Pam's Flour Build

[robert goslin]

Just catching up on your build here Jim.  As I'm new to the Forum, I'm still finding my way around.
Amazing what you have been able to achieve.  I'm very much old school as I'm pretty much a luddite when it comes to technology.
But you seem to have fully embraced it with a laser, a 3d printer and the cameo cutter.
And mastering all the software side of it, which I guess is the really hard part.  Great to see something different.

Great looking building.  The brickwork is especially nice.  and good to see someone actually doing a very large building.  Too often, and not by choice, we have to build smaller structures to fit.
Yours really does look industrial in size.

[Jerry]

Jim that is some impressive work and detailing.  Wonderful tutorial on your doing all this.

Jerry

[Larry C]

Jim just read through your thread. Not sure if this is kit building or kit manufacturing,
but at any rate your results are outstanding. Looking forward to seeing the finished build
on your layout.

[ACL1504]

Jim,

Very impressive work. Fantastic looking Flour Mill.

Tom 

[Jim Donovan]

Just catching up on your build here Jim.  As I'm new to the Forum, I'm still finding my way around.
Amazing what you have been able to achieve.  I'm very much old school as I'm pretty much a luddite when it comes to technology.
But you seem to have fully embraced it with a laser, a 3d printer and the cameo cutter.
And mastering all the software side of it, which I guess is the really hard part.  Great to see something different.

Great looking building.  The brickwork is especially nice.  and good to see someone actually doing a very large building.  Too often, and not by choice, we have to build smaller structures to fit.
Yours really does look industrial in size.

Rob, thanks for joining the Forum and for stopping by. Frankly most of the guys that post their work here on the Forum are much better modelers then I am, I simple use the tech toys to close the gap as best I can. The programming required is much like learning an airbrush, you simply get better at it the more you use it. This is by far the biggest building I have made and most likely will always be. I have one spot on the layout for it but the overall layout is small so there will only be the one then back to smaller buildings.

[Jim Donovan]

Jim that is some impressive work and detailing.  Wonderful tutorial on your doing all this.

Jerry

Thanks Jerry.

[Jim Donovan]

Jim just read through your thread. Not sure if this is kit building or kit manufacturing,
but at any rate your results are outstanding. Looking forward to seeing the finished build
on your layout.

Larry I have found it does give new meaning to scratch building. Designing and making the windows, doors and all the other parts does add a lot of time but I am beginning to see where I can draw on past projects for current ones. Such as the board on board look I will be showing on the warehouse I used before as a floor on another structure. Some doors are reused as well. Thanks for checking in.

Jim

[Jim Donovan]

Jim,

Very impressive work. Fantastic looking Flour Mill.

Tom

Tom, thank you. I'm trying to mimic mills of 1912 we will see how it turns out but I know this will be the last really large building I make for the layout.

Jim

[Jim Donovan]

At this point I turned my attention to the third and final structure of the facility, the intake warehouse. These early mills did not have storage silos but instead received and stored the grain in regular buildings. The grain was delivered by, horse wagon, train or canal boat, held in barrels or burlap bags with the bags ending up how all grain would be delivered back then. 

For my layout I will have the product delivered and shipped using all three methods. From the warehouse the grain was often transported by a unique conveyor system that utilized gimbaled buckets that while moving on a vertical conveyor would dip into a bin full of grain and send it up to the top floor of the processing building. There it began the process of being turned into flour. Fire and explosions were a very real danger so these early warehouses were well vented, other then that they came in all types of shapes and sizes.tt

I am going to admit something here. Often in my modeling I end up wandering, finding what I designed either not right or I end up not liking the result, quality, overall look or whatever. I for the most part simply leave these dead ends or redo's out of what I report. But I've decided to show all the bumps and hiccups for this structure, at least for now. I may decide in the future to leave the bloopers out but for now you will see the clumsy methods I often use to make something. The reason I say this is frankly I have no clue how this building is going to end up. I was going to just make the outside finished but inside parts keep creeping in and I am not sure if they and the design will be right or if I will simply start again.

So let's start, my initial idea is to make the warehouse out of wood with a 3D resin printed corrugated roof. It will have a coupla with lighting and venting. Here goes:

The design is a simple wood structure much like a barn with warehouse doors on each side at dock height. a wood platform will be on either side for receiving of grain from wagons on one side and trains/ canal boat on the other. I used tinkercad to design the building and cut the walls out with the laser. However, I want the walls to look like board on board with nail holes. The laser will sketch this look into the 3mm birch plywood. Creating the look is done by simply speeding up the laser travel and reducing the power output. For example, it takes my laser 5 passes moving at 400 mm second at 100% power to cut through the 3mm birchwood plywood. Entering the board on board lines and nail holes is done at 1500 mm per second, only 1 pass and at 80% power. The floor will be set at dock height as well with 1/8 x 1/8 wood used for straightening the corners and a 1/4 x 1/4 strip wood used across the upper length of the structure to keep thing straight.







As you can tell I left some steps out of how I got to this point but imagine you've seen this part done before and most likely better. After cutting the wood it was spray painted country white on outside and black on inside. I used a #12 knife to lift some of the boards to get the slightly used/ worn look. The corners are 1/8 x 1/8 basswood strip painted cottage blue. This will be the trim color for the entire building. To keep the structure straight while the canopy glue set I placed it in a Micro Mark steel building box with square magnets keeping everything in the right place. More in a minute.

[elwoodblues]

Jim,

Just spent time catching up on your build.  That is a great looking complex there and excellent modeling.

Personally I like seeing the 'bloopers", it's how we learn.

[Jim Donovan]

You might of caught site of the freight door frames and doors in one of the previous photos. The design of the door frame is a simple one that allows for two sliding doors and has a row of windows above to help with lighting. The frame was designed with tinkercad and has the 'pocket' idea I like to use to slide real microscope glass between the outer and inner mullins. The doors themselves are cut from the birchwood and a board design etched into the wood using the laser. The doors also have very small pane windows and I simply glued a small cut slide across to complete the look. I think I will add an inner finished door by gluing a paper printed door to the inner wall of the door to give the finished look, we will see.





As you can see from above photo in addition to the freight doors I designed vents using the 3D printer and colored them iron. Well I need to stop at this point for the night I will catch rest up in day or two.

[friscomike]

Howdy Jim,

The design and build of the intake warehouse look terrific.  The doors are convincing.  I like seeing folks use both the 3D printer and laser.

Have fun,
mike

[Philip]

Interesting design pocket for the glass. Where do you get the glass and how do you cut it?

Philip

[Rick]

Jim, great job of programming the laser to create the board on board look.
It's very convincing.
Using real glass is always a nice touch.
It's coming together nicely.

[Dave Buchholz]

One of your first posts indicated incoming shipments on some prototype structures being unloaded from canal barges.

Is this source of shipment something that will be represented on the layout? I can't recall viewing the final layout location for the structure in your posts?

Dave