Silhouette SD

[Dave Schneider]

I posted these photos in the weekend update, but thought I should include them here as well for the continuity of the thread. As we all know, there aren't that many different N scale window castings available. In fact, the simple windows I used for my Gibson yard office appear to no longer be available from Tichy. Over the years I have read about people painting window frames directly onto the clear glazing and thought I should give this a try with the Silhouette. My current project, the Milbrew building contains many windows on the track side, so I thought I would start with them.

Here is a view of the prototype.


I took .010 clear styrene and overlaid Frog Tape (from Home Depot) and pressed it down with a wide putty knife to get a good seal. This tape has a water activated compound that is supposed to provide a nice tight seal for latex paints, so I thought I would give it a try. I laid out the windows in the Studio software, and used a spacing between glass panes of .0135 actual inches or 2.2 N scale inches. A little wide, but in the ballpark. Then ran the taped styrene through the cutter using the blue cap (.1 mm blade depth), a speed of 1 and a thickness of 10. I wanted to cut the tape but not really scribe the plastic. These settings were just about perfect. I then peeled up the window frame cutout using the tip of a sharp xacto knife. The tape came off very cleanly. I had two the the mullions tear off, but these were easily removed using the knife tip. In all, it took just a few minutes to peal them off. Here is the resulting mask.



I then sprayed it with a Krylon spray bomb (cammo khaki). Of course this is a solvent based paint so I probably used the wrong tape....not sure what I was thinking. I waited about 20 minutes for it to dry and then peeled off the rest of the tape. Overall, I am very happy with the results. Note that the outside frames are too large, but this won't show once it placed behind the window cutouts, and I tried to not cut it too closely. The color is pretty opaque, but next time I will use a gray primer followed by the the window color to see if it is better.
They look a bit flat, as might be expected, but I am hoping that once they are framed by the opening it their looks will improve. I might also dust these with some black chalk to darken the edges as they will not cast a shadow on their own. 



Best wishes, Dave

[lashedup]

Very, nice Dave. Tighten up those gaps a little more to give that very fine detail look and it would be perfect. You may want to try the scribe method as well and see how that works.

I've been sick as hell lately so nothing new from my end and I'm itching to work on stuff. I just haven't been upright much!

-jamie

[Zox]

I've been experimenting with cutting block walls, using various methods and materials, and I think I'm getting somewhere:



This was done with a piece of acetate transparency sheet (approx. 0.004" thick) attached to 60-pound cardstock with "repositionable" spray-mount adhesive. The blocks are individual rectangles. Each row of blocks is one N-scale foot high; the mortar gaps are 0.010" wide (about 1.5 scale inches).

I cut the acetate at speed 2, thickness 10, double cut. I then peeled off the mortar "grid." As you can see, a few of the blocks were not completely detached from the grid, and pulled off with it--they all seemed to be attached at the same corner, probably because the knife needed to move a smidge further to close the cut. (Any suggestions on how to fix that?)

I then primed the result with a fairly heavy coat of flat black Rustoleum, waited for it to dry, and did a heavy drybrush with cheap craft paint and a disposable brush (I was in a hurry).

I think this may be a viable approach, for creating block/stone work with "3-D" mortar lines. Suggestions, of course, are welcomed.

(edit--forgot to specify N scale)

[DKS]

My Silhouette is en route to me, so I'm watching this thread very carefully...

[Zox]

Since the mortar "grid" from my wall came off in one piece, I decided to try an alternative approach. I used the grid as a stencil, to apply spackle to some cardstock:



Nothing fancy here; I just taped down one edge of the stencil, then used a putty knife to work the spackle into the holes and scrape it off level with the stencil. (This particular spackle, DryDex, goes on pink and turns white when it's dry.)

I then subjected the resulting object to the same paint treatment as the earlier attempt, and here's the result:



It looks like, for objects with continuous "negative" space like a wall, the stencil approach may be superior. This way, you don't have to worry about keeping a myriad of small objects in alignment throughout the process.

There's also the potential for doing multiple layers with different stencils--sort of a poor-man's 3-D printer--but that's a project for another time.

[Zox]

Because Science Demands It, the same technique, but replacing the spackle with paintable caulk¹:



(I got really sloppy with the painting here, unfortunately, but the underlying detail is much sharper than the paint job.) 

While the spackle looked good, I found it tended to flake off when cutting the piece to fit after painting. The caulk should be adhesive, cohesive, AND flexible enough to avoid this problem.

¹ "PolySeamSeal Ultra: High-Gloss Tub & Tile, Kitchen & Bath Sealant."

[DKS]

My cutter just arrived. Now I need to find both the time and the space to set it up and start playing.

[Zox]

My cutter just arrived. Now I need to find both the time and the space to set it up and start playing.

Given what I've seen you do before, and what you're currently doing with your G&D recreation, I'm almost afraid to see what you can do with this gizmo...

[Dave Schneider]

Given what I've seen you do before, and what you're currently doing with your G&D recreation, I'm almost afraid to see what you can do with this gizmo...

Funny. That's what I was thinking as well. Seriously though, I look forward to having more people share ideas and techniques.
Best wishes, Dave

[Zox]

Money-saving tip: cardstock (I'm using 65-pound) sprayed with repositionable spray adhesive serves quite nicely as a carrier sheet.

Having a disposable carrier sheet is especially important when your chosen modeling method leaves hundreds of acetate "chads" stuck to the carrier.

[lashedup]

Nice Tip Rob, I'll have to keep that in mind.

Also, Silhouette sells just the blades (instead of the whole blade/caps/holder kits) which is a bit cheaper. I've found that after cutting a few sheets of the clear materials (which are more brittle) the blades do wear down. I found that the blades start to round the cuts a bit more and generally just don't seem to cut as deep. So I ordered some more replacement blades.

I still have to finish the Motel I'm working on. Hopefully I'll have more updates on that next week.

-jamie

[Dave Schneider]

I have 3 blades at present and have kept them separate for different uses. The newest one I only use to cut tape masks, an older one I use for scribing blocks and window cutouts, and the oldest one I use for rough cuts for building cores. I am going to try to sharpen the dullest blade I have using a wet stone to see if I can improve it.

I also had a dooh! moment while making more windows. I had thought that paint was leaking through the Frog tape and leaving tiny speckles on the windows. Turns out that this was overspray landing on the backside of the window...which I had neglected to cover with tape.

Best wishes, Dave

[Clevermod01]

I'm visiting from another forum. we are just starting to look at using these machines and i want to thank you for being trail blazers.
I'm looking at the Gazelle and the KNK cutters. I'm very encouraged by the results I'm seeing here.
I'll be happy to share what I find.

Thom

[Zox]

I'm visiting from another forum. we are just starting to look at using these machines and i want to thank you for being trail blazers.
I'm looking at the Gazelle and the KNK cutters. I'm very encouraged by the results I'm seeing here.
I'll be happy to share what I find.

Thom

Thom, welcome to the nuthouse...

Would you mind telling us what the other forum is that you mentioned? More sources of information is always a good thing.

[lashedup]

Some updates...

As some might remember I've been working on a Motel project for one of our modules. This is a Wisconsin Dells Motel from the 1950's (thereabouts) that is typical midwest motel except that this one is a two-story affair that is kind of unique. I was able to find an old postcard of the hotel:



There are a fair number of challenges here that make this fun. The most obvious is all the railing and stair details which all largely have to be scratch built. I decided to compress this a bit to fit the space I have to work with, so mine will be a little bit shorter. I also wanted to use the Silhouette SD as much as possible to try and maximize what I can do with it. So I used it to cut out the basic building structure including the walls, window and door cutouts, scribe the decking, cut the angled vertical supports for the railings, scribe the window muttons, cut and scribe the screen doors, cut and scribe the screens over the windows and even to scribe the eve vents (which didn't work out so well as they are just too small). Most things worked out great. The printer cuts the door and window openings so exact, that I could actually have it cut individual window screens that could be inserted inside the frames (so-to-speak).

The screen door "prototype" has a three panel design that looks to have metal ornamentation in the center section like this:



So I drew the screen door out in Illustrator along with the windows and storm/screen covers. Side note - this is the revised drawing where I cleaned things up and changed the ornamental work to make it more correct/prototypical:



I discovered that the Silhouette SD Illustrator plug-in let's me adjust a number of print variables including printing speed and the amount of cutting force. It also let's me set up layers and allow different settings for different layers. So the black outlines above are all scribe cuts at the lowest cutting force so they only scribe the sheet but don't cut all the way through. The red lines represent the higher cutting force cuts where I want the pieces to be cut all the way through.

So all went well and I cut these out of clear material. I removed the piece from the sheet and first painted on some Pollyscale Flat Aluminum to work the paint into the scribes and then wiped off the excess with a clean cloth before it dried. This left paint only in the scribe marks. Then I quickly (and sloppily) painted the frames and lower section. This is what I ended up with:



And this is what it looks like in its proper location:



Other than my first attempt at the ornamental work not connecting properly (my fault) and the shoddy paint work, it turned out way better than I expected. So the next issue was how to make it look more like screen and not like glass. So I sprayed some matte/flat spray on it and that did the trick. Here it is with the screen/storm windows as well:



And here is what they look like inserted into the final wall pieces:



The screen windows were also cut out of the clear material and I'd do two things differently. One, I'd stick with the flat aluminum paint as it shows up better than the flat grey I used. I went with the flat grey because I thought it would look closer to the real thing, but it nearly disappears, especially when you spray it with the Matte finish to dull it down and give it that screen look. I also had issues gluing the screens in place. I tried a number of different techniques and glues and ran into a lot of issues with the glue wicking between the window and screen and turning blotchy underneath. Also with the material being flexible it down't always want to lay down flat and I've got issues with the corners or edges of the screens not always looking consistent. Lastly, I needed to find a way to frame around the exterior of each window with trim as that will hide some of the imperfections in the screens. Problem is that the window frame trim needs to be be very fine and cutting individual pieces of styrene and trying to glue them in place straight, in proper and consistent position and without making a glue mess repositioning them was going to be very difficult. If I used a glue that leaves a glossy residue behind (like CA) then I'd have to try and touch up the brown paint and risk getting that on the yellow trim. So I turned back to the printer and tried cutting the window trim out of .01 styrene and it was just too fine a cut and didn't go all the way through consistently. I then tried .005 styrene and that was too flimsy, curled too much and just wouldn't lay down. Next I tried clear material and that just wouldn't get all the way through and also wouldn't lay down flat either. I tried cardstock, that disintegrated trying to cut too fine a lines and paper which also curled and tore. I had nearly given up till today when I decided to try and use some sign vinyl that came with the printer. This has adhesive backing on it as well, so I can just peel and stick. Here is what it looks like on the flat white vinyl:



I'm going to airbrush the railings this afternoon, so I'll also air brush the trim at the same time and post up how it goes.

Here is a photo of the eaves where I tried to scribe vents and I also cut small pieces of styrene to represent the lights that are under the eves (I thought about surface mount LED's but I just don't have the time to deal with it).



Lastly, I just stacked all the pieces on top of each other so you'd get an idea of how the first floor will look. I need to add shingles, roof vents, sewer stacks and electrical connections to the roof (so a few things).



Anyway, that's where it is at right now. Fun stuff!

-jamie