Going nutz

“Does a bear make a poo in the woods? Probably unless he lives in a zoo. “Is the Pope Catholic?” Most likely, unless he’s a closet Wicken. “Am I going crazy?” Most likely. I spent part of the morning making elbows and flanges for 24 inch pipe. I don’t mean I was out and about with a hammer, metal and a welder (at least … I don’t think I was), but mostly ‘building’ the bits and pieces in Google’s Sketchup.

I am in the midst of building a small dam in O scale (American 1:48) and I need to have various pipe fittings. 24 inch pipe at that. In O scale that’s ½ inch. Now, lucky me, Evergreen Models makes a ½” Styrene tubing, part no.236 it has an .500 OD and a .444 ID. This scales out to a beastly SCD 90 more or less. I rummaged around the aisles of Lowes looking at pipe fittings for water, gas and electric with the idea of modifying something but didn’t have any luck.

That brought me back to Sketchup with the idea to ‘roll my own’ and then get them 3D printed. Will it work? Oh I can design them easily enough. Whether it will be feasible to have them printed (meaning, How much?) is to be seen. In the meantime, here’s what I have.

Modeled in Sketchup and rendered in Kerkythea. No, they are only rendered in Bronze because it’s pretty! Across the bottom we have 90°, 30°, 45° and a 22.5° degree elbows. You can’t see it but the ends change from an arc to a straight section to fit a recess in the flanges above. The elbows match the Evergreen ½ inch tubing for OD and ID. The flanges across the top. On the far left is for capping off a flange. Notice there are two flanges with bolts, one being the blank. In the middle are a pair of flanges, with bolts and nuts with a recess on both sides. That represents a pair of flanges, the recess matches either one of the pipe elbows or the Evergreen tubing. Cool huh? Finally, on the right is a single flange, again with a recess to fit the elbows or tubing.

I may very well be a little crazy, not really sure. I’ll have to ask Ms Kitty her opinion.

Edit : Ok. Ms Kitty said not to be silly. I was as sane as anyone else that talks to cats.