The Home Machinist!

About 4 years ago when the "next engine" scanner came out for solidworks I was very excited about it. I went down to Westec and went up to there booth and fought my way through the crowd standing in front watching all there display and sales routines and hype (first show it had been displayed at!). I got one of there sales people attention, placed my debit card on the table and picked up a sample part on there table. told him to scan it in in front of me and show how it is placed in solidworks so I may work with it. explained to him that once i seen it worked and that I could do something with the scanned images that I would buy it! after a Half hour of his fiddling and him getting another person to help him, he gave up! niether of there sales staff was able to actually scan something in live! they could only used the "canned" images that they already had, and could not figure out why it would not work. I picked up my card and explained to them they just lost a sale,,,
hopefully they have improved from there, later I found out when it worked the resolution was about .005 claimed, but in real practice it was about .015. still a little course for my usage.

Things are rapidly changing. The N Scale guys at Yahooo Groups are showing a bobber caboose printed in clear plastic, with all the details! The Nn3 Yahoo guys are printing whole D&RGW fleets of cars, flat cars, passenger coaches, all with the detail intact!

Someone recently told me he knew all about plastic printing, and that there was no way you could get a smooth surface on a non-flat surface, and they couldn't print smooth curves. Well, it's been done now!

One can only imagine the next couple of years!

It is the Star Wars Replicator!

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Pat P in the Great NW.

I'm waiting patiently for the metal casting folks to figure out that this is the salvation to their moribund industry. Imagine, actually advertising (now that would be a feat unto itself!) that they accept computer models into the castings process! Unimaginable.

I've talked to casting folks. It's hard to break a person's funk when they go around all day humming Tara's Theme...

How about an example of what is now possible?



Not bad, huh? Would you be surprised that this is a N Scale truck?

Yep, these guys are printing their cars and trucks! Microscopic! So, why aren't we doing this to send to the casting folks?

http://www.hypr3d.com/

This web site offers to take your photos and create a 3-D model ... no software to install. I have not tried this, but it is on my list of things to do.

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George Erhart
Loveland, CO
www.grotonengine.com

Judging by one of their examples on their own site, it doesn't look like it works very well at all... lots of missing polys in the mesh.

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John Schuch
http://www.whatthehal.com & http://www.csppry.org

I know of several live steam gauge and larger castings that have been made recently using RP patterns, it's already being done. But the models for the patterns weren't made with the image based renderin technique discussed in this thread, they were designed clean in Solidworks.

Soon some of the RP products I have been making for my boxcar will be finding their way into castings for 2 1/2" scale, and the patterns will be RP.

--M

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Allen Models Chloe, MEG Steam "Wendy", 3/4" scale "Anny"
Darjeeling B-Class project - sonadaworks.com
Photography and more - www.mikemassee.com