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…..............................--- Sawmill Design/Build – Pt. 4 ---

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First finishing up the printing of the rest of the items needed for the green chain....

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Once I got the resin printer I was hoping that I could print corrugated roofing with it for some of the buildings on the layout.

I found the dimensions of different 'real' corrugated roofing and for some the corrugations where too close to do in N scale. You wouldn't see them if the print was totally to scale. I found one, maybe newer than my time period, that I decided to try and was able to stay 'pretty close' to the actual measurements and I'm happy with the final results. If there is any interest I might put up some print files for some different size flat sheets one could print. In …..

…... this case I was able to print both sides of the roof as a single print.

With the printing done I moved back to the design of the main building of the saw mill. I can't have everything that most sawmills have as the building would get to large but want to try and represent some of the main features of a mill. One of those can be a planer or multiple planers if they planed lumber at the mill in addition to having rough sawn lumber. This mill will have one planer.

The green lumber to be planed will exit the mill via the green chain where it will be sorted and stacked to air dry (later the mill might add a kiln dryer). After the lumber has dried ….

…. it will be brought back to the mill with a forklift and put on a dock near the planer. The forklift will place it on a cart that rides on rails that are gauged to 3 feet. The carts are hand pushed back to the the planer and unload and at the same time run through the planner. The planed boards will go over and above the green chain. There they are mechanically push back and above the green chain to the point they fall on the chain and proceed outside to be sorted and stacked. They will go back into the yard and will leave the mill via truck or train.

The empty cart won't go back to the loading dock directly as another cart or two is on the rails loaded and ready to be moved to the planer. The empty proceeds along a track away from the planer to a turntable. The cart is empty and it easy to turn the table by hand so that the cart can continue on the track to another turntable and on back outside to the dock to be loaded again. There can be a number of carts on the track at the same time and 2-3 could be loaded and left for the planer operator.

Needing a cart one was designed. No the wheels won't turn but it will sit on the printed rail on the mill floor and can be placed anywhere along the track.

Also some lumber to be planed was needed, so …..

…........ back to Fusion 360 and the printer to come up with some different loads.

At the moment there are the loads shown in the image above but I will also design the other ones listed in the image. Amazing now what we have at our finger tips to use in modeling. Thought about the lumber loads laying awake at 3 am. Got up, designed some with Fusion 360, printed them and painted them all before noon. Our options for what we can do are many now and don't cost all that much. I printed a lot more that what is shown above on one build plate in an hour for a couple bucks and a $200 printer and was able to use a very powerful CAD program that is free if you aren't a commercial user.

Getting closer to printing the main building. Need to make sure I have all the openings that are needed in the final design before printing. The building walls will have to be printed in at least 3 prints because of the size as I'll use the resin printer. The Ender 3 Pro does do a good job on buildings, such as the coal mine complex that was entirely printed with it.

The mill's roof and roof trusses will be removable to reveal the interior if wanted. The interior floor also will be removable. That will allow the interior to be detailed more in the future if so desired..

To be continued............

A link to this whole build ( HERE ).

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