| 3d Printing |
 The scratch-built gate valves were, as I said, ‘Good Nuff’ for where they were to be used. I had got into 3d printing a little later on and decided to upload a .stl file from the Sketchup model I created originally just to give me dimensions to build these suckers out of bits and pieces.
This is a screen-grab from the Shapeways website of the original design. Pretty simple – in fact it’s as about as simple as I could make it and still be happy. I ‘did’ add some bolts to the top of the valve body, the packing gland housing and the top support after I had my test parts printed but that was pretty much it. This thing has undergone so many revisions that I don’t even have a copy of the original design that I could find. |
 Here’s the gate valves printed by Shapeways in what they call ‘Frosted Ultra Detail’ (known to us having things printed in this material as ‘FUD’). There is minor layering that you can see on the upper support bracket on the one laying on the dime but .. come on .. that’s not obvious really except with a close-up like this.
You can get finer resolution but the cost is quite a bit higher. I’m pretty much happy with how these came out. |
 This extreme close-up is as good as I can get with my camera and the close-up lenses that I have. This photo has been tweaked a bit to try for more detail so that layering is just a bit magnified since I had to sharpen the photo several times. Still .. considering the size of the sucker it’s acceptable to me. With some primer that would mostly disappear .. and after all .. that’s supposed to be cast iron.
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| Part III |