Tips & Tricks For 3D Printing Railway Models

Today I'm sharing some tips to help you with making models on an FDM 3D printer!

Thanks for watching!

0:00 Intro
2:38 CAD Design Tips
8:09 Slicer Tips
12:28 3D Printer Tweaking & Maintenance

[CymruRails]

Please consider doing an introductory video for motors, wiring and adding pickups to your 3D printed locos. I really want to be able to 3D print my own locos but I have not got the knowledge to wire them myself.

[victoriaq]

With such small scale parts I suggest using a 0.20 nozzle which will yield half the height layers, half the lines. Keep the great vids coming, Sam, thanks.

[azuma]

Sam you are a such a clever boy, everything seems so easy for you.

[HarryPorpise]

I’m a bit of a 3d printing nerd so I have a few more tips:

1. If you use an I3 style printer (such as an Ender 3), set your layer heights to be a multiple of 0.04. This is the smallest size that the Z axis can move in, and it’ll result in much cleaner layers. If you’re using a 0.4mm nozzle, I wouldn’t go under 0.08mm or above 0.32mm to make sure that there aren’t any issues when printing.

2.) If you have a tall and skinny model, use a brim or raft to prevent it from breaking off.

3.) Dry your filament. If you don’t, you’ll start to have a lot of issues that are impossible to fix otherwise. I’d recommend getting a filament dryer, but an oven should work fine as long as you’re super careful (they don’t have very accurate temperature control, so you can melt the part pretty easily). I’ve also heard that food dehydrators also work well for this.

4.) It’s very easy to tension belts on a printer without belt tensioners. You usually just have to unscrew the pulley and move it back by hand, and you’ll never have to touch it again. A belt tensioner will only really save you 5-10 minutes.

5.) Although Sam says to oil your printer, you should grease them. Oil will very quickly wear off after an hour or so of printing. It is designed for high speed applications, not high precision. Use machine grease and only lubricate the lead screw. The wheels shouldn’t be lubricated because they shouldn’t slide on the V-Slot. If they do, you’ll lose a bit of accuracy.

6.) Have fun with your printer! The more you use it and play with it, the better quality parts you’ll be able to make. It’s good practice to print models you find online, especially torture tests or calibration objects. It’ll also help to use your printer for around the house fixes that you may need.

7.) Design your parts to not need supports. In many cases, you can make small changes to your part to avoid using them.

Overall, this was a pretty good tutorial, though there were a couple little mistakes here or there (such as the recommendation to use oil). I hope that my little guide is also helpful, and you should hopefully be able to print better and more reliably.

[robertsparks]

Wow! That is incredibly useful. These are the exact tips for the point that I am at in 3D printing. I would be very excited to see another video in this series. And perhaps you could make a video about the process of priming/filling/sanding a 3d model to get a nice smooth result. I notice that your creations have benefitted from this sort of process. Thanks.

[jameskellam]

Ghis is hands down the best fdm video I have seen so far.

[MSB]

Love love love that you're doing this. Thanks for doing the hard work for me!

[Hacksworth_Sidings]

One thing I’ve been doing a lot of recently is motorising the plastic locomotive kits that Dapol produces from the old Rosebud toolings, my conversions work well but they use chassis components from Triang models, one thing I think would be fun to look into is producing motor kits for them, maybe that’s another thing for you to look into if you’re interested

[dibsyardshuntinglayout]

Some fantastic tips there Sam. Especially around layer height.
The only tip that I really disagree with is the use of the glue stick. I have seen in the past others use this technique too. I tried it a year or two back and got very mixed results. I now use nothing to promote adhesion, but I just wipe the bed clean with IPA before each print as the bed heats. I don't get much adhesion problems these days. My printer is a basic Creality Ender 3, with a glass bed though.

[jimc]

Could not resist when I saw price via affiant link - time to upgrade from my dinky MonoPrice mini. Great vid as well - much appreciated.

[NWRJ_WStudios]

Did you know Sam that you can get a glow in the dark, and wood plastics for your 3d printer. Huh I wonder what that could be used for ;)

Cheers Jasper & Willow

[paulsngaugechannel]

Well done Sam, some great advice. The print bed stuff is really good. Although I don’t have a 3D printer, the advice is great for knowing what to look out for. Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge. 🎉

[YourLocalRailfan]

I’m gonna be doing this, and forget printing details, I’m going to be using brass wire for the details much like manufacturers do

[peterloader]

Your knowledge is priceless! Thanks very much.

[SteamSuperHEater]

Great video! I occasionally 3D-print my own rolling stock in N scale and a lot of these tips are pretty helpful to me. I ought to try that last tip of yours; I've been using masking tape for bed adhesion but gluesticks and IPA might work better for me.

[NWRJ_WStudios]

Very interesting Sam, I watched a video somewhere that you could change the hardrive on your 3d printer to make smoother model.

Cheers Jasper & Willow

[azuma]

Sam when was the last time you had Lindt chocolate? 😊

[nathanrice]

I have issues with a corner lifting during the print, squashing each layer up. Tryed leveling the bed and having the entire model build a few mm off the bed on supports which didn't work as well as planned. I just print a thick base now and just sand it flat but its more work than it should be.

[chasesrailwaylinesrr]

In the slicer I use polar cloud Allows you to mash different builds together. What does new tool mean when You review a locomotive

[melodiclodgings]

Yeah best to got to much smaller nozzles but you do run into issues like clogging so you do have to look at fine tuning your 3d printer to avoid those issues