Printing From A Known Object

[wazzou]

Can’t you just make the Walthers Water Tank work?

[BCR751]

Take a look at this ..  see if this shape is more to your liking?  Is this in HO?


https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2800974/files

The shape is stretched horizontally on this one.  It looks like one of those city water towers and is likely way too big for my purpose.

Doug

[BCR751]

Can’t you just make the Walthers Water Tank work?

Actually, that  would be perfect but sadly, it's only available in HO Scale.

Doug

[Sumner]

Isn't Fusion360 cloud-based though? (Meaning all your drawings belong to them, and can be made inaccessible to you on a whim, à la Photobucket).

The program downloads from the cloud and you can save your drawings with them but I also save all my drawings on my computer and load them from my computer.  I save often both places.  Once you save 10 times to them you then have to go mark all of them or some of them as 'read only'.  Since I save all on my computer and work with only the ones on my computer I just spend 30 seconds or so and mark the last 10 as 'read only'.  Not a big deal at all and I probably didn't explain that very well but the end result you don't need to access any files on the cloud if you keep saving and exporting them to your computer as your modify them.  All the .f3d and .stl files I put up on thingiverse.com come off my computer.

Once a year you resubmit for a hobby license which takes about 5 minutes.

I love the program and there are some good youtubes to learn from,

Sumner

[Sumner]

That looks really good .. did you do that in fusion?  I've just started to tinker around with it .. It has a definite learning curve

Yep, I couldn't of done it in the first few weeks of using it but now it is pretty simple to do, at least something like that.  I've been using it about 14 months now but was printing usable stuff in the first month.  Just don't try and design an engine shell right off, in fact I'll still wait a while longer. 

It has incredible tools of which I'm probably using less than 10% of the,

Sumner

[peteski]

I'm not CAD or 3D printing expert, but I've done a some armchair-CAD.  If the tank is designed as hollow (because if it was solid it would waste too much resin), it needs either a drain hole somewhere on the top or bottom, or better yer, it should be made in at least 2 parts (make the top and sides as one piece, and the bottom dome separate.  That way the unused liquid resin (or the wax printing support) can be removed/drained.

[Simon D.]

You can also hollow out an object (.stl) in the slicer - Chitubox at least - and add drainage holes.  You do have to be very careful to ensure that the print is properly rinsed with the alcohol and all the resin inside gone, as any residue will eventually cause it to burst open (don't ask me how I know this).

[BCR751]

I'm not CAD or 3D printing expert, but I've done a some armchair-CAD.  If the tank is designed as hollow (because if it was solid it would waste too much resin), it needs either a drain hole somewhere on the top or bottom, or better yer, it should be made in at least 2 parts (make the top and sides as one piece, and the bottom dome separate.  That way the unused liquid resin (or the wax printing support) can be removed/drained.

The hole should be in the bottom of the tank since that's where the water exits on the prototype.

Doug

[peteski]

The hole should be in the bottom of the tank since that's where the water exits on the prototype.

Doug

That makes sense, but If I was designing the tank, I would make it a 2-piece assembly (it might be difficult to drain all the uncured resin/wax completely through a small hole).  Only some small additional design time would be needed to split the tank into 2 pieces, and that would leave a wide-open interior.

[peteski]

I took a crack at it also ....



I'm not interested in printing it but if someone is I could put the file up on my thingiverse.com account.  I might like the looks of something looking at the CAD file but usually find I want to tweak it some before I'm happy and that takes more than one print and the time and materials to do that  .

Also for CAD software if you are doing much of this I'd really look into downloading Fusion 360.  It is free to use if you are not using it in a commercial application.  I've used SketchUp for some years but find Fusion 360 a lot more powerful and easier to use (after a learning curve) than SketchUp.

Sumner

Nothing against you design skills, but the cylindrical part looks too short, and the dome ends look to spherical. The the prototype domes seem to be "squished"  (not spherical).  The overall height is correct, but because the domes are too tall, the cylindrical part is too short. The ribs also seem too prominent.  But it is much better than my (non-existing) design.  John's rendering seems to have better proportions (looking at the protitype photo).  But then again, it might be my eyes that are out of calibration. 

[Sumner]

Well thanks for your view but I feel it is closer to ...



.. the picture that was posted at first, not the picture of the tower later.  The ribs are only .050 and when 3D printed with a FDM printer (what I use mostly) they won't be as prominent as the CAD drawing shows them.  It would of been nice to of actually had some measurements of  the the various parts vs. a picture on a grid but for a quick 30 minute exercise that I won't use I'm happy with it and it might appear to look like a sphere in the one picture but isn't, the two ends are different.

Hopefully you will pursue working with CAD programs and printing with a printer if you haven't done so already.  A fun thing to do,

Sumner

[BCR751]

Before this turns into a pissing match, I need to chime in here.  When I first thought of doing this water tower there was no such thing as 3D printing.  The model shown in the photos I posted was the only thing I could find at the time.  Fast forward to last week.  I'm now at the stage in construction of my layout where I need to consider the water tower.  I again checked the online sources and, again, nothing is available.  Now being aware of the potential of 3D printing, I asked the question here.  I received two excellent suggestions, one that followed my photo and the other a different, but more prototypical design (for my situation).  Both are quite acceptable. I apologize for not posting that prototype photo in the beginning.  However, the modelling community now has two choices for water towers.  I think that's a good thing.  Carry on, gentlemen.

Doug

[John]

I sent these pics to Doug already ..  Just playing around with some basic shapes on Tinkercad, I came up with this ..  The railing set is something I found on Tinkercad from an HO water tower by Kris Brumble and scaled down to N

This is probably a decent start - and gives him the opportunity to customize as he wants








The parts are here if anyone wants to play ..

https://www.tinkercad.com/things/emImce9owlR-water-tower-1/edit

[Sumner]

.....The parts are here if anyone wants to play ..

https://www.tinkercad.com/things/emImce9owlR-water-tower-1/edit

Wondering if you have a different link to try.  I don't use Tinkercad but have an account there and logged-in the link doesn't work.  I was interested in seeing what you have up on there.  Is there a link that goes to your designs?

Thanks,

Sumner

[John]

It's not all that impressive .. the ladders and the platform with the railings on it I imported from KABrumble water tower project on thingiverse -- the rest was just messing around to try and find something close to what BCR571 was looking for ...  This link might work ..

https://www.tinkercad.com/things/emImce9owlR-water-tower-1/edit?sharecode=u12rHGMvvpj9p751ULYzbkDtc16SSVB9DyxG0SJQzTA

It's not all that impressive .. will have to see what he does with it ..