Winter Challange 2024 - Pam's Flour - Jim Donovan

[Jim Donovan]

I will be placing a build thread in the contest area as well. It will not be judged for the contest but will be judged for the AP program the NMRA has. I will be scratch building a 1900 flour mill that used coal steam power to operate. It will incorporate ideas from several actual buildings of that time and will highlight the use of 3D printing and laser cutting techniques. This will be the second try at building this structure from scratch. Have you ever built something and when done just said, 'that looks terrible'. That is how the first attempted I did came out. I hope what I learned the first time will help me do better this second time.



Here are photos of actual buildings of that time I will use as reference and what the first attempt of this facility came out looking like.

[tom.boyd.125]

Jim, a really nice looking structure, will pull up a chair and watch...Tommy

[GPdemayo]

I'll be looking in Jim.....

[Zephyrus52246]

Will be interesting to see how you accomplish this. 

Jeff

[ACL1504]

Jim,

I'm ready for this one as well. I have a cold Diet Pepsi and laid back for the build.

Tom 

[Mark Dalrymple]

Looks to be an interesting project, Jim.

Are you going to change up any of the layout/ structures in your second attempt?  What size is the overall diorama?

Cheers, Mark.

[ReadingBob]

Count me in as well.  Instead of a Diet Pepsi I'll be sipping a little whiskey as I follow along with your build.  Retirement is wonderful. 

[Jim Donovan]

Looks to be an interesting project, Jim.

Are you going to change up any of the layout/ structures in your second attempt?  What size is the overall diorama?

Cheers, Mark.

Great questions Mark;

All the structures that make up the facility will be changed in detail, method of building and look. Since I made the original in 2023 I've learned a lot more both about how an early 1900 flour mill operated and my own method of scratch building has change. Resin printing and use of a laser for shape cutting have become more incorporated in my building.

The original took up about 10 x 22 and was made to stand against the backdrop. This one will be smaller and detailed on all sides. The biggest size reduction will come from the rail receiving warehouse being cut in half in size. Most of the diorama will consist of the facility as my build will be geared towards being judged for the NMRA Structures AP program. 

Thanks for asking.

Jim

[Jim Donovan]

Building a freelance scratch building I first research the history of the structure type, review photos of similar buildings and get a 'feel' for why the buildings were built as they were. For this project I spent 20-30 hours. The history of flour mills is remarkable. If you would like to see a real mill of the 1800's in operation check out this YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tp7nvAvuwk

Until the 1920's most mills were three or four stories high using a pa.tented automated method of converting wheat grain into flour (patient #3 by Oliver Evans and signed by George Washington himself).

My interpretation of a mill will be an early coal fired (converted from a water wheel) operation using milling stones and the Evans vertical bucket belt system. This information is important in it will set the size and shapes of the three buildings that make up the facility. The primary building is the center 'tower' building where the actual processing occurs. A schematic of this operation looks like this:

 
The other two buildings are the boiler room and the receiving warehouse.

The boiler building will be based on a great photo I found of an early steam power building operated by Toledo Edison. It will be significantly smaller of course, consisting of four boilers.



The receiving warehouse design is still under development. So enough background information time to start the project.

[Jim Donovan]

The first building of this complex will be the central tower building. It will be 5 floors high because the ground floor will be a shipping warehouse two stories high. I will be cutting the walls using a Sculpfun 9s diode laser of 5 watts maximum power. As modeling lasers go this is small but more than adequate for my needs. I bought it from Amazon a little over a year ago and it has helped my modeling tremendously. I paid about two hundred dollars and it is still about that price. You can cut and paste the URL below if you'd like more information.

https://www.amazon.com/SCULPFUN-Engraver-Efficient-Engraving-Machine/dp/B09MQMXXGD/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=2J1QPSDVAZRNN&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.GFtpnZ-X_LGmPbzmR2woEI7HIfZEi81Ps1X-_zFwa1U8lRDGbjIonWpvkkFrt1iQjb2rEuTXW2GNTFI32P7b54e_7J-kzodi2xsOoZNXYl4G7rT8iddx61eWPVhvL5JyXPANjnjKJLvONS1VT-Oy0iH2x9hXygp_NQpE3rr93dM_BzhmFcfo76wr88htDP-R6ec-8PHUM4yonQILpfY-.A_eqkEcSHgnKKpjMte-xC6JZTtKusoVT9K_-28Bak5c&dib_tag=se&keywords=sculpfun%2Bs9&qid=1732588286&sprefix=Sculptfun%2Caps%2C144&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1


The laser and the 3D printers I will be using all require data files which I make using a free on-line CAD program called Tinkercad. Made and supported by Autocad it was designed for students to learn basic CAD design. I found it straightforward to learn with a host of YouTube videos available to help. I've been using the program for over two years now. The laser itself runs off an old Mac laptop computer I have that dates back to 2008 using a laser cutting program called Laserburn. Laserburn in turn creates the cut file from a data file exported to it from Tinkercad. These files are called .svg and are two dimensional drawings.

Have I lost you yet? Hang in there we are about done with the jargon. I mention all this as it is how I create and make large parts of my scratch built and kit bash kits. In the tower building there will be no commercial bought windows, doors or accessories, everything will need to be designed, manufactured, fitted and assembled. The vast majority of time in creating this model is spent designing and manufacturing the parts. I won't go any further into Tinkercad but will show the final drawings developed that become cut files for the laser.





The above two screen shots show the design of the tower building. The covered overhang is where boxcars will be loaded with the bags and barrels of flour. Barrels were phased out by the 1920's.


By hiding the majority of the building I can make a slice of just the front wall. This is the file that will go to the Laserburn program to operate the laser. You can see what the cut file looks like below once Laserburn creates it.

[Jim Donovan]

In my store wanderings I picked up over 70 birchwood 3mm thick plywood boards for $.07 each. I will be using some of these to make the walls of the tower building.



Here is one of the walls having been cut out by the laser. I left it in the board to show both.



And here are all walls required having been cut.

[Jim Donovan]

With the walls cut I spray painted the inner sides black. I intend to have interiors that can be seen through the windows but I will use shadow boxes instead of creating entire floors. 

The building is to be brick and I have special textured paper I have been saving. I got it from a gentleman from Italy years ago but I can not remember his company's name. If anybody recognizes the paper and knows the person please let me know as I would love to get more. As I understand it the heavy duty textured paper was originally a type of wall paper in Europe that did not sell very well. One side has the wall paper print still on it. The other side this person ran through a high end copier and printed a great brick design. Actually he printed several various types of bricks. 



While there appears to be a repeating pattern in the design I have found that once glued on the wall with all the windows, doors, fixtures and such the pattern disappears.

[Jim Donovan]

While the brick pattern looks to repeat when seen by itself once in place with the doors, windows, fixtures and such the pattern disappears. 

I used 12 inch wide 3M #465 two sided tape to affix to the back of each sheet of brick paper. Since the laser will need to produce some scrap around the edges I did not need to carry the tape from edge to edge. While 465 tape is not cheap it sure works wonders and beats gluing were it can be used. 



After applying the tape to the back of the brick sheet I used a steel block and, putting the brick face down on a clean surface, I gently wiped the block across the tape to make sure it was evenly applied.

I was able to use the same cut files for the front and back as used for the wood cutting, I simply adjusted the laser settings down, increasing how fast the head moved and reduced the passes to only two. I left the laser power at 100% to make sure a clean cut was made. When placing the sheet onto the cutting tray I checked and rechecked to make sure the laser head would cut straight across the bricks and not on a diagonal which would ruin the illusion of straight bricks.



For the two side walls I needed to add 5mm per side since they will be covered by the front and back wall at the corner when joined. The extra length will cover the end on sides of the front and back. I plan to have quoins on each corner but the brick coverage will keep things straight. I scored the tape on these sheets so that the wax paper was left in place on the edges after the brick sheet was glued to the wood. You can see what I mean below:

[Jim Donovan]

So after designing, creating files, cutting, painting and gluing we have the brick walls we need. More next post.

[Janbouli]

Wow , great research and nice use of the laser , now you have me doubting again between buying a laser cutter or a 3D printer, I think both in the long run.