3D printing brick walls.

[chessie system fan]

Has anyone designed or printed any brick structures in N so far?  Brick styrene sheets are overscale, and some brands look better than others.  3D printed offers the opportunity to create something potentially better.  Because of size and paint thickness, true scale brick and mortar may not be possible.  But before I go to the trouble of a bunch of tests to see what in my mind's eye looks best, I thought I ask what others have done.

[John]

Still a work in progress - but I built these walls one brick at a time .. and the prototype at the end ..  Bricks scaled to N will be too small .. something between HO and N is better

[chessie system fan]

Excellent.  I like the proportions between the bricks and the mortar lines.  What size is the bricks and how wide are the mortar lines in that building?

[chessie system fan]

Oh, and how deep are the mortar grooves?

[John]

Oh, and how deep are the mortar grooves?

I just emailed you a couple of files .. I think around .25 to .4 mm or so

[Chris333]

These are N and 3D:




https://www.thingiverse.com/chris33333/designs


https://photos.app.goo.gl/aayAZwJkqvTFHzit7

[chessie system fan]

Thanks, Chris.  In your third example, the brick size is 4.32mm x 15.76mm and 1.26mm deep.  Mortar lines are 2.54mm.

EDIT: At least that's the size when I converted the mesh to a solid in Fusion360.

By contrast, I designed my first brick wall a few days ago with a brick size of 0.35mm x 1.176mm with 0.15 mortar lines.  I haven't tried printing it yet, and now I'm glad I didn't.   

Hence this thread to find a happy compromise size.

[Chris333]

You could do a few test walls with different settings. My drawings may not be ideal, but they are what I used.

[chessie system fan]

That's the plan.  I shall report back with my findings hopefully over the weekend.

[dem34]

You could do a few test walls with different settings. My drawings may not be ideal, but they are what I used.

Stupid question but I can't find a better place to ask, what program did you use for the CAD drawings of these buildings btw? Because whenever I try this in Fusion360 the thing stutters to a halt long before I can make a proper wall, much less a building.

[Chris333]

I used Sketchup.

[chessie system fan]

I use Fusion360. My first test was 100mm x 50mm.  The program froze. This was with everything as one body.  I don't know how many individual bricks that was, but the polygon count couldn't have been that high.

[garethashenden]

Here are some early experiments I did. Compare to the Walthers smoke stack behind it.

[garethashenden]

I use Fusion360. My first test was 100mm x 50mm.  The program froze. This was with everything as one body.  I don't know how many individual bricks that was, but the polygon count couldn't have been that high.

I've seen a technique where you have the model and then import the mortar lines as a pattern on top. Here:

[peteski]

Thanks, Chris.  In your third example, the brick size is 4.32mm x 15.76mm and 1.26mm deep.  Mortar lines are 2.54mm..

Something must have gone wrong in the conversion because those numbers don't add up for N scale.

Converted to inches, those bricks would be 0.170" X 0.620" and mortar line would be 0.100" wide.  N scale brick over half inch long?! That is huge!  Seems like the decimal point was not at the correct location.