I’m in the process of designing a William B. Pollock Slag Car as a 3D printable file for my Etsy Store. A helpful benefactor had access to some great drawings which I could not do without. I was originally relying on some old patent drawings but I could not get the frame right, the patent drawings did not show that the frame curved inward as well as having a curve to the frame as seen from the side.
While the files will be in Proto:48 it can be scaled up to practically any scale. Several potential customers want to do it in 1:29 scale.
I was curious how it would look in a larger scale and to see how well my printer handled larger items so I decided on 1:35 scale as it is not too big to where it would eat a lot of resin in my Saturn 2 printer.
I’m also a a 1:35 modeler so this was a convenient scale to try and print in.
I split the ladle into two parts and the seam is hidden by the yoke assembly. I only did it to save time on the printer as it could have easily been printed in one piece.
I used Tamiya grey putty thinned with Tamiya cement and stippled it on the surfaces to create cast surfaces. There is some areas I need to touch up as you can see the build lines.
Virtually every piece on the prototype was cast including the frames which was quite an undertaking when the first prototypes were manufactured around 1900!
The ladle was tilted by a large pneumatic cylinder and mechanism which I’m still in the process go designing.
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This is a better picture of the ladle after printing. The parts in the foreground are 1:35 scale and the ladle in the background is Proto:48
The faceting on all the rounded parts from the .stl file was easily sanded out with one of those Dremel Flapper Wheels.
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This site is where I found some great photographs of this Slag Car and other equipment used in steel production.
https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll10/search
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Oh, it’s a rail car! Here was me thinking it was some pillock’s Chavmobile that Sandra and Tracey might be seen falling out of in the early hours of a Sunday morning…
Cheers,
M
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This is the tilting mechanism to dump the ladle. Aside of the frames, this has been the most time consuming area to design.
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I want to hear more about the pneumatic drill girl.
Was the dump mechanism powered by the train line compressed air or by some other means?
Thanks for bumping this thread. I missed it the first time around
It could be powered by either steam or air although I think it was air exclusively later on for safety reasons.
I’m getting close to calling this finished. There will be two versions, a Proto:48 O scale and a larger G scale. Both kits are nearly identical, the main difference is the G scale is broken down into pieces to make printing easier.
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Your CAD work and your rendering are amazing!
Thanks! Other than having drafting in high school (in ancient times they used to teach those things in public schools) I pretty much self taught myself ViaCAD back in 2012. The rendering is done by the program which basically soups up the screen shot. ViaCAD 12 does a better job than 14 which switched to a photo rendering Keyshot which I do not like.
I really enjoyed drafting as well. (1966). The only HS class I ever got an A in!
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