are pushed on the track to a planner. More on all of that at a later date.
The three square platforms between two of the arrows are where there will be three long sections of rollers. Cut lumber from the bandsaw will move over to those sets of roller and then along the rollers to saws that will cut the lumber from the bandsaw into individual width boards and also to length. From there the lumber will move to the green chain and outside to be stacked and air dried.
I mentioned above that Fusion is fast. Well it is fast depending on your computer. I spent some money about 2 years ago now on a faster gaming type computer with a dedicate graphics card to speed things up. 90% of the time it updates changes in a second or so. Large brick walls with all the brick faces can get somewhat slower but sill not bad compared to the previous computer I had.
The chains and there adjacent structure to move the logs with the turning sprocket on the end are a whole different story for some reason. Sometimes I'd wait up to 10 minutes for the computer to update a change I had just made to the design. Sometimes it would crash the program. I am so glad to be done with them.
I had to make two prints of most of what you see here. The first would come out OK but I'd see things that I wanted to add so would make changes (painfully slow ones on the chain from the mill pond and the log deck) and then print the second print shown above for both of those items and for the carriage. I was happy with the bandsaw the first time around.
I'll design and print some additional logs of different diameters and lengths to use on the chains and in the mill pond. Can't see it here but I have some designed with bark on and bark off (after the debarker).
The carriage that moves back and forth with the log on it and that also moves the log towards the bandsaw blade for each cut is actually more complicated than what I designed. It has cable and hydraulic lines all over it. Check out the video
( HERE ).
For years someone rode on the carriage and operated it. I have the seat for the operator at the far end of the carriage above and will have an operator on the carriage. Now at Hull-Oakes the carriage has been replaced and no operator needed.
I decided to try printing the saw blade and it came out, somewhat surprising to me as it is only .007” (.18mm) thick. That is usually my lower limit for detail I'll put on a print. It is one N scale inch and is really about as small as you can see at most viewing distances. The blade is 1 ft in with (n scale) and actually not as wide as the blade is at Hull-Oakes as seen
( HERE ).
All of this was printed on a $200 AnyCubic Photon M3 using Siraya Tech 'Build' Sonic Grey resin. Love that resin and is all I use. Great detail, strong, not so brittle (the blade above will flex some) and it is drillable and tappable. Perfect for all my needs. I use the print settings on Siraya Tech's site for my printer and I've never had to mess with the settings.
Above one can see the carriage operator's seat at this end of the carriage. He would also at times stand and hold the new piece of lumber being cut back against the log until the saw was at the end of the cut.
As I mentioned further above the compute times when designing the log deck and chain from the mill pond shown about got really long and frustrating waiting for. In comparison any design change I made for the bandsaw, carriage or the whole floor for this end of the mill never took more than a couple seconds for the computer and software to make.
I hope I can restrain myself from trying to design the remaining interior for the south end of the mill to a later date. I'll finish the structure that will be above the debarker but really need to get back to finishing scenery and laying track.
To be continued............
A link to this whole build
( HERE ).
Sumner
