Next Project - EMU Locomotive!

It's been AGES since the last video... if you've read my latest article you'll know that I've been working on building a modular model railroad. It's a work in progress at the moment but videos will start to come out in the very near future on that layout and it will feature many future videos related to building the layout as well.

So if you're interested in seeing a model train layout being built from scratch be sure to follow the channel so you don't miss the videos as they get published.

In the mean time I've been slowly working on using the new 3D printer from Anycubic, it's called the Photon Mono M5s. So far I'm having some really good success and for the video I've decided to attempt a project I tried quite a while ago... 3D printing a functional locomotive.

It's certainly had its challenges so far but (user error), like any new printer there will always be a small learning curve. I'm really liking the high speed resin! The EMU loco I've been printing takes up the entire build volume and it only takes 3 hours to print! However in the most recent print I adjusted the layer height to 0.06mm to test the accuracy and it meant a 3 hour 45 print time, which is still awesome for a print that uses the entire volume. For those wondering that's 3329 layers and a build height of 20cm!

The image above shows the very first attempt at printing this awesome model, The detail came out fantastic and even the hand rails which were unsupported worked fine! given that this was the first test print there were still some issues to work on. Mainly it was just the wandering sides of the locomotive body. The issue here was due to a lack of supports. It had no additional supports on the inner sides of the model so the sides were just relying on one sting of supports to hold it in place.

The second test print is underway as I'm writing this post and from what I can see so far adding the additional supports to the iner sides of the locomotive body has helped significantly to eliminate the warped sides!

The plan for this locomotive is to use a powered bogie (tenshodo) along with an ESU Loksound v5 decoder to get this model to function. The model itself was designed by Jamostrainos and was downloaded from Thingiverse here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5274441

The model is basically just the base frame, there is lot's of room to add extra detail afterwards to really make this model stand out.... which of course I'll be doing 😊

Stay tuned over the next 2 weeks as this project comes to life, it will be a good test on the progress of 3D printing and what the future may look like for model railways.