Plastic Metal (i.e., I-Beams) found a company

[Jeffs_Railroad]

Hi all,
Earlier today Tom (MTA) and a few other people asked about plastic Metal parts (i.e., I-beams, etc.). and I mentioned I had a box given to me by a friend. The parts came from Plastruct Inc., 1020 S. Wallace Place, City of Industry, CA 91748. Please note I have no idea if the company still exists, but hope that helps those of you that where looking.

Regards,

 

[Russ Bellinis]

They still exist. They are across the street from the company that I retired from last May. They are one of the leading suppliers for supplies for archetectural model building. The problem with plastic I beams is that the thickness is too much for scale models because of the relative strenght (weakness) of pastic. If you are building a model where you want the I beams to show and be very close to scale thickness, get brass. I can't remember the name of the company that produces brass structural shapes right now. My local hobby shop generally has a nice stock of their product in most of the time. I don't know if they make "I" beams, but I think they make a thin "U" section that could be soldered back to back to make a nice "I" beam.

 

[doctorwayne]

Russ, I think that K&S is the supplier of brass structural shapes. Evergreen also has a pretty good selection of structural styrene, and Plastruct offers both styrene and ABS versions. The styrene is generally of thinner cross-section than the ABS. Northeastern also has (or had) a large selection of structural shapes in basswood, although I always had a lot of trouble working with that stuff. :curse:
In this photo, all of the structural shapes for the crane runway are from Evergreen, while all of the shapes and most of the angle-iron handrails on the overhead crane, built many years ago, are basswood.

Wayne

 

[Russ Bellinis]

Russ, I think that K&S is the supplier of brass structural shapes. Evergreen also has a pretty good selection of structural styrene, and Plastruct offers both styrene and ABS versions. The styrene is generally of thinner cross-section than the ABS. Northeastern also has (or had) a large selection of structural shapes in basswood, although I always had a lot of trouble working with that stuff. :curse:
In this photo, all of the structural shapes for the crane runway are from Evergreen, while all of the shapes and most of the angle-iron handrails on the overhead crane, built many years ago, are basswood.

Wayne

Thanks Wayne. It seems as I get older, I start to post something, and suddenly have a "senior moment" when I can't remember the name of the most familier company!

 

[Jim Krause]

Gee Russ, I thought I was the only one with that problem.

 

[doctorwayne]

What were we talking about?

Wayne