Model Railroad, Water Tank

thingiverse

This thing is a model of a railroad water tower that was used to supply water for steam locomotives (circa 1850's to 1950's). This design is based on pictures on the internet and does not model a specific water tower. This water tower is roughly scaled for O-scale trains (e.g. Lionel). The printed water towers are slightly undersized (see picture), so the .stl files should be scaled for your purpose. for O27, scale by 105% to 110% for S, OK as is (i.e., 100%) for HO, scale by 65% to 70% for N, scale by 40% to 50% for Z, scale by 40% to 45% The dimensions of the water tower without any scaling are: overall height, 260 mm (10.24") clearance of waterspout, about 93 mm (3.66") Tank OD 85 mm (3.35") Instructions Designed with OpenSCAD 2013.06 There are 5 files: (1) legs (2) tank (3) top (roof) (4) water spout (5) ladder This water tower is roughly scaled for O-scale trains (e.g. Lionel). The printed water towers are slightly undersized (see picture), so the .stl files should be scaled for your purpose. for O27, scale by 105% to 110% for S, OK as is (i.e., 100%) for HO, scale by 65% to 70% for N, scale by 40% to 50% for Z, scale by 40% to 45% The dimensions of the stl files are: overall height, 260 mm (10.24") clearance of waterspout, about 93 mm (3.66") Tank OD 85 mm (3.35") Special features of this thing: tank made with boards, shingles on roof, ladder. Three versions of this water tower were printed on a Makerbor Replicator2 printed vertically, separate builds for the legs, tank, roof scaled by 100%, 55% and 35% (see recommendations above for scaling) PLA (Makerbot filament) Printed: Low(faster) resolution, 8% infill, 2 shells, 0.30 mm layer height, 230C a raft was not used on 2 occasions, the legs did not print properly. once it gets to the first set of cross beams, it should be good. if you have problems, you could try a raft. the design includes some supports for the roof. no need to add more. Build volume for Makerbot Replicator2 is 11.2"L x 6.0"W x 6.1"H (284-mm L x 152.4-mm W x 154.9-mm H) Some cleanup of the cross-beams in the legs will be required. Make sure the parts are placed on the build platform. Some best practices for printing: optimize print parameters for your printer, filament, etc (only you can determine the best parameters) use good filament level your build plate prior to printing complex parts. it's worth the few minutes it takes. always level after removing tape, or if pulling hard to remove a part. make sure the build plate is clean. if using blue tape, stretch it tight when applying it to the build plate. if you have holes in the blue tape, do not print the legs over them the vertical legs must be able to adhere to the plate (very important for smaller parts, especially the legs) pre-feed the filament 30 to 60-s before printing (i.e., run load for 30-60s) do not print several complicated parts in one build (do complex parts by themselves) I find that printing faster is better for printing legs (probably so the filament can't ball up in one spot) when the filament spool gets low, the filament can be tightly wound on the spool and the filament may not feed properly... take special care... when a new spool is used, it is easy for the filament to jump outside the spool and then it will bind up later, ruining your build make sure it is easy for the filament to enter the filament feed tube. others have designed spools, mounts, etc. for that purpose. i use a small rope that forces the filament away from the spool before entering the filament feed tube. if you hear clicking when printing, that may be a result of the filament wrapped around the spool and not feeding make sure that there aren't any obstructions on the spool, such as some filament used to hold it in place during shipping for the replicaor2, look at the blob a filament in the left front part of the build plate and then the trail of filament to the biuild location. there should be a glob, and the line of filament should be continuous and smooth one way to remove parts when using blue tape is to use a very thin spatula bought in craft-art stores (advice on youtube that works!). get ones with a wide, blunt front end (not long and thin). mine is 11 mils thick (0.011"). a painting spatula/scraper in hardware stores won't work and may damage the build plate. (I use blue tape so I don't have any best practices for bare plates, heated plates or for other tapes like mylar) perform regular maintenance (grease, etc). when I continued to have problems printing even after performing maintenance, troublshooting instructions, chaning filaments, cleaning gears, cleaning, optimizing print parameters, etc., I bought a new extruder assembly from makerbot and it solved all of my problems (sounds like a poor quality print head to me...went bad after 3 months) Parts list: filament, small wire for water spout (e.g. paperclip), black sharpie, glue or epoxy. Assembly instructions: Use a pin, wire, small nail, etc. to connect the spount to the base pipe. Glue as needed. Color tank strapes with black marker. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, LGPL version 2.1, or (at your option) any later version of the GPL. Woverine Boat LLC is providing this document and its contents on an "as is" basis and makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to this communication or its contents. Woverine Boat LLC disclaims all such representations and warranties, including for example warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, see ttp://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html or write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA Version number 13.A (first distributed version) Author : Wolverine Boat, LCC - wolverineboat@flash.net Copyright © 2014 by Wolverine Boat, LCC Created Feb. 2, 2014 Modification: Feb. 2, 2014 ... original version Special instructions: User feedback: Limitations: Designed with OpenSCAD 2013.06 Disclaimer: This water tank was not based on a specific prototype and there isn't a true scale for this item. The design is based loosely on Google images of old water tanks and not on anyone's design.