Picked up a North Pole Express Christmas train from Home Depot in 2022, been using under the tree. Each year, around this time, I mod/extend the setup and plastic based tracks. HD Train is G gauge (45mm width), curious whether anyone else has, or does something similar?
Asking after noticing some folks also tinker with trains to spark/inspire their kids, or just for the fun of it…
The work I did was super fun. DCC is a clever solution although I never finished getting it to work. It is just begging for a good esp32 dcc solution. That was 6 years ago. So it is possible that has found a solution.
Another oppotunity you have is scale modeling. You could make a scale model of your house or of your shop or low rider or of rmrrf.
Pulling an all nighter to do some Boring tunnel work…
Mistakes were made, and will continue to be… Using this quality being not so important project to play around with feederate during the job.
Anyone found a Battery Charger module (BMS) they like that can balanced charge four 18650 batteries. Would be nice to end up with single USB-C port at some point.
There a way to optionally “skip finish top surface” in EstlCam 3D Machining settings? Would like to reduce milling time, by skipping unrequired toolpaths for top surfaces of .STLs that are flat and same thickness as stock material.
Am observing finish pass will sweep over the entire top surface, a useful default behavior for many uneven models, or where stock is uneven. For my situation, am only wanting to rough and finish cut the 3D perimeter contour that has box joints with Jamie’s compound curves enabling CNC milling.
Am currently working around by disabling finishing, and doing a single rough pass, then separately configuring and saving .gcode for a 2nd “rough” only pass file has low stepover percentage and low allowance (i.e. it’ll actually be a fine pass). There’s other workaround options too (e.g. edit gcode, or, raise Z origin and save a single gcode with both rough and finish passes that takes ages but just cuts air when passing over the top).
Maybe I’m using the 3D Machining settings wrong, and/or others have run into this as well?
Making a goofy low priority open box dumpster/wagon. Figured this is an opportunity to try out Jamie’s Box joints milled flat approach for tight dogboneless CNC’d joints without needing to clamp stock vertically.
EDIT: 3D printed test parts are too tight, tried editing offsetting faces for 0.2mm clearance, but ended up with Fusion not being able to handle all the OpenScad generated faces. Fusion just hangs…
Will try recreating the compound curves using Fusion’s native Sketch and Solid operations, hoping Fusion’s internal model/parametric algos will handle better than the many thousands of faces/triangles in the OpenScad generated .STL model.
I remember fighting with this, but I don’t remember what the resolution was. I do remember lots of “workarounds”. Another thing I remember hacking when doing 3D shapes was that I wanted more than two passes. One for roughing, and then two passes with different orientation for a decent surface without ultra-small stepover.
