Using a 3D printer to make the building 'Shell'

[Jim Donovan]

Afternoon Folks;

While I write this I have a little Anycubic Filament PLA printer (Kodia Go) chugging away on my desk making what I hope will be its first complete and correct 3D print. I bought it a little over two years ago when Anycubic was running a discontinuing sale as better faster units were out and this little guy is 'ancient' compared to what is available, or so I am told. I think I paid $189.00 for it but you had to put it together, which I got around to about 3 months ago. I tinkered with it, got bored and put it on a shelf till I got bored again. That time is now. So today I took the time to fuss with it and get it to work (YouTube Videos for learning and fixing are the best).  I have been 3D printing now for 4-5 years but with liquid resin machines, this guy uses a spool of thread resin, heats it up in a nozzle and the plate and print head move back and forth to deposit the resin. Liquid resin printers produce a much finer detail finish product and can make pretty small items so great for working in HO (evenn N gauge). When I make something for someone in O gauge the detail achievable is truly amazing. These filament printers are getting better for detail parts too, just not as fine yet as resin and not this little guy. You can definitely see the layer lines with each layer .2mm thick (my main liquid machine deposits a .03mm layer). However none of that is to put this little guy down he has a bright future I hope. 

The drawbacks of liquid resin printing is you are not done when the part is made. It needs to be washed, the support sprues removed then UV light put on it for some more time. All these processes turn out to easily cause a mess with dripping and sticking and such. Keeping the printing area clean is a must and is on going duty. Further, liquid resin smells, period. The manufacturers use cute names like 'low odor',  green and so on but it smells until the product is hardened by UV light. I have my machine in an enclosure and vent the majority of smell outside and the machine sits in the garage. The wife says she can still smell the resin a little but I can't. Did I mention the liquid resin is slightly toxic (like fiber glass resin) so wearing nitrile gloves while dealing with the wet parts is a must. Still even with all that I love making resin details for my layout using the liquid resin printer.

So here is where this little filament printer comes in.  I have begun to do use the 3D printer make the building 'shell' then I add the wood siding, details, windows, doors and such. Doing so creates a building with strong 'bones' and eliminates the stress of getting things plumb.  I can do this because instead of using pen and paper to draw out my structures I use a free CAD program called Tinkercad. It was developed for elementary students to learn CAD through the use of object addition and subtraction such as rectangles, circles and triangles. I am sure the students learn it much quicker then my old brain did but I now can try things out on the computer before actually making the item. Now I export the file to a USB stick (or direct through internet) to the printer and it makes what I designed. Using the liquid printer to make these shells is overkill and expensive, lots of liquid used. I hope to use this filament printer to make these shells (and other stuff like the 9 volt battery power pack) at a lower cost and without the worry of a mess. As I mentioned to begin this it is currently on my desk in my office and no smell, even the wife can't smell it and she is the sensitive nose in our house. We will see how it and I get along but it is looking promicing. I will post to this thead a 'shell' when I get to that point. In the meantime here is a photo of the little guy chugging away.

Jim

[deemery]

I don't think I've seen someone use a 3D printer to do the shell, with wood or other siding, etc, added on top of it.  So I'll be very interested to see how that works out.

dave

[Rick]

I don't think I'd ever get a 3D printer, but I am interested in what you're doing and how it turns out.

[Jim Donovan]

I don't think I'd ever get a 3D printer, but I am interested in what you're doing and how it turns out.

Hi Rick;

It is just another way to model, not better just different. For me I am comfortable with computers and was an old Cobol programmer when IBM ruled the world with their IBM 360 mainframe. (48K core memory if my own memory is correct). I was a student at USF and helped come up with some of their internal programs (more a keypunch operator than anything else). Coming to the hobby late I am just leveraging things I know to help create stuff I don't know. Glad I can share something a little different.

Jim

[Jim Donovan]

I actually used the 'shell concept when I made the power plant section of Pam's Flour Mill. Using the liquid resin printer to I created the four walls with window and door cut outs as a one piece unit. I then used my laser cutter to cut to shape embossed brick looking paper (got it years ago from a guy in Italy) and using 3M two sided tape attached it to the shell. I 3D printed the roof and made the gingerbread stuff along the roof separately so I could paint them a different color. Finally the interior was all 3D printed assembled boiler room parts. So here it is when it was made:







I was happy with how it came out.

Jim

[deemery]

Well, I did some of my first 'production work' in COBOL, but the only time I punched a card was when I needed to test the card reader attached to the system.  That was a microcomputer based system to replace card punches with online data entry. 

dave

[Jim Donovan]

Update on the filament printer first test print, it worked! Couple hours of tweeking and watching a 'how to fix issues' youtube video but the little printer did a great job. Filament printers main advantage over liquid printers is speed in making a part. Well most filament printers but this little feller took 3 hours and 13 minutes to make the owl which is 4 inches high. Still it did a great job, tomorrow I am going airbrush this little guy and put him on the computer stand to watch over the printer. 

I also found a photo of the power plant 'shell' I made using the large liquid resin printer. I think the 'little' filament printer could of made it but we will see.





Jim

[Jim Donovan]

OK so the FPM machine is not ready for prime time but I did go ahead and make the initial building shell for the pickle factory using the Anycubic Mono 5s Pro. Given the size of this shell the FPM printer would not have been able to make it most likely anyhow. This first screenshot shows the design, such as it is at this point, for the facility. The largest part is in tan color and is modeled after a pickle factory located in Oregon at the turn of century. I exported this part as an .stl file to the slicer program for the printer and 12 hours later the shell was complete. In real life this structure is 7 x 5 x 6.5 inches high. The printer could just handle the size as one piece.





I have never had a part with so many supports to remove, it took over an hour to remove them and I will need to go back over the inside tomorrow to clean up some areas. As I mentioned it took the printer 12 hours to make the part and the resin cost was $8.00. I have learned to really make sure the part is as best designed as possible and correctly oriented on the printers plate to reduce the possibility of a failed print. With this print I could not orient the building at the optimal angle due to size limitations but have learned that straight up works OK if lots of support is provided. If I had tried this a couple of years ago I probably would have had to try two or three times to get it right. The learning curve does cost money.

After removing supports and initial clean up of the shell here is how it looks and where it will go on layout. The building was sized for this area and the track siding will be in the back where you see the staircase and raised loading dock in the screenshot.







I will post a photo here of how it looks when everything is added to the shell.

Jim

[Yannis]

Jim great work there!

Excuse my ignorance but i have not printed yet any structures on my resin printer yet (all fdm previously). I see that you printed the whole structure without any angle (relative to the build plate) at all on the resin printer. How come you did not have any skewness issues? I see many cases where they angle the piece in order to have a "better" print.

[Jim Donovan]

Jim great work there!

Excuse my ignorance but i have not printed yet any structures on my resin printer yet (all fdm previously). I see that you printed the whole structure without any angle (relative to the build plate) at all on the resin printer. How come you did not have any skewness issues? I see many cases where they angle the piece in order to have a "better" print.

Hi Yannis;

You are right, angling the structure on a liquid resin printer is the norm but I have found if the structure is printed upright, supported more than normal you can get a good print. I only do this when print space is at. a premium. You need to watch the doors and windows making sure they are supported properly and I have found it seems to work best if ABS like resin is used. The overriding reason to print this one upright is I would have to cut it into two halves in order to print it on an angle due to its size. Angling is best in keeping supports down but straight up has its place.

Hope that helps.

Jim