At the end of day five I've now got 2 chassis and couplers of varying sizes to play with, the larger pair are far better to handle and feel quite strong enough for my needs. Now efforts are focused on the headstock area, braking & hopper.
Work on the track has come to a standstill as I try to source wood while keeping within a strict budget, although I did spend a large part of the day dismantling a wood pallet and then painfully hand sawing into the correct width.
The hopper has been sliced into 6 sections with a total build time of 25.4 hours and half a kg "ish" of material. And that's at about 3mm thickness of the walls with no rivet detail or straps etc, that I will add separately... "Yay screams the audience". So I'm further tinkering with the file to reduce this to say 1.5mm thickness to reduce print time. Which will make it rather flimsy, so.. what if I laminate it with a very thin sheet metal? then drilling holes in the appropriate places and using actual rivets, after smearing no more nails or PVA glue for permanent adhesion. I could build a hopper from scratch but it's somehow important the whole thing be 3d printed, after all with the right preparation and reinforcement ABS plastic is incredibly strong when left outdoors in the harsh UV & humid conditions of New Zealand's climate. If I did build it out of steel it would no doubt rust away after 5 years knowing my handiwork.
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