I found myself one evening exploring Templot when I came across an intriguing post about battery locomotives. Naturally, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and soon discovered Pocket Railway Museum, a group that offers fully 3D-printable models. While I’m not certain how prototypical their models are, they looked very convincing and immediately sparked my curiosity. At that point, I had zero experience with CAD software, more on that later.
With most of my projects, I turned to ChatGPT for some help.Normally, its helpful for tech projects, but in this case it wasn’t quite as helpful. That led me to YouTube, where I dove into the usual “tutorial hell”. Thankfully, I found Mango Jelly Solutions, whose videos I highly recommend. After just a couple of tutorials, I felt confident enough to start redesigning some parts in FreeCAD, aiming to make the chassis and model more reliable.
My main objectives were:
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Improve the frame.
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Refine the axles and wheels.
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Develop solutions that could carry over to other designs.
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Address alignment and component challenges as they arose.
This isn’t a criticism of the original design or its creator. The original models are commendably designed to be printable on basic bed-slinger 3D printers, making them accessible to a broad audience, which is a cool take on things. My aim was to complement this with more easily sourced maker parts from [insert favourite online marketplace], such as bearings, brass rods, screw-thread inserts, and so on.
As of today, after many iterations, I’m happy to report that I have a working prototype. I’ve designed bespoke wheels to interface with 4mm steel rods, engineered a chassis block that uses roller bearings, and am now working on a screw-thread insert to make it easier to remove the body for access to the motor, control boards, and battery.
More soon...
