Testing the water on building an FCS 090

Method

Wim got the idea of building an FCS wagon. The available models however come with a lot of errors which makes a fiNe-scale conversion a lot of work. Thus his idea was to etch one. However this is not so straightforward because, although the FCS wagons are built from flat sheet, they are actually pretty complex models in the sense that arriving at the correct form in flat sheet is a lot work of calculating angles if you want to do this in 2D. We found a drawing in HP1 that shows the right cross section. The Book of Gerd Wolff "Die Zweiachsigen Selbstentlagewagen" is better than Carstens giving also the differences in angle between various FCS variants, but his sketches are very small. A works drawing is to be preferred if you can find one.

This basic drawing showing correct angles also as numbers.

This drawing was imported into C4D and used as basis for a 3D model of the body. Extruding the splines of the two planes into 3D forms and make a boolean cross cut of these two and then you arrive at a body.

A 3D box of main body.

The panels of the 3D model can be layed flat producing a plane 2d drawing and this can be exported to Corel for producing a basic sheet profile suitable for cutting and etching. This flat sheet was cut out using the Robo Cutter in 0.25 mm plastic sheet and folded into a test model.

This shows the test fold-up that shows that it should possible to built these wagons in fiNe-scale.

The test fold-up shows that some jigs are necessary to assist in building it as you cannot really hold the body. Thus with some more effort an etch can be developed for this wagon. The other parts of the wagon are relative straight forward and this wagon can be done in plastic as well as in NS sheet. But don't hold your breath.

copyright: Henk Oversloot
date: 15 jan 2012