Recently, the Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society started the process of uniforming our onboard services car hosts. To that end, we needed to reproduce some of the uniform trappings such as hat badges.

In a former life, I spent about 25 years as a Revolutionary War "living history" person. Within that community are a number of artisans who specialize in small-quantity castings and reproductions. One of these is my former colleague Roy Najecki. Roy has done some exquisite reproductions of uniform hardware from that period, some of which are seen on his website:

http://najecki.com/repro/reproindex.html

Roy was able to reproduce the DL&W Trainman's badge shown in the attached photo for us very economically. If any of you have need of reproductions of uniform items in white metal or brass, I would highly recommend dropping him a line at roy@najecki.com

Tim,

That's pretty neat. What process did he use? Did you have to give him an original, or can he work from photos and drawings?

David

This is John, by the way....

Remember the nature of Roy's Revolutionary War-related business -- all his castings are based on original artifacts, or at least reproduced items provided to him as masters. Our effort to recreate the badge fit that process. Since we were looking for a white metal item, Roy was able to do that completely in-house, which also kept the cost down.

In our case, the original was a stamping. To create a master thick enough to cast reliably, Roy just built up the thickness by filling the stamping with plaster when making the mold - a non-destructive modification easily cleaned off afterward. He then cast the badges in a high-tin content pewter. The reproduction is only slightly heavier than the original, and thanks to the particular alloy, is strong, but capable of being curved to the badge shape. Has a nice "ring" to it if you drop it on the table, too. ;^)

Brass work is done as lost-wax castings, in partnership with Cranston Castings (http://www.CranstonCasting.com), with Roy doing the finish work. As you might expect, prices are a good bit more for anything brass.

As to any other questions, by all means drop Roy a line at roy@najecki.com.

Someone asked about making up badges starting only with a drawing of photograph. This would be a perfect application of photo etching.

There are model companies that etch brass, nickel silver, and stainless steel, but these materials typically are only etched a couple thousandths of an inch deep. However, there is still a small market for etched printing plates. These were traditionally zinc, thicker material, and a deeper etch. Last time I had this work done (admittedly, twenty years ago) the plate material was being changed over to a magnesium alloy, which is both lighter in color and more corrosion resistant than zinc. When I saw the Lackawanna badge pictured above, at first I thought it was an etching; it looks just like the magnesium plate material. The etched plate could be used as a pattern for casting, but I don't see the advantage, as the etchings were relatively inexpensive, and given the film and set-up charges will be the same for either one or as many as will fit on a sheet, I don't see any advantage to doing so.

All that should be needed to do the job is full size black and white art for one badge, the etcher should be able to replicate this multiple times to fill the sheet. Traditionally, areas to be left un-etched, like the raised letters, were rendered in black, but I'm sure with the widespread use of computer graphics these days, reversing the colors is no big deal.

As I said, it's been twenty years since I had any need for this, but a quick Google search shows the outfit I used is still around:


Fyco Photo Engraving
100 Woodview Drive
Elgin, IL 60120-6800
(847) 742-5812

Unfortunately, no web site, but the Google search brings up multiple hits for companies that should be able to do this sort of work.

Nowdays, with 3-D printers available, it will be just a little setup work to scan in the original and do the necessary steps to produce the design for printing.

Your choice of plastic or metal.

Stay tuned - you can now make fully auto AR-15 parts via a 3-D printer, so a cap badge, reverser handle, switch key, lantern, Winton 201-A prime mover can't be too far away.

Yeah, not a good idea to make declarations like that. Making an automatic weapons is a violation of the National Firearm Act and a felony. Doing so would subject someone to a substantial fine and lots of prison time. The ATF takes this very seriously and they do troll the internet looking for people who suggest bucking the law...

Lee - there is a lawyer in Texas that has already publicly produced the parts and is testing the law under the guise of he is not selling it just for personal use.

Probably like producing the specs for an atom bomb on the internet - and will end up the same way.

BUT, let's not get into this topic here. I was just stating a fact, no moral, ethical or common sense pontificating was intended!

Lee,

I know I am going to go slightly off topic, but...

This is one of my major gripes with the current media, they have convinced people weapons are not the type they really are. An AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle (1 bullet per pull of the trigger and it loads the next round into the chamber, then waits for the USER to release and repull the trigger), a M-16 is the Military version and is an automatic rifle (1 pull of the trigger releases multiple rounds). To add to the debate the AR-15 was produced and released before the M-16 was built for the military, as people keep calling the AR a civilian assault rifle, where the M-16 really is the modified for the military version of a Civilian Rifle. Per the military definition, an AR-15 is NOT an assault rifle, an assault rifle must be an automatic a.k.a. machine gun.

The real problem with 3D printing gunparts is that a person needs a federal gunsmith license to sell the parts. A person can only make gunparts legally for their own use, kind-a like copies of CDs, Tapes and LPs.

Now back to our original discussion...
Rich C.

Furthermore--and actually an angle relevant to this discussion--the gun parts created so far, according to sources I've been reading, DO NOT hold up to repeated weapons use and repeated loadings. They're, thus far, useful primarily to make a point of issue for potential court/legal challenges.

As I've been led to believe, 3D "printing" would be useful, in the context of the above discussion, for making a pattern of a new or recreated design for making multiple castings, but not for making originals to hang on the hat.

I know the difference between each. I own an AR-15 and shot plenty of M-16s (and darned near every other type of small arms) as an active-duty US Army officer.
I'm going to re-quote the same passage again, highliting a very important part:
Even to a gunsmith, "full auto" generally refers to a weapon that will fire more than one bullet each time you pull the trigger (and will stop firing as soon as you let go of the trigger, a key point because there have been legal auto weapons in the past that would fire the entire magazine from one trigger pull). That is illegal and the ATF trolls the internet looking for such passages. I know this for sure because I know an ATF agent who does exactly that.
If someone suggested any other illegal activity here, people would leap all over them. I know it's not RR-related, but it's a very important thing if you don't want an AFT agent on a slow week to show up at your house. It DOES happen, people.
I'm done with this topic, you either get it or you don't...

Closer to the original topic, here's another source:

http://debco-mfg.com/

Actually, 3DP is a very good way to make a reproduction one-off hat badge in a material that can be done by 3DP. They don't take the mechanical stress one would find an a firearm or other machine subject to wide mechanical stresses and variation.

Of course, stamping is a great way to reproduce things made by stamping, provided you intend to make enough to justify the cost of the die.

dave