Sneek Peek from Keystone Details- The Leslies are coming

[Ed Kapuscinski]

You're all a bunch of negative nancies.

How hard do you handle your stuff?

No, wait, I don't think I want to know...

These are the best horns you're ever gonna see in N. If that's not your bag, fine, but I'm willing to be careful in exchange for the quality.

[jcox3751]

I am curious, what it would cost to print in metal? Most likely could remove the jail cell from around the items, this should save some cost. These look great.

[Lemosteam]

I am curious, what it would cost to print in metal? Most likely could remove the jail cell from around the items, this should save some cost. These look great.

They can't be.  The design would be an indistinguishable blob in the end to meet their casting requirements.

See this link and click the Design Guidelines tab:
https://www.shapeways.com/materials/brass

This is the tool at Shapeways that assesses the design for "printability" against the deign requirements in the link above.  You can see from the red covering the ENTIRE HORN, that it would never pass, especially without the cage, this is before they manually look at the other features below the interlocking Parts check, only when requested to print the model.  Wire thickness would kill it instantly.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I love how one of the underlying assumptions of the Railwire is that nobody knows anything about what they're talking about (especially if they're a proven expert at it).

[Lemosteam]

I love how one of the underlying assumptions of the Railwire is that nobody knows anything about what they're talking about (especially if they're a proven expert at it).

@Ed Kapuscinski ,  I'm not offended and I don't mind sharing the facts of it all.  Everybody learns that way.

Honestly I wish they could be cast in brass as I have them designed, but they would likely look like they were- sans-any semblance of detail.  Now if GHQ could spin cast them in pewter....

Sometimes I wish that I could learn that process and have the right tools to do it.  I think I would really enjoy it.

[peteski]

@Ed Kapuscinski ,  I'm not offended and I don't mind sharing the facts of it all.  Everybody learns that way.

Honestly I wish they could be cast in brass as I have them designed, but they would likely look like they were- sans-any semblance of detail.  Now if GHQ could spin cast them in pewter....

Sometimes I wish that I could learn that process and have the right tools to do it.  I think I would really enjoy it.

John, pewter is better, but is still a very soft metal. Like I mentioned, best would be lost-wax-brass (aka investment) castings.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost-wax_casting Those are used for casting very small and fine-detailed parts.  BLMA horns were done using that method, and pretty much all of the brass model manufacturers use that method for making small brass parts for their models.  Heck, even the Life-Like stem locos had their smokebox front done as a lost-wax brass casting. Miniatures by Eric also uses this technique for making their parts.

I recall @robert3985 has experience in this type of casting.  I believe he mentioned that jewelers could do small runs of list-wax parts fairly affordably.  But if your airhorns are fully customizable, then that process will likely not be economical.

Shapeways can print items in wax. That can be then used directly for the lost-wax investment casting

[wazzou]

Any NP, SP or SP&S folks interested enough in Nathan P3 or more technically P24R1 horns?
The Nathan P24R1 had bells that were marked by size #1 being largest, so the NP horns had bells #2 and #4 facing forward, with bell #1 facing rear in the middle position.
I believe the SP&S's were the same but the SP may have had the same horns though the bells may have been oriented differently.

I can track down pictures of the NP's horns easy enough.

[Maletrain]

First, I want to thank NickelPlate759 for that link to air horn pictures and sounds!

And, I want to say that I am interested in some Nathan M5s and probably some Nathan M3s (if I can verify that is what the B&O started using for their freight units in the 1950s.)

[Lemosteam]

Well, nowhere did I mention anything other than Leslie horns so without definitive dimensional info lik I got for the Leslie horns,  the Natthans are a non-starter.

[robert3985]

John, pewter is better, but is still a very soft metal. Like I mentioned, best would be lost-wax-brass (aka investment) castings.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost-wax_casting Those are used for casting very small and fine-detailed parts.  BLMA horns were done using that method, and pretty much all of the brass model manufacturers use that method for making small brass parts for their models.  Heck, even the Life-Like stem locos had their smokebox front done as a lost-wax brass casting. Miniatures by Eric also uses this technique for making their parts.

I recall @robert3985 has experience in this type of casting.  I believe he mentioned that jewelers could do small runs of list-wax parts fairly affordably.  But if your airhorns are fully customizable, then that process will likely not be economical.

Shapeways can print items in wax. That can be then used directly for the lost-wax investment casting

There are at least three ways to produce lost-wax brass investment castings for small, delicate model railroad parts.

(1) The most expensive way is to have Shapeways do it all for you.  You order your parts to be produced in brass, and they'll do it...and you pays them a LOT!

(2) The second most expensive way is find a rock shop or jewelry store that will do the investment casting for you.  You supply the castable resin parts which you've had Shapeways make for you, and your casting person will tree up, invest, cast and roughly deinvest (by throwing the still hot flask into a bucket of cold water, which will roughly shatter the investment away from your brass parts tree).  Your brass parts which will be given to you still treed up for you to cut off the tree and do a final deinvestment.

(3) A better way to produce a lot of these small parts, would be for you to buy some equipment for between $800 and $1,000.  These two tools are jewelry manufacturing tools and are used to (A) make vulcanized rubber molds from your hard masters which can be used to produce castable wax masters by (B) injecting them with hot castable wax.  The first tool for actually making the flexible vulcanized rubber molds is called a "Mold vulcanizer machine" and is basically a heated press that you sandwich your parts tree between unvulcanized rubber strips inside an aluminum mold frame, then squash the unvulcanized rubber into the mold frame...which fills all the nooks and crannies of your part because the heat causes the rubber to partially liquefy so it flows around and into every detail.  I believe Shapeways can produce prints using a strong and heat-resistant resin specifically designed for using as a hard master in a "mold vulcanizing machine", but I'm not sure what level of detail the material is good for.  If the level of detail isn't good enough, then have Shapeways print up a dozen parts in "castable resin" which WILL hold the details at 103%...with several parts treed up together, and take these to your investment caster.  After they've been cast and the investment removed, use these as the hard masters to make your vulcanized rubber molds.  The second tool is called a "Wax Injector" and is a heated and pressurized pot with a nozzle or two you'll use to inject hot wax into your flexible vulcanized rubber molds.  Since it takes a while for the wax to cool, and your rubber molds get hotter the more you inject hot wax into them, you'll need from 3 to 5 identical molds for each castable wax part-tree you're making by squirting hot wax into your rubber molds, letting it cool, then removing the castable wax master...dusting the interior of your mold with fine talc powder, and injecting it again.  Having 3 to 5 molds allows you to not have to twiddle your thumbs waiting for the wax to cool enough to remove the wax sprued-up parts from the rubber mold because you can set several molds recently filled with hot wax aside to let them cool while injecting empty molds.

What it costs me to have a small flask treed up, invested and cast is $20.  I supply the pelletized brass for them to use, and I also make sure the investment they're using isn't "old" (meaning the sack hasn't been open for more than four months...and I ask them specifically if their investment is "old").  I'll buy them a new sack of investment from the local jewelry supply house if theirs is "old"....because "old" investment sometimes causes the surface if the brass parts to appear to have been roughly sand blasted, and I don't want that.  A small sack of investment isn't expensive, so it's a good way to ensure that the parts will have a proper surface finish.

Although solution 3 will initially be more expensive, you only use Shapeways once and it won't take you long to recoup the equipment cost and you won't have to wait on Shapeways either to produce your castable parts since you will do that with your flexible rubber molds, your wax injector and your casting person.

N-scale detail parts don't occupy a lot of space, so you will be able to get several hundred parts out of one medium sized flask during the investment casting process, which will greatly lower production costs over what you're having to pay for at Shapeways...even if your rock shop/jewelry store charges you more than $20 bucks a throw.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[Lemosteam]

@robert3985 ,

Can you share an image of something in N that you have had investment cast that is similar in delicateness to the horns above?  I would like to see some macro images of features such as scaled 3/8 hex bolt head.

Shapeways no longer prints in wax, and some of the details on this design are at the limits of printing in FXD already, much less brass or wax.

Shapeways provides for no inventory, no shipping management or cost to me, and no packaging so any investment outside of designing something is expense for a cottage producer such as me.  MAKING that parts is only part of the equation.

You can see from the minimal interest here that having the ability to order one-shot custom investment cast horns for EXACTLY what a customer needs would be an expensive proposition.  Leslie's total assembly complexity has 5 chimes, 5 manifolds, three power chambers and two orientation factors  at each chime position on the manifold for the chimes and power chambers.

Single = 1 manifold x 5 chimes  x 3 power chambers = 15 potential assemblies (horn is symmetrical so Forward and Rearward are ignored
Dual = 1 manifold x 5 chimes x 3 power chambers x 2 positions x 1 orientation = 30 potential assemblies
Triple = 3 manifolds 5 chimes x 3 power chambers x 3 positions x 3 orientations per location = 405 potential assemblies

15 + 30 + 405= 450 potential unique designs that I could never afford to tool up even at $20 per investment + materials.

Printing them at Shapeways affords anyone to have that one horn that they have always wanted.  Ed's Frankenhorn is that example.

Is $12.50 USD + shiping really ALOT for this?  No one needs 100 horns, especially if they cannot be sold, packaged and shipped cost free to me.  This is an S Scale tree printed at Shapeways for a client.  This tree could not be printed in Brass if scaled to N.

[Maletrain]

Well, nowhere did I mention anything other than Leslie horns so without definitive dimensional info lik I got for the Leslie horns,  the Natthans are a non-starter.

Well, I would still like similar Leslies, if that is all I can get.  In N scale, I doubt that normal viewers will notice more than the number of horns and the directions they are facing.

But, if I can find info on the Nathans, are you interested in offering those, too?

[Lemosteam]

Well, I would still like similar Leslies, if that is all I can get.  In N scale, I doubt that normal viewers will notice more than the number of horns and the directions they are facing.

But, if I can find info on the Nathans, are you interested in offering those, too?

Depends on how deep the rabbit hole goes and the amount of time I would want to be compensated for.  Return on these will be minimal, and that's OK.  If those that want Nathans can assemble a collective for a minor fee then I would say yes, and it would be a while into the future.

[up1950s]

In the key or keys info , http://locomotivehorns.info/leslie/supertyfon.shtml

[Lemosteam]

@robert3985 ,

Can you share an image of something in N that you have had investment cast that is similar in delicateness to the horns above?  I would like to see some macro images of features such as scaled 3/8 hex bolt head.

Shapeways no longer prints in wax, and some of the details on this design are at the limits of printing in FXD already, much less brass or wax.

Shapeways provides for no inventory, no shipping management or cost to me, and no packaging so any investment outside of designing something is expense for a cottage producer such as me.  MAKING that parts is only part of the equation.

You can see from the minimal interest here that having the ability to order one-shot custom investment cast horns for EXACTLY what a customer needs would be an expensive proposition.  Leslie's total assembly complexity has 5 chimes, 5 manifolds, three power chambers and two orientation factors  at each chime position on the manifold for the chimes and power chambers.

Single = 1 manifold x 5 chimes  x 3 power chambers = 15 potential assemblies (horn is symmetrical so Forward and Rearward are ignored
Dual = 1 manifold x 5 chimes x 3 power chambers x 2 positions x 1 orientation = 30 potential assemblies
Triple = 3 manifolds 5 chimes x 3 power chambers x 3 positions x 3 orientations per location = 405 potential assemblies

15 + 30 + 405= 450 potential unique designs that I could never afford to tool up even at $20 per investment + materials.

Printing them at Shapeways affords anyone to have that one horn that they have always wanted.  Ed's Frankenhorn is that example.

Is $12.50 USD + shiping really ALOT for this?  No one needs 100 horns, especially if they cannot be sold, packaged and shipped cost free to me.  This is an S Scale tree printed at Shapeways for a client.  This tree could not be printed in Brass if scaled to N.

@robert3985 Still waiting for the brass casting claims to be substantiated.... Seriously I would really like to be wowed.

I really would like to see some examples of brass N Scale parts that have a high level and quality of detail.  Anybody else?