modelrail.otenko Trains, computers, vintage, retro, model railways… the lot…

PIKO VT135 Repairs

This happened to be another impulse buy from eBay... and I fully blame COVID. Anyway, it's a super-cool 4-wheel VT135 DMU (or Verbrennungstriebwagen) from the German brand PIKO.

The 'shell doesn't stay on chassis' defect was pre-communicated, but something else wasn't:

It's missing an eye!

They seem to be a triangular piece of transparent acrylic with a small hemisphere on one face. How hard can that be to design and print? I jumped straight into Tinkercad after a quick session with the ruler and whipped up the following:

5mm x 5mm x 5mm triangular block and a 2.8mm diameter hemisphere. I added a cylinder behind as the thickness of the VT135's shell caused a version without the cylinder to sit too far in. Once printed, the item was tested out...

It didn't look toooooo bad... it's a little more opaque than the originals. The first shot above shows the very first print with no cylinder on the left and a 'shit print' on the right. Rule #1: clean the print bed after each print! Anyway, a third print was beautiful and its performance was as follows:

It ended up being much brighter! Maybe I should replace the other three to even it all out... or maybe I'll try and work out how to printer clearer 3D models. You can find the STL here.