Sleepless Night

yeah. that just made it 24x more amazing :slight_smile: awesome work :slight_smile:

Thank you, again.

Another steam engine. Only about a third finished.

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I know solid models, I use “solid inspector” and “FIXIT101”, but I haven’t tried 3D printing from SketchUp. I guess the process is vary by printer. We have a person who 3D prints our models in the office, but I haven’t had to print my designs yet.

He uses Fusion 360 and I sent him files before, but they came through fractured, even though I checked and it was solid and “watertight” in SketchUp.

Is it possible to leave Fusion 360 out of the process and sent the model straight to the printer? Save as .stl ?

Yes, many people have done this. The ability to create an STL file varies with SketchUp version, sometimes it’s an extension (from the SketchUp team), I think sometimes it is built-in as an Export option.

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very nice reference… I love the style…found the whole collection…

As I wrote, solid components are clean and easier to mange/modify. Although I don’t 3D print everything I model, I make every component a solid as I’m modeling as part of the process. It might be faster up front to not worry about that but invariably it costs the user more time later than the time they saved.

As @TDahl wrote, 3D printing can be done directly from SketchUp models without using Fusion360 as an intermediate step.

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WIP update. Governor and steam chest linkage left to finish up and of course a few pins and a pile of machine screws and nuts.

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Awesome :+1: :+1:

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I must have been something like 4 years old when I saw a similar engine still in action, providing power to a dairy.

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Most of the governor (AKA James Watt’s balls) is complete. For those who aren’t familiar with the mechanism, as the engine runs the vertical shaft is driven through the bevel gears. The balls swing outward as the engine speed increases raising the left end of the fork below the balls. This in turn closes the steam valve on the left end of the engine below the steam chest reducing the speed of the engine. Once set it keep the engine running at a constant speed.

Clearly some small hardware is needed yet. I’m not real happy with my bevel gears and might redo them.

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Or tire chains for the winter Dave R is about to have.

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Remarkable work Dave! I enjoy the ongoing progress reports, Thank You.

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Redid the bevel gears so they mesh better and finished up the rest of the parts. Nothing left but the screws, nuts, and rivets.

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And still another engine. This is a WIP. Still need the valves and linkages for the steam chests and the steam inlet valve. Then all that’s left is to time the valves.

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It’s a good thing you don’t have a day job.

My job now runs all kinds of weird hours.

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Uh, oh, now you have me thinking I should try my hand at modeling the VR6 engine in my Corrado. No, no, too much else to do!

Do it! Do it! You know you want to. :smiley:

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Just need to build a base for it.

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