3D Printing material options:  What's the differences?

 

Every reference to Shapeways and their materials is irrelevant now, however, the information can be kept here for reference:

 

SCC items ordered directly through the email provided on this website usually are created using various 405nm Photosensitive Resins.   These are very similar in finish to the Shapeways FUD but a little less clean up is needed as it doesn't have the slight 'frost' effect some FUD items do, some prints are not quite as dimensionaly accurate as the FUD due to the technology of the MSLA/DLP printing process yet they are very comparable in qualities costing usually around half the price.  You can see many MSLA/DLP examples on this website. 

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If you ordered SCC items via Shapeways, there were two main choices; WSF / WNVP standing for White Strong Flexible that was later renamed to White Natural Versatile Plastic and FUD / FXD / standing for Frosted Ultra/Extreme Detail later renamed to Smooth Fine Detail Plastic.   

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Essentially WSF it is a form of Nylon sintered with a laser, the 3D prints turned out very strong and durable and would often survive a fall onto a hard surface without even losing any details plus they were quite cheap, the downside is the texture was quite grainy and required a few goings over with abrasive papers and filler primers.  It lacked the crispness of FUD but was quite forgiving for beginners.

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FUD as an acrylic based resin on the other hand was a lot smoother and crisper than WSF, especially the FXD or Smoothest variant but was considerably more expensive, being resin it was quite brittle also so care was needed.  3D prints were dimensionaly the straightest and most accurate.  Before painting I usually soaked the models for 40 minute or so in White Spirit to eek out any remaining wax deposits used in the creation process.

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What RTR chassis will fit SCC bodies?

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Most of the SCC loco bodies have been designed with their own 3D printed chassis kit as a complete unit which were available through Shapeways, as these are no longer an option solutions are slowly being worked on in the mean time. 

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However, as is understandable many people prefer to use Ready To Run 00 Chassis from the well known manufacturers, for this reason we can't verify every possible RTR donor chassis that will fit.  However, over the years many of you have kindly had a go by experimenting and so far there's been a few known combinations. 

For example with some careful modelling the full length E2's can be made to fit Bachmann Jinty, 1F chassis and the original Hornby E2 chassis.  There are some exceptions though, the RWS Green Goblin V2's have been designed to fit a Hornby W4 Peckett chassis and the A0 range of Pacifics has been designed around three different Hornby A1 chassis to make fitting them easier.  Some SCC loco's would be wildly out of proportion if they were designed to fit certain RTR chassis so this is kept to a minimum.

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