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Re builder and number plates - just an idea - if you could accept the backing being 1/32" thick fibreglass and the letters being .010" high copper, you could have the plates made by any printed circuit mail order supplier, and in the USA, and for not much money. pad2pad and expresspcb are two examples. When ordering you specify 1/32" FR4 and maximum thickness copper pour PCB material. Just food for thought.Another approach - have someone with a superfine resolution 3D printer make some full size models of the plates in PLA resin, embed them in investment plaster, burn out the PLA, and cast the plates in brass or aluminum in your shop. If you search for Myfordboy in Youtube he recently posted some excellent videos on making tiny leaf spring models and some gorgeous tiny handwheels by this method.The engines and plumbing are looking good! Re - three stooges plumbing job - I remember one show where the stooges plumbed a house and had running water coming out of the light switches, and lights coming on when they turned on the sink faucets! Now those guys were real plumbers!
I thought about that way, but not sure how to hold them for soldering. Do you have a jig?
Hi Chris, I look forward to hear how the Lombard photoetch / Marion Shapeways printed brass plates compare. Did Shapeways tell you they were casting the parts in brass? The reason I ask is that their normal process for making metal parts is not casting. They usually 3D print the parts oversize in a resin filament heavily loaded with the metal powder being used, ie brass. After printing they sinter the parts in a furnace to burn off the carrier plastic resin in the filament, and bond the metal particles together (similar to how Oilite bearings and powder metal parts are made but without the pressing under high force step.) Have seen some great results of this filament/sinter process for jewellery or other parts where high accuracy is not needed but good finish and appearance is. Dimensional stability/ accuracy suffers in the sintering phase and the parts partially melt. Of course this will not matter so much if sizes drift a little on your plates or jewellery for example, they are not fitting parts.There is another type of additive manufacturing called DMS for direct metal sintering. In this process a layer of metal powder is laid out and a high power laser passes over it in a pattern and fuses the powder together. Excellent finishes and high dimensional accuracies (+/-.003" or better) are very possible. The machine and run time in this process is far more expensive than the fused / sintered filament process. EOS make the best DMS machines I have seen, if you want to look into it further. In industry I have had several mould cavities made with this process and results are excellent. A 60 mm dia x 28 mm drum shaped insert costs about USD$1800.00. Cavities still need to be finish-EDM'd to size, but most other features can be used directly off the machine, the parts can be very hard stainless steel right off the machine. Weird shaped cooling passages are no problem. Lots of surgical bone implants for skull orthopaedics particularly, and also special turbine blade shapes with internal passages are made on these machines.
Brass models are fabricated using lost wax casting. First, the model is printed in wax using a specialized high-resolution 3D Printer. It is then put in a container where liquid plaster is poured in around it. Once the plaster sets, the wax is melted out in a furnace, and the remaining plaster becomes the mold. Molten brass is poured into this mold and set to harden. The plaster is broken away, revealing your new product. Natural Brass is briefly tumbled. Polished Brass is carefully cleaned and hand polished. Please be aware that polishing can wear down or fill in very fine details and edges.
To build steel models, special 3D printers deposit small drops of glue onto layers of stainless steel powder, one layer at a time, until the print is complete. We carefully remove these models from the printer. At this stage of the process, the objects are very fragile, similar to wet sand. The models then go through an infusion process that replaces the glue with bronze, creating a full metal product. Models are then processed to achieve your desired finish, sprayed with a sealant, and shipped to you.
Quote from: crueby on May 06, 2019, 07:48:06 PMI thought about that way, but not sure how to hold them for soldering. Do you have a jig?Hi ChrisWell - no actually not. I don't remember how I did the last ones (its more than 4 years ago ) I think I used small kiln furniture to position those pieces and then solderd them. If necessary, I corrected the position after adding silver solder. But it would definitely be a good idea to work with a jig, especially if you have to make more than two or three. Florian
Photo etching is really a pretty easy process to do in the home shop, attached is a photo of a small R&V tag I made for a friends engine.Dave
I used press-n-peal transfer paper and a laser printer, http://www.techniks.com/ Not sure if there is a process for ink jet, you could always run down to the copy store to do the print.I purchased my ferric chloride from Radio Shack and used an iron to do the transfer, probably no need to purchase a kit. Dave