3D Printing - Quite An Adevnture

[Richard08]

And we'll know when he has rocked the boat sufficiently, because brand managers - who should be paying attention - will do the work of rebuttal. That they are not doing so (AFAIK, but others may be able to point out actions I have missed) suggests his influence over the customer base* isn't significant enough to actually trigger action.

Yes, I suspect you are right. But they really should. His review of the "Thanet Flyer" train set is one that stands out. Little Johnny gets his first train set, quite a nice one by appearances, with an engine that has a constantly derailing tender due to a design fault. Chances of Little Johnny taking up the hobby? Tending towards zero.

[mattmay05]

All the anger directed towards Sam just convinces me more he's on the right road, doing an excellent job of rocking a very complacent boat. He presents his evidence, and as far as I can see no one else is doing the same to refute it. When another equally independent reviewer does the same thing, on the same scale, and finds all is fine and dandy then I'll reconsider.

Its not anger, its constructive critic.... especially when it's affecting customers

The evidence he provides is evidence he puts there (aka made up) to create a talking point... otherwise he doesn't know much about it at all there for misinforming customers.
There are a number of people that are to avoid... are the ones that have backing or support from retailers... remember a terrier one that glossed over the warped running plate, or the gap in the roof due to the heavy compromise the retailer/manufacturer made.

End of the day these models are expensive, customers, me, you, I are having to spend £200+ on a model... now if mr personality on Youtube says its fantastic, stunning, X Y Z... but actually never look at the prototype, or actually run the model for a period of time... problems will not show up in the first 5 minutes of use.... You find out after many months... if a motor goes, like Railways unlimited great channel... informative useful... or if a model is blowing chips... why well its wired wrong...
Thats the difference between carpet and a very expensive rug... or a good reviewer and bad one.

Miss information on youtube is terrible and sadly he is at the for front that's why he's being dropper.... why the hell is he running trains under water... if he wants to electrocute himself be my guest, running trains on mega voltage to see what happens... well burns the motor out...

Sadly his name comes up way to much when there's a broken model which I have to repair and give them the right advice... and then the oh I won't be watching him again.

[Bigmet]

... his name comes up way to much when there's a broken model which I have to repair and give them the right advice... and then the oh I won't be watching him again.

Self-correcting problem then. Seriously, relax, he'll shoot himself in the foot sufficiently in time.

Clearly I move in different circles, never had a 'not working (properly)' model railway loco to look at with cause of the trouble attributed to 'Sam'. Three in the past few weeks:
H-D model with an 'ancient' DIY wiring repair error, wiper pick up supply connected to uninsulated brush, straightforward correction.
Inept design of the wiper pick up arrangement (a well known 'old' problem on the first release of the Bachmann 08) straightforward correction.
Well known live chassis block problem only discovered following recent DCC decoder fit, on an early Hornby production of the A3 from Sanda Kan, straightforward correction.

[D605Eagle]

Bigmet I'd be interested to know how your Heljan diesels are standing up to your rather intense running in respect of the axles running directly in the plastic frames. I don't run anywhere as intensely as you do, but some of my Heljan models are now the wrong side of 20 years old but non are showing any signs of wear in this area.

[Bufferstop]

Going off at at tangent... I picked up a copy of Railway Modeller about eight or so years ago, when the first stirrings of having a train set again were happening. The editor, in his editorial, cheerfully admitted that photographs were Photoshopped. I binned it, what's the point of 'showing what can be achieved' if what is shown is fake?

If it's the incident I remember the Photoshopping was to remove very intrusive foreground (below layout) and background detail! A very early bit of photo editing involved masking tape on the negative to obscure the second hand plywood used in the construction of what was an exemplary layout for the time. It probably accounted for about a third of the image area being the profile board going from rail to overbridge levels. Where cropping can't readily remove unwanted sections of an image I think an editor is well within his remit to resort to more advanced "Editing" techniques. The clue is in his job title.
Somewhere on this board there is a track level shot of a coal loading plant with a cup and saucer neatly framed by its portal. An obvious case where photoshopping is a move for the better.

As Richard says he was going off at a tangent so I've replicated this post in a new
thread "Photoshop Use and Misuse"
John W.

[Bigmet]

Bigmet I'd be interested to know how your Heljan diesels are standing up to your rather intense running in respect of the axles running directly in the plastic frames. I don't run anywhere as intensely as you do, but some of my Heljan models are now the wrong side of 20 years old but non are showing any signs of wear in this area.

No trouble whatsoever, but my oldest Heljan diesel model in the 'heavyweight' department is the EE type 2 'Baby Deltic' (23) so it has only had about half a dozen years running, the slightly younger BRCW type 2 (26/0) likewise. (It was a long wait for Heljan to get around to a model subject I could use, having rejected their Brush 4 because it simply didn't look right. Amusingly, didn't buy Hornby's Brush 2 either for the same reason: thus avoiding a brush with mazak rot twice.)

But I have 30 year old heavyweights from Bachmann with steel axle in plastic bogie frame 'bearings' , their class 45 purchased in 1992. Had these two - one with an old Joueff 40 bodyshell jammed on - running outdoors for a couple of years, both withdrawn when better models appeared and rapidly converted to BoBo 'mules' for the track cleaning drag, with extra weight on. The tyres are worn to the brass underneath the original long gone plating. One has had no attention at all as an experiment, after I saw the quantity of grease in the first one I opened up to have a look. No wear evident, no additional noises, both run and pull as ably as ever. (Leaves H-D for dead in the running robustness stakes, try running one of theirs in heavy haulage without adding any lubricant or giving it any service attention...) So no worries, and if they both fell over tomorrow, I would feel I have had value for money.

[D605Eagle]

Thanks for the reply. I had a feeling you were going to say something along those lines. Kind of shoots Sam's getting hot under the collar about lack of axle bearings down in flames!

[Bigmet]

...Kind of shoots Sam's getting hot under the collar about lack of axle bearings down in flames!

Seen discussion about the Sam opinion elsewhere, relating to driven steel axles in both plastic and mazak. My experience is that the plastic compatible greases reduce wear to a negligible level. I have had three types of the earliest larger Bachmann Blue Riband steamers (BR std 5, WD 2-8-0 and Pepp A1) ballasted with lead to roughly twice the weight on the coupled wheels compared to ex-factory condition, and they are all running smoothly 20 years and more later. It won't be the running mechanism that gives out first, but the motors; a couple are showing signs that they may be wearing through their brushes.

Sam is a 'replay': there were volumes of hot air along these lines spouted by the 'Sams' of the day in the late 1990s and early 2000's, when it was realised that all our RTR OO was now going to come from China, fitted with can motors which could not be serviced, and with steel axles running in plastic or mazak, witter, witter, witter.

Anyone with some knowledge of what the American HO market had been getting in RTR from the 1970s onwards (this would be me) found it laughable. It was a welcome day when the well proven mechanism technique developed for American HO fully found its way into OO, and I promptly filled my boots with the superior product from 1999 onwards, and it all still runs as well as on day one, which overall is better than everything in European produced RTR OO. (Bachmann got in just in time with their Blue Riband OO, I was on the brink of going US HO, and suddenly there were locos, coaches and wagons in RTR OO made to 'expert kit builder' standard suitable for modelling BR(ER). Excellent!)

It's not perfect, but it's a sight better than anything previous, minor problems are easily tackled by anyone practised in kit building locos and stock: when a can motor finally gives up, a suitable replacement will be substituted. (Which means I am not the Sam audience, and as I have previously indicated it is for the RTR OO brand managers to tackle the points he raises; if that is, they are actually significant in terms of the target customers.)

[Richard08]

Seen discussion about the Sam opinion elsewhere, relating to both steel axle in plastic and mazak. My experience is that the plastic compatible greases reduce wear to a negligible level.

Nylon type plastics, I dare say there's a posh name for them, can be self lubricating - used in cars quite a lot (called 'nylon' but usually neoprene or such I seem to recall) . As it happens I think Sam is wrong about the lack of bearings in plastic chassis, but is correct in metal chassis. However, picking on one single point as evidence he's always wrong is missing the point. Sam applies the same criteria and method to all reviews, so it is possible, agree with him or not, to make for one's self a valid comparison based on the evidence he provides. It really doesn't matter too much if you agree with him or not, the way he does his reviews gives one a good idea of what to expect, based on *his* independent experience. It doesn't matter to most, the 'average modeller' (whatever that is, is someone who likes Hornby Doulo not a modeller?), if the shade of green is a questionable, what really matters is will it work out of the box, be in one piece and represent value for money.

[Richard08]

Seen discussion about the Sam opinion elsewhere, relating to both steel axle in plastic and mazak. My experience is that the plastic compatible greases reduce wear to a negligible level.

Nylon type plastics, I dare say there's a posh name for them, can be self lubricating - used in cars quite a lot (called 'nylon' but usually neoprene or such I seem to recall) . As it happens I think Sam is wrong about the lack of bearings in plastic chassis, but is correct in metal chassis. However, picking on one single point as evidence he's always wrong is missing the point. Sam applies the same criteria and method to all reviews, so it is possible, agree with him or not, to make for one's self a valid comparison based on the evidence he provides. It really doesn't matter too much if you agree with him or not, the way he does his reviews gives one a good idea of what to expect, based on *his* independent experience. It doesn't matter to most, the 'average modeller' (whatever that is, is someone who likes Hornby Dublo not a modeller?), if the shade of green is a questionable, what really matters is will it work out of the box, be in one piece and represent value for money.[/quote]

[Bigmet]

...Sam applies the same criteria and method to all reviews, so it is possible, agree with him or not, to make for one's self a valid comparison based on the evidence he provides...

With my quality assurance hat on, the comparison is only valid for that test methodology. A significantly different test methodology will inevitably deliver different results, from which equally valid comparisons can be made.

In an ideal world, 'everyone' would have a source of reviews based on testing which closely matches the way in which they intend using the product. However, since this isn't the case, variation in opinions of the validity of test results are bound to occur.

Over the years since internet forums became available I and others have been taken to task (here and elsewhere) for suggesting that the application of some care and knowhow to the model as received is the path to good results. This criticism has varied from 'But I don't know how', all the way to 'I am entitled to do exactly as I see fit and still get optimum performance'.

As I have remarked earlier this mess is for the brand managers to sort out, if it is of sufficient importance for their business results. (Adoption of the HO schemes for expectation setting on the lines of 'Beginner', 'Trainset', 'Expert', would be one possibility.)

[Bufferstop]

Yes steel axles in the right choice of plastic can be as good as steel in brass, you've got to get the surface finish of both parts correct, the axle by good machining practices and the plastic by the choice of the mixture and the design and finishing of the dies. I'm not the only engineer who, having shouted cheapskate on first seeing a mechanism, has subsequently been forced to eat both his words and a chunk of humble pie when said mechanism proceeds to be not only totally trouble free but also virtually maintenance free for a very long time. Just because plastic construction can be cheap and nasty, it doesn't have to be.

[Richard08]

As I have remarked earlier this mess is for the brand managers to sort out, if it is of sufficient importance for their business results. (Adoption of the HO schemes for expectation setting on the lines of 'Beginner', 'Trainset', 'Expert', would be one possibility.)

I guess Hornby tried that with the Railroad range, but it seems to have gone a bit wobbly over the years. I agree some sort of grading would be good [fires up pipe, puts thumbs in waistcoat fob pockets, leans on mantle over roaring log fire] in 't ole daze price were a bit 'o a guide [steps away from really rather warm fire] but all the major manufacturers seem to have 'interesting' pricing strategies these days (on of the big take-homes from Sam reviews for me). Personally I'd go for 'Value', 'Standard' and 'Craftsman', as being able to afford and buy an expensive model has nothing do with expertise.

[Bigmet]

I guess Hornby tried that with the Railroad range, but it seems to have gone a bit wobbly over the years. I agree some sort of grading would be good ... Personally I'd go for 'Value', 'Standard' and 'Craftsman', as being able to afford and buy an expensive model has nothing do with expertise.

Those would do, and I could segment Hornby's present range to match in a half hour in the following broad categories:
Everything tooled in Europe before the move to China, Railroad, and some crappy main range items tooled in China.
Most of what's been tooled since the move to China.
The cream of what's been tooled in China, and the nostalgia branded 'Hornby Dublo' items.

The 'wobbliness' you remark on gives me no great confidence in Hornby's ability to consistently stick with such a plan...

... all the major manufacturers seem to have 'interesting' pricing strategies these days ...

It's not strategy, just tactical manoeuvres in a confused situation. This ones getting plenty of orders, lets up the price and grab all the loot we can while it is 'hot' would be my take on what is going on.

[Boksonay]

(That last one falls into the same category as such as Hornby pacifics with flangeless trailing truck wheelsets: if there's a path to fix an otherwise good model, I'll take it; so it hangs on whether their class 37 bogies have scale diameter wheelsets and are made available as spares.

They do, and they are, but I'd recommend you examine a 55 in the 'flesh' as the wheels are not noticable