Help Needed: Animating Siderods

Zeldaboy14

Owner of ZPW.
I need help with Animating Siderods. I can do the Basic side rods, like simple one's but I can't animate siderods that are complicated. Maybe someone can help and tell me how to do one's that are seen on, for example, the Flying Scotsmen.
 
When you say "basic side rods", do you mean coupling rods or connecting rods?

If your having trouble with connecting rods, take a look at this Blender tutorial:
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~m_collett/blender/piston.html
Also have a look here, although this is for an old version of Blender, most techniques still apply:
http://44090digitalmodels.co.uk/tutorials/blender3.html

I've never found a tutorial for the rest of Walschaert's gear, but you can acheive a reasonable relult using a combination of techniques from the above tutorials, as long as you understand what each of the valve gear components (return rod, expansion link, etc.) is actually doing.
 
I need help with Animating Siderods. I can do the Basic side rods, like simple one's but I can't animate siderods that are complicated. Maybe someone can help and tell me how to do one's that are seen on, for example, the Flying Scotsmen.

Which software?

Thanks John
 
Its always good to check!

I strongly suggest you study diagrams and animation of your chosen valve gear to really understand what's going on, learning the names of the parts will help as you can name your parts in Blender to help with their management.
 
Ok! The type of Side Rod that I'm looking for help on doing looks like this:
SideRodsExample_zps32e1f29e.jpg
 
That's Walscheart's valve gear, looking it up on wikipedia will be a good starting point.
 
A quick note, I can't seem to figure out how it's done. Is there a newer tutorial out there, or even a video tutorial on this?
 
Actually, it's Gresley's Conjugated Valve Gear. :)

Kieran.

It is Walscheart's, the conjugated gear is the bit that sticks out the front of the steam chest (and is thus not visible in the pic) linking to the inside cylinder. Thus you can have three cylinders with only two full sets of valve gear. GWR 4 cylinder locos have a similar but less complex set up with the Walscheart's on the inside. The simpler geometry of 4 cylinders means only a simple lever is needed, not the full conjugation needed for three cylinders.

Tutorials for full valve gear are very difficult to find. You just have to work at it yourself.
 
I retract my statement.

I will however mention that the timing of the return crank on Gresley engines is a bit different to that of most others.
 
Are you sure its the return cranks and not simply the main driving crank. As I understand it, it is the main driving crank for the middle cylinder that is offset to compensate for the fact that the cylinders aren't parallel in order to clear the front driving axle.
 
Zeldaboy

Unless you understand the purpose and name of each component you will get nowhere.

How far do you want to go?

Is your loco one with just coupling rods, the rods coupling the main driving wheels together? If so animation is simple. I suggest you try to do this first and get something to work in Trainz.

If your loco has connecting rods, the rods going from one of the crank pins to the crosshead, the thing that slides backwards and forwards and connects to the piston rod, then this becomes more complex especially if you try to go straight to this stage.

Finally the valve motion gear. Don't even dream of tackling this before you have a model with the two previous stages working on the tracks in Trainz. The interaction between all the parts is complex and a good working knowledge of Blender animation is vital if you want to succeed.

Peter
 
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