N Scale--3d printing roof shingles

[PanAmShay]

I am working on modeling in CAD a Depot building that existed from the 1920s-1060s.  I see a few generic posts here about modeling shingles and siding, but nothing specific in n-scale.  Has anyone had success with it looking acceptable and any suggestions on how much exageration/scaling was necessary for features to show up?

Thanks,
Andrew

https://vernoniasociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/49589620_1957511567700107_1041819200399605760_n.jpg

[Sumner]

Are you going to print with resin or filament?  What type shingles, wood, asphalt?

I did some ....


https://1fatgmc.com/RailRoad/UP%20Canyon%20Division/page-242.html

..... corrugated roofing on my sawmill that is close to scale in N Scale.  Haven't tried shingles on a project but was thinking about in on the small passenger station I did the other day. 

Sumner

[Scottl]

For asphalt shingles, I used 50% thickness overlap to get a visible effect.  The original shingles were produced in sheets and trimmed to fit the roof faces.  The capping shingles are perhaps a bit exaggerated but it looks good to my eye.

[PanAmShay]

Sumner, I was planning for wood shingles, but would be OK with either wood or asphalt.  Printing planned on a resin printer (I did a test print on my filament printer just of the side wall and it was, as expected, pretty mediocre)

Scottl, thanks for the suggestions.  I found your recent posts of this building and see you used Blender.  I have not used that program, but will have to check it out. 

[Scottl]

In Blender, I generated a shingle rectangle with bevelling to round the corners.  I then used the array modifier to replicate it in two dimensions and then exported the array to Tinkercad as an .OBJ.  That took about 10 minutes.

Tinkercad was at its limits handling this kind of manipulation so this was the viable solution.  A simpler roofline could probably be done directly in TK.

[Sumner]

I designed....



.... a couple courses of shingles that were based/scaled at an average wood shingle size according to AI.   Printed ....



.... with the Bambu filament printer and was surprised that it even got this close as some of the dimensions are under what it can print.  Then printed the same file...



.... with the AnyCubic Photon M3 (an older resin printer at this point but I love it).  It handled all the dimension pretty well but..



... the shingles are so small they are very hard to see unless the light is at the right angle.  I think if I proceed on this at some point I'll go oversize to the point where they are a little more pronounced on the print.

Sumner

[Scottl]

Mine are to scale.  I find the finish brings out the detail that is barely visible in the raw print. 

[PanAmShay]

Thanks for the help Sumner and Scottl.  I finished modeling my Depot building and added the roof shingles.  This was done in Creo.  I was surprised that the shingles, which are just a pretty simple pattern, really caused it to bog down to create the features.  Once they were created it was fine, but just slower than I expected. 

I am doing a quick print on my filament printer just to make sure there are no surprises at correct scale, but a friend has offered to print it on his resin printer so I'm hopeful that turns out nicely.  Scottl, on the building image you shared in this thread, was that central part a single print, or did you break it down into smaller components such as walls, roof, windows, etc?

On the attached historic images which is all I really had to go off of, the link to the first one is in my first post (happy to give credit, but cannot find who took it), second is from Images of America: Vernonia

[Scottl]

I spent most of July watching my screen update spin, lol.  Same issue, shingles bogged down Tinkercad and being cloud-based, my hardware was not the issue.

The print in my photo is a single print from a Saturn 4 16K U.  The entire building is composed of three prints that max the X-Y dimensions.

Looks great! Are your capping shingles a solid shape?  It was a pain, but individual cap shingles really stand out IMO.

[PanAmShay]

Good to know!  A Saturn is what I hope to have this printed on.

Agreed your ridge caps look really good as individual shingles--and that must have been a pain! 

The ridge and hip caps from the photos I can find look to be a single piece which is why I modeled it that way--does it look that way to you?  I would guess metal, but I'm not an expert. 

The attached image is from the 1952 Portland NMRA Convention Excursion Train and one of the better end views I've found.  You can see the roofing is very deteriorated, at this point the building was 30 years old and would be torn down roughly 10 years later.  Our module assumes this did not happen and a new roof was put on at some point

[Sumner]

As an update....I did print out a full roof with the N scale shake shingles and painting did help a lot  .

A couple pictures .....









.... and more info on Railwire ( HERE ).

Sumner