Monorail game changer?

[Breakdown]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4DBrix-Monorail-Full-Straight-Track-set-of-4-LEGO-compatible-/272269707705?hash=item3f648a09b9:g:p2wAAOSw9eVXU1Nm

He's selling 4 long straights for $49.95 3D printed, 1/2 lengths and 1/4 lengths along with double-car carriages.

To me this is very exciting!

I realize that the quality won't be there, but at the same time I'm hoping that this makes straights more affordable/available if the quality is such that there are solid connections with studs, count me in.

I wish that he could consider selling monorail sled wheels alone, those get lost from lego collections so easily!!

If you go to the guy's website, he's also trying to make a laptop controlled switch automation.

And for the record, I don't know the guy, I'm not the guy, etc, etc, just the work excites me!

[paul_delahaye]

Very interesting, I wonder whether the printing teeth on the track will be sharp enough for the cog?

[ecmo47]

A video would go a long way to sell this track. While certainly less expensive then real Lego track (average about $25.00 per piece) it's still pretty expensive for the "average" consumer.

[Wookiee]

While it may be ok for some people, i think the quality is quite poor from the pictures. I can't get my head around the visual look of all the layers and i think i would personally just pay the full amount for the real product which i have done recently. While it hurt paying $30aud per straight at the time i have forgotten about it now and enjoy watching my mono rail go from point to point.

"The poor man pays twice"

[AlmightyArjen]

I wonder how fast they wear out. Since it's 3D printed, I don't expect them to be very hard. Maybe I'll give it a chance, I'm thinking about it.

To also end with a quote:

"The hapiness of the low price has long forgotten when the annoyance of the poor quality continues"

[exwisdem]

Hello from a lurker and bumper... I thought I would provide my two cents on this topic.

I took the plunge and ordered 8 monorail long straights. They arrived today and I have set up a temporary monorail layout by mixing the 4DBrix tracks with the Lego monorail tracks.

From a visual inspection, the 4DBrix monorail track appear to be 3D printed - no surprises there. Consequently, there are very small printing lines visible on the sides and the top of the monorail. Some ends do have small discontinuities but, nothing unreasonable from 3D printing and I have not observed any issues running the monorail.

A visual comment: some AFOLs want as realistic to life MOC as possible, and I will say that the 3D printed monorail track looks more like poured concrete than Lego monorail track.

I was concerned with the 3D printed lines would make a louder noise as the monorail passed over the 4DBrix track compared to the Lego track. The temporary setup was on laminate flooring, which would amplify the noises; however, I could not discern from the noise whether the monorail was on the 4DBrix track or the Lego track (but of course, my wife does say I am hard at hearing sometimes).

In terms of clutch power - the monorail track from 4DBrix is not Lego, but it is on par with what I have experienced (if not better) than the ME Rails I have purchased and mixed with Lego.

In the end, am I happy with my purchase? Yes, I am. I doubled the number of long monorail tracks for half the price of what I could of purchased from Bricklink. More importantly, my daughters are happy.

my two cents.

[Artanis I]

A handy 2 cents

[Amtrak USA]

Very interesting.

[Breakdown]

Hello from a lurker and bumper... I thought I would provide my two cents on this topic.

I took the plunge and ordered 8 monorail long straights. They arrived today and I have set up a temporary monorail layout by mixing the 4DBrix tracks with the Lego monorail tracks.

From a visual inspection, the 4DBrix monorail track appear to be 3D printed - no surprises there. Consequently, there are very small printing lines visible on the sides and the top of the monorail. Some ends do have small discontinuities but, nothing unreasonable from 3D printing and I have not observed any issues running the monorail.

A visual comment: some AFOLs want as realistic to life MOC as possible, and I will say that the 3D printed monorail track looks more like poured concrete than Lego monorail track.

I was concerned with the 3D printed lines would make a louder noise as the monorail passed over the 4DBrix track compared to the Lego track. The temporary setup was on laminate flooring, which would amplify the noises; however, I could not discern from the noise whether the monorail was on the 4DBrix track or the Lego track (but of course, my wife does say I am hard at hearing sometimes).

In terms of clutch power - the monorail track from 4DBrix is not Lego, but it is on par with what I have experienced (if not better) than the ME Rails I have purchased and mixed with Lego.

In the end, am I happy with my purchase? Yes, I am. I doubled the number of long monorail tracks for half the price of what I could of purchased from Bricklink. More importantly, my daughters are happy.

my two cents.

Hey . . . . thanks for taking the plunge. I'm tempted to buy that monorail extender to make a 4 car monorail, but that'll put me out $50 for the pair.

How do your rails match up colour-wise? That's my biggest concern. Would love feedback on that aspect. Thanks again!

[dr_spock]

Would you have pictures showing the two together?

[exwisdem]

How do your rails match up colour-wise? That's my biggest concern. Would love feedback on that aspect. Thanks again!

The colors are an exact match by my eyes.

About the monorail extender car.... I picked one of those up too, and I like it. The only thing that slipped my mind is that it is not as long as the Lego monorail base, which is 4 x 20, and the 4DBrix monorail extender is approximately 4 x 20, but the "deck" is 4 x 16. Also, the base of the monorail extender is 3D printed as two separate pieces - the 4 x 16 plate and the bottom portion which snaps to the top part like connecting two plates. A versatile and nice design in my book, as you have the freedom to change the bottom or make wider monorail cars possible.

Would you have pictures showing the two together?

I know the 4DBrix website, www.4dbrix.com, has a video of their product next to / connected to Lego track. I plan on making pictures, but no time soon as their are too many things competing for my time at the moment. But, I recommend anyone interested to check out their website.

[Lowa]

http://www.ebay.com/...2wAAOSw9eVXU1Nm

He's selling 4 long straights for $49.95 3D printed, 1/2 lengths and 1/4 lengths along with double-car carriages.

To me this is very exciting!

I realize that the quality won't be there, but at the same time I'm hoping that this makes straights more affordable/available if the quality is such that there are solid connections with studs, count me in.

I wish that he could consider selling monorail sled wheels alone, those get lost from lego collections so easily!!

If you go to the guy's website, he's also trying to make a laptop controlled switch automation.

And for the record, I don't know the guy, I'm not the guy, etc, etc, just the work excites me!

Hi Breakdown,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

I’m willing to take a look at any need that might exist in the monorail community. Just send me the details of what you would like and I will check if there is a viable solution to it.

Very interesting, I wonder whether the printing teeth on the track will be sharp enough for the cog?

Hi Paul,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

That’s an interesting questions and one of my focuses designing the monorail tracks. The teeth on the 3D printed tracks are slightly blunter than the original tracks but it’s not an issue of the cog. The cog has enough play to be able to handle a variety of track teeth. Note that there even is a slight difference between the teeth on the original LEGO tracks. The short track has 41 teeth for a length of 8 studs while the full track has 163 teeth for 32 studs; the teeth on the short LEGO track are thus slightly sharper than the teeth on the long LEGO track. A fair amount of play is also needed to get the motor over the switch points.

A video would go a long way to sell this track. While certainly less expensive then real Lego track (average about $25.00 per piece) it's still pretty expensive for the "average" consumer.

Hi ecmo47,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix. There is a video on our 4DBrix YouTube channel:

where you can see the Futuron monorail train on the 3D printed monorail tracks.

While it may be ok for some people, i think the quality is quite poor from the pictures. I can't get my head around the visual look of all the layers and i think i would personally just pay the full amount for the real product which i have done recently. While it hurt paying $30aud per straight at the time i have forgotten about it now and enjoy watching my mono rail go from point to point.

"The poor man pays twice"

Hi Wookie,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

The main focus is to create the best possible monorail track (from both a functional and an aesthetic point of view) while keeping the price to an affordable level. They are 3D printed and that’s visible, if that is an issue then these monorails are not for you. We understand that and we want to be very open about this, the goal is not to trick people into buying something they are not going to be happy with.

The pictures on the 4DBrix website show the rails as they are, but keep in mind that those are close ups. The print lines are about 0.2mm thick, you cannot see that type of detail from a meter away. You can verify this on the YouTube video. At around 20s the video shows a close-up and you can see some of the print lines, but in the overview shot of the full layout (starting at 1:07s) I can no longer tell the difference between the original and the 3D printed tracks.

To summarize, I feel that from a practical point of view (meaning that if you look at the tracks from a distance like you would in a real life situation) the aesthetic quality is good; otherwise we would not have released them. But they are not real LEGO tracks, so you have to be OK with that to enjoy the 3D printed tracks.

I wonder how fast they wear out. Since it's 3D printed, I don't expect them to be very hard. Maybe I'll give it a chance, I'm thinking about it.

To also end with a quote:

"The hapiness of the low price has long forgotten when the annoyance of the poor quality continues"

Hi AlmightyArjen,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix. To be honest, that’s a question I hadn’t really thought of before… I’m afraid I need to get quite technical to answer this.

Wear is normally related to the hardness of the two surfaces making contact. The rails are printed with pure ABS, the same material as LEGO uses. So in both cases it’s a ‘hard’ metal cog rubbing against a ‘soft’ ABS surface. I don’t really see a difference in hardness between the original and 3D rails, and even if there was I don’t think it would be a meaningful difference as the cog is clearly much harder. I haven’t seem any wear on the 3D printed tracks, but as they are new they have only seen a limited amount of use.

A related issue would be teeth breaking off. 3D printed ABS has a different strength than injection molded ABS. The rails are printed by laying down small strings of ABS. Those strings are very strong (as the material in those strings is similar to injection molded ABS) but the bonding between neighboring strings is weaker. In case of the monorails, the ‘strings’ are parallel with the axis of the rail. That means that the cog is stressing the teeth in a direction that pulls on the ‘strings’, so in the direction the material is the strongest. It’s not stressing the planes in between the layers. So I don’t see any increased chance of breaking off teeth compared to the original rails. I tried pulling of teeth with pliers, they did not break off...

Hey . . . . thanks for taking the plunge. I'm tempted to buy that monorail extender to make a 4 car monorail, but that'll put me out $50 for the pair.

How do your rails match up colour-wise? That's my biggest concern. Would love feedback on that aspect. Thanks again!

Hi Breakdown,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

The color of the tracks were a major focus when developing them. I tried a couple of standard gray filaments and none matched close enough to my taste. In the end I had a filament provider recreate the ‘Classic Light Gray’ based on the LEGO color code...

This is a screen shot from the YouTube video. The straight track is one I 3D printed, the curve on the right is an original LEGO track. The color match also depends on the state of your original tracks, as the old gray tends to turn yellow over time. If you compare the two rails from close by you will see a slight difference, also because the surface of the 3D printed rails is not as smooth as the injection molded LEGO ones. But if you take a step back and compare them from 1m away, I can no longer see a difference.

Hi,

So I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

As Breakdown stated, I’m working on a system to automate LEGO train and monorail layouts. The main goal if to offer a LEGO compatible range of products like you have for the model train sets: track switch motors, traffic lights, sensors, decouplers, … and an extended range of special tracks. I stared with the monorail and I’m working on both monorail and train products at this moment.

The next big target is to finalize the automation software and hardware for the trains. The first version should include: tracks switch motors, traffic lights and train sensors. Eventually the monorail will also be supported by the automation system. You can see a prototype of the monorail automation on the YouTube video. If you focus on the station, you can see that I mounted a white motor to the monorail control switch; it’s how I started the train at 1m32s. This is a custom LEGO compatible servo motor that can by mounted on the monorail controls with a special connector. The goal is to create switches (standard left, right and the Y and cross) that can be powered by the same motor. 4DBrix is a micro-business, so this will take some time...

It was a nice surprise to find this post here. We intend 4DBrix to be community driven, so I tried to reply to all your questions as detailed as possible. If you have any additional comments, questions or suggestions don’t hesitate to get in touch.

[Heppeng]

On 17/09/2016 at 7:57 PM, Lowa said:

Hi Breakdown,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

I’m willing to take a look at any need that might exist in the monorail community. Just send me the details of what you would like and I will check if there is a viable solution to it.

Hi Paul,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

That’s an interesting questions and one of my focuses designing the monorail tracks. The teeth on the 3D printed tracks are slightly blunter than the original tracks but it’s not an issue of the cog. The cog has enough play to be able to handle a variety of track teeth. Note that there even is a slight difference between the teeth on the original LEGO tracks. The short track has 41 teeth for a length of 8 studs while the full track has 163 teeth for 32 studs; the teeth on the short LEGO track are thus slightly sharper than the teeth on the long LEGO track. A fair amount of play is also needed to get the motor over the switch points.

Hi ecmo47,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix. There is a video on our 4DBrix YouTube channel:

where you can see the Futuron monorail train on the 3D printed monorail tracks.

Hi Wookie,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

The main focus is to create the best possible monorail track (from both a functional and an aesthetic point of view) while keeping the price to an affordable level. They are 3D printed and that’s visible, if that is an issue then these monorails are not for you. We understand that and we want to be very open about this, the goal is not to trick people into buying something they are not going to be happy with.

The pictures on the 4DBrix website show the rails as they are, but keep in mind that those are close ups. The print lines are about 0.2mm thick, you cannot see that type of detail from a meter away. You can verify this on the YouTube video. At around 20s the video shows a close-up and you can see some of the print lines, but in the overview shot of the full layout (starting at 1:07s) I can no longer tell the difference between the original and the 3D printed tracks.

To summarize, I feel that from a practical point of view (meaning that if you look at the tracks from a distance like you would in a real life situation) the aesthetic quality is good; otherwise we would not have released them. But they are not real LEGO tracks, so you have to be OK with that to enjoy the 3D printed tracks.

Hi AlmightyArjen,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix. To be honest, that’s a question I hadn’t really thought of before… I’m afraid I need to get quite technical to answer this.

Wear is normally related to the hardness of the two surfaces making contact. The rails are printed with pure ABS, the same material as LEGO uses. So in both cases it’s a ‘hard’ metal cog rubbing against a ‘soft’ ABS surface. I don’t really see a difference in hardness between the original and 3D rails, and even if there was I don’t think it would be a meaningful difference as the cog is clearly much harder. I haven’t seem any wear on the 3D printed tracks, but as they are new they have only seen a limited amount of use.

A related issue would be teeth breaking off. 3D printed ABS has a different strength than injection molded ABS. The rails are printed by laying down small strings of ABS. Those strings are very strong (as the material in those strings is similar to injection molded ABS) but the bonding between neighboring strings is weaker. In case of the monorails, the ‘strings’ are parallel with the axis of the rail. That means that the cog is stressing the teeth in a direction that pulls on the ‘strings’, so in the direction the material is the strongest. It’s not stressing the planes in between the layers. So I don’t see any increased chance of breaking off teeth compared to the original rails. I tried pulling of teeth with pliers, they did not break off...

Hi Breakdown,

I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

The color of the tracks were a major focus when developing them. I tried a couple of standard gray filaments and none matched close enough to my taste. In the end I had a filament provider recreate the ‘Classic Light Gray’ based on the LEGO color code...

This is a screen shot from the YouTube video. The straight track is one I 3D printed, the curve on the right is an original LEGO track. The color match also depends on the state of your original tracks, as the old gray tends to turn yellow over time. If you compare the two rails from close by you will see a slight difference, also because the surface of the 3D printed rails is not as smooth as the injection molded LEGO ones. But if you take a step back and compare them from 1m away, I can no longer see a difference.

Hi,

So I’m the guy behind 4DBrix.

As Breakdown stated, I’m working on a system to automate LEGO train and monorail layouts. The main goal if to offer a LEGO compatible range of products like you have for the model train sets: track switch motors, traffic lights, sensors, decouplers, … and an extended range of special tracks. I stared with the monorail and I’m working on both monorail and train products at this moment.

The next big target is to finalize the automation software and hardware for the trains. The first version should include: tracks switch motors, traffic lights and train sensors. Eventually the monorail will also be supported by the automation system. You can see a prototype of the monorail automation on the YouTube video. If you focus on the station, you can see that I mounted a white motor to the monorail control switch; it’s how I started the train at 1m32s. This is a custom LEGO compatible servo motor that can by mounted on the monorail controls with a special connector. The goal is to create switches (standard left, right and the Y and cross) that can be powered by the same motor. 4DBrix is a micro-business, so this will take some time...

It was a nice surprise to find this post here. We intend 4DBrix to be community driven, so I tried to reply to all your questions as detailed as possible. If you have any additional comments, questions or suggestions don’t hesitate to get in touch.

After reading and re-reading your post there is something I am not sure about, I wonder if there is something you could clarify for the benefit of myself and others,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are you the guy behind 4DBrix?

[Criosphynx]

I have a couple thoughts.

Firstly, I saw a review on youtube a buyer did on these track as i was also VERY interested and when he went in for close ups I recoiled a bit. I think they are a great idea, but i can't stomach the look of them. ..... I will however probably buy some when I build a large layout where they are far away, or in a tunnel of some sort. I do think they are fairly priced, but the look just bothers me personally.

Secondly, I have bought straight track for as little as $10usd on several occasions, you just have to be VERY patient and be prepared to jump on deals when they appear. If you have to have it NOW, yes you will pay much more.

 

Anyway, great idea, maybe future customer, with caveats.

 

[Legotom]

Can you print the motor covers in other colours? I really need one in yellow. Also can you make them more like the original Lego one, with smooth sides except the three recessed rows of studs at the top. I'm worried the extra studs may catch on bits the monorail doesn't, and it rather spoils the smooth sided look of the original. 

[Lowa]

5 minutes ago, Legotom said:

Can you print the motor covers in other colours? I really need one in yellow. Also can you make them more like the original Lego one, with smooth sides except the three recessed rows of studs at the top. I'm worried the extra studs may catch on bits the monorail doesn't, and it rather spoils the smooth sided look of the original. 

Hi, we can make one without the extra studs, that not a big deal.  It should possible to make one in yellow, but it would be in a 'standard' yellow which is not going to be an exact match of the LEGO yellow.  (Recreating the LEGO yellow is not justifiable for one motor cover...)  If a 'standard' yellow (see picture below) works for you please contact us on our website (www.4dbrix.com) so we work out the details.

[willhappy]

hi 

just my 2 pence worth, if the track is hard to get hold off and cost's a lot then 3d printed could be the way to go.  There is another way and that's to make the mold for 3d printed and then use them to  inject the plastic.  This has been done for some items so it could be done.

will