The Ship Model Forum

Thanks!

While it took less time to design the powder hoist portion of this system, it still took 6 days to do it. It is singularly, the most complex SketchUp work I've ever done. This still conforms to my goal for each project I take to push the envelope further and keep increasing my skills. It had all the same ambiguous drawings as the projectile side, plus some more complex geometry, little links that had to be ferreted out as to their purpose and destination. And finally, I had to keep imagining how it was going to print and ensure that every surface and every little appendage was fully solid and attached properly to all the other parts so it would print with integrity. When it was all done, I did one final fit into the master turret drawing and found that the powder hoists were spaced about 2" on each side too wide. Luckily, moving them inwards didn't create any new problems. They have to slip between the main frame rails. I could have trimmed the rails during assembly, but that seemed like cheating.

I incorporated that fully-modeled diamond-plate floor with the hoists to facilitate wrapping the plates around the protruding hoists and to add another piece of structure to keep their spacing.

This view shows the lower portion of the projectile hoist with their respective access doors. I modeled one open with projectile ready to go up to the gun house and the other closed. This is an accurated depiction since its upper doors are open with another projectile ready to be placed in the gun tray.

[attachment=3]5IP Hoist Comp Frt.jpg[/attachment]

Those manual handwheels are going to be very delicate. If they don't hold up when printing with the entire assembly, I'll print some separately and add them later.

The reverse view shows the powder hoists and the little aspect that pokes through the floor. There is an operating foot pedal that's also above the floor plates.

[attachment=2]5IP Hoist Comp rear.jpg[/attachment]

I learned how to find and edit materials in the V-Ray rendering engine that's part of my new SketchUp installation. It's more complex to operate then my previous add-on renderer, Podium. It's also more sophisticated, faster (much faster) and does a much better rendering job.

I gave up on the idea of printing this beast in one piece. Instead I designed the two pieces so they will index together during assembly. I did this by adding some more structural steel at the bottom tying the two powder hoists to the central column. While this is not prototypical, I took artistic license to make the model work.

I also split the floor panels and added a lip to align and give purchase to the asembly joint.

[attachment=1]Screenshot 2023-12-09 at 4.19.19 PM.png[/attachment]

Here's the mess of supports needed to set it up for printing.

[attachment=0]Screenshot 2023-12-10 at 11.41.32 AM.png[/attachment]

It's on the printer now and will be done after 10pm. I'll know then whether it's successful or not. Then I'll have to figure out how to remove all those supports without wrecking anything. Wish me luck.

This was the last of the really complicated parts on the project. The rest is downhill.

It took over a week to draw the projectile hoist. It's complex, ambiguous in parts, had penetrations and curve cuts that needed shape cutting, and finally, required some major rework to get it as right as I can.

The rework was this.

[attachment=3]Screenshot 2023-12-04 at 10.25.54 PM.png[/attachment]

This central core had gotten so messed up with multiple diameter layered in on each other which created voids, reversed faces, and other anomalies that I couldn't get a decent solid image on the slicer in my tests. I finally bit the bullet and stopped screwing around with it and redrew it from scratch. This time it was perfect. All the discontinuities that plagued me were now gone.

I also figured out the routing of the handwheel linkages. Speaking of handwheels, I wanted to make sure that they would print perfectly since they're quite frail even when perfect. If there were joints that weren't true, it wouldn't hold up. That took a couple of hours.

And speaking of hours, it took an entire afternoon to get the doors right. Again, when I put them on the slicer surfaces were showing up as invisible. The "Solid Inspector 2" add-in kept showing surface interface irregularities. I when inside the object using the x-ray function and removed all non-functional surfaces and made sure all the face surfaces were perfectly tight. I was rewarded with beautiful objects in the slicer.

One of my other forums is SketchUp's. I post this in its entirety in five forums. The readers in the SU forum are expert artists and offer good suggestions. One was to not scale the 1:1 object in a 1:48 file, but instead, just load the 1:1 object in the slicer and do the scaling right there saving a whole range of copy/paste operations. With this massive file, those take a lot of time. Another suggestion was to set a camera scene facing directly at the tiny 1:1 component so with a click of the track pad, the 1:1 is instantly brought into the center of view. Otherwise, I have to keep zooming in many times to get the object to fill the screen. These zooms take a lot of time with big files.

Here's the finished object Front view:

[attachment=2]5IP Projectile Hoist Comp Frt.png[/attachment]

And the rear view:

[attachment=1]5IP Projectile Hoist Comp rear.png[/attachment]

I'm going to attempt to print at least this part of the hoist system as a single part. Here's the part sitting on the slicer. It seems perfect. Will all of the intricacies print... who can tell. I only know when it's finished. That's the fun of 3D printing.

[attachment=0]Screenshot 2023-12-04 at 11.13.36 PM.png[/attachment]

I can now work on the powder hoist part of the system. This should be easier since there is no fuze setting linkage, only a single channel per side, sinpler doors, etc. There is one complication; the chute follows a curve and seems to change diameter.

It was 11 days ago when I put this complex sighting system on the printer. Since then I did five different runs. Each had it share of problems from total failures when my build plate has lost its holding power, to failures due to mistakes in my design or drawing execution. Today I was able to get a fully usable part. I had to make some minor fixes using Bondic, but all in all it will do well. Meanwhile, I had designed and drew the Sight Setter's Regulator and incorporated it into the part's design and printed it as an integral unit. The Sight Setter's Regulator adjusts the two telescope prisms so they match the aiming data sent down by the gun directors. In normal operations all of these settings would directly operate the guns, but everything has a manual backup.

This is viewing from the mount front. The front armor shield normally hides all this, but I will cut it away so some of it will be visible. It's pretty cool in its complexity.

[attachment=9]5IP Sighting Sys Comparison 1.jpg[/attachment]

And the rear view that will be seen from the mount's interior.

[attachment=8]5IP Sighting Sys Comparison 2.jpg[/attachment]

After doing a trial fit I was rewarded with a pretty good result.

[attachment=7]5IP Sighting System Test Front.jpg[/attachment]

And the interior view.

[attachment=6]5IP Sighting System Test Rear.jpg[/attachment]

While this was printing I designed the Fuze Setter's Regulator. This assembly is also connected to the front complexity, but is very close to the starboard side gun mount. I decided to print it as a separate part and will install it after installing the guns so I can get the trunnion cap in place. This device is used to translate the firing timing from the gun directors into the fuze setting system in the projectile hoist. It was mostly obsoleted when the proximity fuze was introduced later in WW2.

[attachment=5]5IP Fuze Setter's Regulator.jpg[/attachment]

I've created masters for decals for all of these systems to simualate their dials.

I redesigned the acess doors with the hinges in the open position to show the insides and how the system were maintained. I also redesigned the optics hood with the open shutter so the shutter had more beef in the hinge so this fragile part had a good survival chance.

[attachment=4]5IP Open Side Panel.jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=3]5IP Telescope Shields.jpg[/attachment]

I'm now working on another complex unit, the projectile hoist. There are two of them, but they are not mirrored. They extend over two decks since they start in the Ready Service Room (RSR) before the gun house, pass through the center and end up in the gun house. I'm creating them this way. There are some structural steel cross-braces that support them. They do not go to the RSR's floor. They hang above it and the whole deal rotates with the turret. Unlike the big guns where the entire deck rotates to keep the hoist aligned with their respective guns, in the smaller 5" application, the hoist rotates, but the RSR is stationary.

[attachment=2]5IP Projectile Hoist.png[/attachment]

It's very complicated to created curves on already curved surfaces in SU. You can't do the simple push-pull extrude operation because that only works when the two sides are parallel. To cut a curve into another curve, you have to created a negatively-shaped "cutter" and use it with an extension called BoolTools2, to remove the interferece area and create the shaped surface. You can also do this directly in SU with "Intersect Faces", but you have a lot of clean up work since it gives you the cutting line, but leaves an open space that you must hand draw all the interconnecting lines to create a closed solid.

[attachment=1]5IP Proj Hoist Upper Works.png[/attachment]

While doing all this I finally finished that cute little n-gauge display layout that's going into the Newtown Hardware House in Newtown, PA. I was able to accurately model four Newtown buildings. These were drawn in SU using actual and Google Earth images.

[attachment=0]NHH160 Finished 1.jpg[/attachment]

I have the Trumpeter 1:32 F35b on layaway at Scale Reproductions, Inc. I was waiting for the most complex F35 to finally come out in 1:32. While I'm not a big Trumpeter fan, they're the only one making this model now, so I'm going to get it. It will be 2024 when I start it so stay tuned.

Just a quick progress report. I've spent over a week working on the elevating mechanism and still not done. Nothing about this one is easy to understand or easy to draw. What makes matters worse is the real ship, most of this stuff is buried in the front of the turret up against the lower portions of the armored front and you couldn't get near it to make any real world measurements. I draw it in a separate file, at 100x full size. I then copy it, reduce it to 1:1 scale and export it to the master file. I then fit it to the gun stands and the shell sides. Nothing on the part is a right angles to the SU main axes. I have to figure where the parts need be separated for effective printing.

[attachment=3]5IP ELEV WIP.png[/attachment]

[attachment=2]5IP ELEV WIP 2.png[/attachment]

This is a view from the rear which is kind of what you'd see if you actually went into the turret.

[attachment=1]5IP ELEV WIP REAR VIEW.png[/attachment]

All of this is created with images like this:

[attachment=0]Sight Telescopes.png[/attachment]

Work continues on designing the very complex (for me) Elevation Station. This assembly includes all the input controls, the output shafts, the optical telescope and its linkage, the elevation gear housing and the connecting shafts to the other gun and Sight Setters station. There are no right angles! Making it more complex is the coupling casting that ties the elevating regulator column to the gear housing. This thing. This, BTW, was not correct as drawn here.

[attachment=6]5IP Gear Bracket.png[/attachment]

The reason for all this confusion for me was none of my referece drawings showed the entire part, nor were there any that gave me a true understanding of its geometry. It took well over an hour to get this far. I even sent out the word for help from some other SketchUp, but didn't get a response. Here's what I had to go on.

[attachment=5]5IP Gear Bracket 2.png[/attachment]

[attachment=4]5IP Gear Bracket 3.png[/attachment]

[attachment=3]5IP Gear Bracket 1.png[/attachment]

I persisted and eventually landed on a shape that works and looks credible. Whether it's actually correct is a totally different question.

I then took this assembly with the beginnings of the gear housing and put it into position in the gun house on the master drawing. This is what I found.

[attachment=2]5IP Elev Gear Fit Challenge.png[/attachment]

The gear house (and associated shafting) was too low. I also found from a verticle perspective drawing of the turret interior, that the shafting an its associated apparatus were to far left. This is all the result of not having a single orthographic diagram of the equipment design or location. Some are perspective and others are isometric, but locating accuracy was very difficult to achieve. It just a series of aproximations.

I'm satisfied that I've got it right... enough... for now.

[attachment=1]5IP Elev Gear Align Rev VIew.png[/attachment]

[attachment=0]5IP Elev Gear Aligned.png[/attachment]

The Trainer's station is similar in design to this one and I'm going to use the same "casting" to join it to the other gun's elevating housing. There is another ambiguous part that I need to design. It sits on the gun side of the housing near the bottom and contains a ton of complexity of which I can make no sense. Problem is when I enlarge the drawings to bring out of the detials they disappear since the images were screen prints of scans of a manual and have no resolution when magnified. Again, it will be mostly quess work. I do have a picture of the Trainer's station with this component that shows more detail. I can cannabalize off that one.

Good work and glad that you have been able to tune in your printer settings as well as your supports. It's not a push button system and requires much experimentation and experience!

Back to the ship.

My first prints of the elevation and training pump systems was okay, but a couple of details didn't form and it bugged me. Here's the first attempt.

[attachment=4]5IP Turret Pumps First run.jpg[/attachment]

You probably can't find the errors, but I know they were there. I tried them on to see how they looked sitting in the framing. And they looked swell.

[attachment=3]5IP Elev Pump Test Fit.jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=2]5IP Training Pump Test Fit.jpg[/attachment]

When I went back and evaluated the support scheme, I found that I misplaced the tiny support on the upper side of the detail, not the bottom-facing apex. This caused the detail to not form correctly until the build reached where the support was. This is support skills 101: the support goes at the bottom-most point what would start to form and create an island. There's a moving line in the slicer that helps you identify this contact point. In this case, I missed it a bit.

When I repositioned the errant supports I got a really nice print. I also moved some supports or made them smaller where they were difficult to remove without damaging the model.

[attachment=1]5IP Pump Run 2 Motor End.jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=0]5IP Pump Run 2.jpg[/attachment]

Those piping details are very, very fine. The phos-bronze wire is showing where the links are going to connect to the regulating pedestal. They will not be this long. I pre-"drilled" the holes in the drawing so I could easily open them up with a 0.032" drill.

The new setting is amazing. It's like learning to 3D print all over again. I'm also reprinting the foot rungs since the new setting will make a truer and stronger part, plus a less warped base that I'm using as a drill jig.

I also finished the elevation hydraulic system. Both are now printed and with my new settings ALL of the piping reproduced perfectly AND it's much stronger to handling that it was with my previous under-exposed setting.

The motor, reservoir and gear box was the same for the Training Hydraulics as the Elevation Hydraulics, but the output side was different. Furthermore, they're mirror images of each other. I'm now working on the human interface portion of these systems. They difficult to draw because they have lots of angles and curved/blended edges, neither of which is something SU is particularly good at.

[attachment=2]5IP Elev Pump Comp 1.png[/attachment]

[attachment=1]5IP Elev Pump Comp 2.png[/attachment]

[attachment=0]5IP Elev Pump in Place.png[/attachment]

At that scale the piping should print well, these are similar piping wise to smoke generators I have printed before. Good research finding out about this ancillary equipment, often hard to work all of this stuff out.

Cheers: Tom

Work progresses...

I designed the Training Gear hydraulic plant. This sits down between the girders on the gun house's right side behind the Trainer's seat and regulator. Luckily this one is drawn in profile in one of the cross-section images I found so I could get the profiles down. I've scaled these drawings so they are representing correct lateral dimensions.

There are two output shafts that extend out of the end and I probably will make these out of correctly sized wire. It was gratified after finishing the drawing that it fit perfectly in the space it was supposed to. I have an add-on that facilitates making those neat curved edges. Also, SU is pretty easy to draw complicated pipe runs once you know what you're doing with connecting lines and adding curves to them.

[attachment=1]Training Pump.png[/attachment]

Here it is dropped into position.

[attachment=0]5IP Gun House w Training Pump.png[/attachment]

Next up will be to design this units hydraulic counterpart, the Elevation Gear Hydraulic Plant.

As in the big gun's turret, all the systems are driven by hydraulic motors with the pressure generated in a remote motor/pump setup. In the case of the big gun, the motor/pump (A-end) was physically remote from the hydraulic motor (B-end), but in the case of this smaller turret complex, the motor/pump was directly in line with it's b-end hydraulic motor.

With my newly refined printer setup, I have no doubt that all that delicate piping will render. It should look pretty good.

B2010,

Your final product looks very good. Getting to that point, was obviously a bit of a hard road. I can fully understand - been there, done that. Once again - you're working on a 5" gun [b]MOUNT[/b], not turret!!!

As I'm into the 3D design/printing, etc. I will comment on something that may help you out - when I got my new printer earlier this year, I was experimenting with other resins as I think I mentioned a while back. I was also at that time starting the layout of supports and using a raft. I found that it was not only unnecessary but taking up height space not to mention resin use. If I were you, I would turn off the raft feature and go back to individual supports with their own base. The thing to make sure of is that the bases all join, and it will then form a raftlike base without the extra height and resin usage. In doing so, I would also increase the supports to perhaps Medium and then adjust the diameters accordingly.

I'm also experiencing a bit of resin curing inconsistency in my large-scale director prints and will use your comments regarding the exposure time as a reference. I did slightly increase the E.T. last week, but will make a larger adjustment for my next round of prints.

As for your HVAC ductwork, if you had any drawings showing this ventilation system, they should have had the duct sizes on them. Plan view drawings would show them with width x height. Elevation drawing show the height x width.

Hope this helps,

It's been a while since I updated this post. I have been working on five projects at once; three of which are commission. This technically is a commission although I'm not charging anything for it. When I last left you, I had to rebuild my 3D printer. I installed a new LCD panel which went well although more trouble than I thought. It's printing well now. I also found out recently, when testing my exposure setting with a new test article (Starship from 3DRS) that I was under-exposing my resin by 20% since I got this machine more than a year and a half ago. When I initially calibrated it I used a simple flat calibration piece and derived 2.5s per layer. With this new part, 2.5s didn't work. I printed a test from 2.1s to 3.1s by twos. 3.1 was it! It explained why I was getting such warpage and support breakage. When exposure is too short, the resin doesn't have enough cure time to develop structural integrity. The warpage is due to the amount of hardening that still needed to take place in post-curing. And the support breakage (a resultant delamination) was due to the resin being too weak to perform.

During all this, I was designing the ventilation system that goes into the gun house. It's a tricky design since the drawing is unscaled and undimensioned.

[attachment=9]Ventilaton System Layout.png[/attachment]

I had designed the overhead I-beams (wrong, I might add) and then Ryan came through with a passal of images showing the entire ceiling of the gun house (also good views of the ready service room and magazine). I have four beams. There are only two. I also had lateral beams. There are none. I also needed to know how the cross vent passed around the I-beams. They don't pass, they go through. Makes sense since head room is so limited. I drew the assembly and decided to print it all in one go, I-beams included to ensure it all lines up. I did't design the blower system yet as that will be a separate part to glue in.

[attachment=8]Screenshot 2023-10-16 at 6.27.58 PM.png[/attachment]

This was the image that told me what's what.

[attachment=7]IMG_4488 2.JPG[/attachment]

I placed my assembly into the gun house drawing and kept moving parts of it around until the ducting cleared the guns and nestled into the I-beam.

[attachment=5]5IP GH w Vent Sys~.png[/attachment]

I scaled it .021, exported as an .STL file and loaded it into the slicer. My first setup used a 100% raft coverage area. The Tall aspect on that little raft started failing about 1/3 through the print. I could see it detaching from the build plate since the plate has risen enough to be clear of the resin level in the vat. I stopped the print knowing it would just be a waste of resin.

[attachment=6]5IP Ceiling System First Setup.png[/attachment]

I redesigned the arrangement with a more substantial raft. I am having no problem with build plate adhesion and blamed the strange setup for the lost of attachment.

[attachment=4]5IP Ceiling System 2nd Setup.png[/attachment]

This will off the machine later tonight so I won't know if it's good until tomorrow. Once the ventilation is squared away, I'm going to dig into all the electro-hydraulics in the gun house, and then onto the ready reserve room below. With exposure change, I'm much more confident about fine details and small piping rendering nicely. I may reprint some of the more dubious parts I've produced so far. I haven't glued or painted anything yet so it's just time and some resin.

All that said, today, I decided to look around more in the gun house and found that my downrunning duct was cutting right through the gun.

[attachment=3]5IP Vent Problem.png[/attachment]

This was NO GOOD. It took a while to fit it all in since not only did the duct have to clear the gun, but the duct had to enter inside the mounting ring to reach the handling room below. And I'm still not sure how the duct gets down there since Ryan's images didn't answer the question. I took my best shot and re-configured the ducting to clear all the obstacles.

After reconfiguring, it looks like this:

[attachment=2]Screenshot 2023-10-17 at 12.17.06 PM.png[/attachment]

[attachment=1]Screenshot 2023-10-17 at 12.17.18 PM.png[/attachment]

The print just finished and it's in the ultrasonic. I also took the time to draw the blower assembly. Since the printer is running so well I decided to go for it. It may still not be right, but I'm going to live with it. I cleaned it and post-cured it and it looks really nice. All the details around the blower rendered perfectly including the i-beam formed motor base and it's hex-head bolts.

[attachment=0]5IP Finished Ducting.jpg[/attachment]

Now I just have to figure out how/when to shoehorn this into the turret assembly. The front vent opening (the one that runs through the beams) looks like it might be where the curved shield seal system it. If I have to modify it on the model, I'll do that. I don't feel like using more resin to make a fourth one. Meanwhile, the new exposure is wonderful. All of the supports were intact and doing their job, even some very fine ones.

Thanks for all the correct terminology. And for the encouragement.

I'm giving Ryan a choice of how to display the innards of the gun house. My first approach would be a cutaway, but while not to difficult to execute, it doesn't show all that much unless you turn it into Swiss Cheese. Ryan just texted me. It will be the cutaway version which follows the theme of the 16" project.

[attachment=6]5IP Gun House Cutaway.jpg[/attachment]

The second approach could mimic yesterday's photo showing the entire armored casing in the air above the open gun house. This would show almost everything, but would have to be suspended above and it would raise the enclosure height. I could use acrylic rods to support. Lighting would require some visible cabling. In order to raise the casing, the guns need to be elevated, as they are in the photo.

[attachment=5]5IP Gun House Suspended.jpg[/attachment]

The last is the most elegant and also the most challenging: making the forward parts of the gun house out of clear acrylic. I would leave the curved wall as it is. While I have clear resin, optically it wouldn't be very good and not any value. Acrylic is very clear and shows no distortion. Gluing it together so it really clean is the first challenge. The second is cutting out the small parts with true and square edges.

[attachment=4]5IP Gun House Clear.jpg[/attachment]

So I'm also asking all of you. Which do you prefer?

I finished cutting out all the casing parts and trued up all the edges. I cut the telescope holes in the right and left sides, the ofc's hatch opening, and the remaining access hatch opening. I clamped both angled face pieces together so I could finish shape the gun slots so they aligned perfectly. I drilled a series of small holes to locate the cutting lines and then used an appropriately-sized drill to create nice rounded corners. I then used the Dremel with router to remove most of the stock and finished with needle files.

[attachment=3]5IP Telescope Layout.jpg[/attachment]

Here's all the parts ready to be assembled.

[attachment=2]5IP Gun Mount Parts.jpg[/attachment]

Since I don't know which version Ryan will pick, I did some future planning... While all the casing parts were in the flat, and they're all accurate, I clamped them to a nice piece of 0.080" acrylic that I had laying around and traced all these parts so I'm ready to cut them out if we go that way. If fact, regardless of Ryan's choice I may cut out all those parts and see how well I can finish them. Having it clear would be pretty neat. You can barely see the scribed lines, but they're there. Now that I DO KNOW Ryan's choice, I may cut out these parts anyway since the acrylic is damage in that area due to all my scratch lines.

[attachment=1]5IP Acrylic Layout.jpg[/attachment]

I also went at the back of the curved wall and removed that lump. I used a cutting disk to remove most of the stock and then my micro-power sander to finish. I may add some filler to hide all the tool marks.

[attachment=0]5IP Real Panel Re-surface.jpg[/attachment]

With the acrylic in the wings, I can continue to construct the regular casing. I won't do the cutaway until after it's built if i go that route, so I won't be getting too far out over my skis.

My new LCD panel arrives today and I've already stripped the old one out of the machine in anticipation. I hope it comes with a new under class plate since I cracked it a bit getting it out of it's depression. It too is held with adhesive stirps. Should be running next week. It has to be running next week. It's on the critical path of two major projects.

Y'all have a nice weekend!

Good luck! It seem with 3D printing it's called 3D as one of the axes only has one side... I finality one arrives at what works, sometimes by iteration. The mount carried no officer, the mount captain was probably a GM 1 (E6). The MK 37 director carried an officer, the scratch forums Dr Phil was one on a cruiser.

I find myself often guided by hindsight, a beauty of 3D printing.

Keep up the good work!

I was in the process of writing a response to the many comments that I neglected to respond to, hit something on my MacBook Pro 16 and "poof" my browser reloaded wiping out what I wrote and all tabs that were open. I neglected to respond because I hadn't checked the box to give me notificatoins of responses and I do command/page down to go the last post and make a reply. I post the identical thread on four other forums, each with a different audience, so I tend to take shortcuts and just copy the first one (Fine Scale Modelers Forum) and paste into the others. FSM's forum is the most onerous requiring me to upload the images into an image service and then link into the post, but the other three let me just cut and paste the entire thread, images and all, into their sites with no extra work. This site, however, also has a unique image handling process, so I paste the text in and then reconnect to images in my files.

A question was asked about part flexibility when coming off the printer. I add 20% Siraya Tenacious to my Elegoo ABS-like gray resin. I was tired of having parts shatter when dropped on the workshop's concrete floor. The Tenacious is a fully flexible resin and really helps. It adds to exposure time. Re: exposure time, I will experiment with shortening the time a bit based on the recommendation.

I had a real challenge deciding on how to situate the gun body in the printer, but I'm not sure that position caused the disfigurement in the loading trough. I think it was drawing errors on my part. The main part of the gun slide was a hodge podge of pieces and there may have been some voids/discontinuities that caused the print problem. I'm going to attempt to actually lay in some brass shim stock into the curve to make it actually metal AND cover up any surface irregularities. We'll see if that worked.

Positioning it vertically may have solve that problem, but could have made others with the gun shield that was integral to the part.

The new LCD arrives tomorrow and I'll install it on Monday. My spouse has imposed specific guidelines on my model work. No work after 5pm and nothing on the weekends. Left up to my own volition, I'd eat and sleep down there. It's a small price to pay to be allowed to build all the cool stuff I do. If you ever saw the movie, "The Fastest Indian" with Anthony Hopkins… He was a motorcycle enthusiast from Austrailia who had this ancient Indian bike that he lovingly made into a racing bike. His dream was to run it at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. He had to work onboard a merchant ship to pay his passage, and did indeed break the world record in his bike's class (almost died in the process). I'm relating this because, he lived in the his shop that was a quonset hut. He had his bed there. I envision that an unmarried me would have that kind of existance. It was a true story.

I spent almost my whole day on the drawing board (well... virtual drawing board). I'm working on several fronts at the same time. Today's work centered on figuring just what kind of cutaway will be needed to show the magazine buried three decks down, while showing some of the intervening spaces. It's not easy and construction will also be a challenge. I also scoped out the wooden base and the plexiglass case. The base will require some lead time so I'll have to get that constructed earlier than one might think. My last base was done by a dear old friend who lives in Albuquerque. He was the bass player in my band and an exceptional woodworker. I'm not sure I want to task him to build another. He's in the process of scratch-building a stand up double bass. Just to clamp the skins requires 54 screw clamps which he just started constructing from scratch also. He's just as passionate about what he does as I am. (or obsessed...depending who you ask.)

There will be lighting to illuminate the shadowed areas. There will aslo be compartments under gun ready service room. The main deck will be planked. There will be no furnishings on the intermediate decks. I think it's pretty neat that V-Ray renders materials that are loaded from my older rendering engine, Podium. I renders much faster than Podium for these test runs.

[attachment=6]Model Display Test.jpg[/attachment]

It's one thing to cut openings in a SketchUp drawing. It's quite another to cut them in styrene assemblies. In some cases the former is easier, but in others the latter is.

Before I could start gluing together the turret parts cut yesterday, I had to do a few more design steps. I wanted to cut the opennings for the side access hatches and telescopes while still in the flat. I also want to drill for the foot rungs. I also located the officer's hatch on that small flat roof piece. I was able to cut one hatch opening and clean it up. The printed part fits nicely once I spent some time with needle files to finalize the shape. The hatch drops into the opening and the hinges sit on the surface. If I want to open one of these, I'll have to reprint with a different hinge orientation.

BTW: In handling the hatch, the handhold broke off. I'm going to be replacing a lot of these with 0.020 wire.

[attachment=5]5IP More Templates.jpg[/attachment]

Here's a closer look at each.

The left side with the hatch out of the opening.

[attachment=4]5iP Access Hatch Cut.jpg[/attachment]

If I would have planned ahead a bit, I would have included these details in the patterns I used yesterday. 20/20 hindsight. "If my foresight was as good as my hindsight, I'd be better by a damn sight!"

Here's the next pattern with the telescopes for the left side. The left side has two openings: the forward one is for the pointer's position, and the rear for the sight checker. The sight checker uses that telescope mostly for training purposes to evaluate how well the pointer and trainer and managing their positions. I will be 3D printing the hoods for these telescopes. Their flanges go around the perimeter of these openings.

[attachment=3]5IP Telescope Opening Pattern.jpg[/attachment]

And here's the officer's hatch opening. I'm going to fabricate the counter-balance cylinder out of metal.

[attachment=2]5IP Ofcs Hatch Pattern.jpg[/attachment]

There's one more series of parts that's required in gun house construction; There are flat shield on each side of the curved gun shields that seal the curved surface from environmental incursions especially seawater. The curve of the shield covers the curved gun shield. There are two per gun side and then a bottom piece to tie it together. The upper edge is connected to the turret roof.

[attachment=1]5IP Shield Seal Patterns.jpg[/attachment]

I used the gun shield in SketchUp in a sectioned drawing to capture both the curve size and position AND the interface with the roof. I can be pretty sure that this works since all the prints were produced from the same drawing. While there's some minor size change in the printing process, it's really insignificant.

Here's an interesting shot of refitting the armor on a 5" turret when refitting the Iowa in the 1980s. Based on this picture, I need to slightly change the lower left corner of the telescope opening. It's not a curve, it's just an angular cut. In this image the guns (without barrels) are fully elevated. Really shows how the gun house fastenes to the main frame. Also good views of how the pointer's machinery is fastened to the frame.

[attachment=0]Screenshot 2023-09-07 at 3.47.47 PM.png[/attachment]

I would agree with Hank about the platen pushing down on some debris in the vat. The usual issue will be a pinhole or a distortion of the FEP. Without the intermediary protective sheet on our original printers, this resulted in a destroyed LED as resin cured to its surface.

As to the thin armor just below the main deck armor, a shell striking but not penetrating can spall fragments off the back side of the armor and this was intended to contain such fragments. The only US Battleship to suffer a considerable number of large caliber shell strikes was SODAK. No penetrations of the main armor was made. As these were at close range no plunging fire was experienced. Later she also took a 500 lb bomb on a forward turret without damage, though Captain Gatch was injured by fragments. I am not sure if SODAK had the same exact armor arrangement though supposedly the Iowa's were modeled safer he pattern.

As to the breech mechanism printing, perhaps orienting them vertically would result in a cleaner loading tray.

Ambitious and high quality project! Thanks fro sharing. Tom

B2010,

Just a guess, but it appears to me that when you ran your last print run, the parts that failed (i.e. - dropped off the build platform into the vat) then became a small mass on the bottom of the vat (FEP) and caused the build plate to press into the FEP on the succeeding print cycles thus cracking the LCD screen in the process. On both my older Phrozen printer and now my current AnyCubic printer, the machine makes a very loud & noticeable noise when it runs into an interference such as this event would have provided. I've had this happen when I've NOT cleaned the vat properly from one print run to the next, [i]assuming[/i] that everything is clear in the vat when it (in actuality) is not. I now use the plastic scrapper after each print run to clean the FEP of any obstructions that may be there - esp. if there is a part that did not print on the previous run. Of course, draining the vat entirely after each run will also show what's there or not.

Hope this helps,

Finished up with the guns for a while until painting and assembly. Added or fixed the broken levers and handles. I permanently glued the gun mounts to the frame. It's okay to do that now since it makes a stable assembly for further work on all the ancillary equipment. I also got the rammer hydraulic lines in place and replaced the first long one with a more properly shaped one.

[attachment=6]5IP Mounts on.jpg[/attachment]

[attachment=5]5IP Mounts on 2.jpg[/attachment]

I cut out my gun house patterns, applied a light coat of MicroMark Pressure Sensitive Adhesive and stuck them onto a large piece of 0.040" styrene sheet. This represents about 2" in scale, close to the scale 2.5" armor on the gun house. Instead of using the right and left side gun house templates, I just cut one and used it to trace the other side. I then clamped them together and sanded their edges lightly so they identical. When possible, I used the corners and edges of the sheet for at least one of the sides.

[attachment=4]5IP Gun House Cutting.jpg[/attachment]

Here's a closer look at the gun house side...

[attachment=3]5IP Gun House Parts 1.jpg[/attachment]

All four of the top pieces had to be exactly the same width and the gun slots had to line up. So I used one of them to trace the other three, even though I had drawn them and they equal in the drawing. This eliminated the slight variations that would crop up depending on which side of the line I was cutting. I got most of them cut out today. I tried the sides onto the 3D printed curved back wall and was rewarded that the corner rabbett that I printed perfectly blended with the styrene sides. I don't have any drawing stuck onto the side piece that I traced, but I will need the location of the side access hatch. For the actual hatch cuts I will trace the real one. I'm also going to located and drill all the holes for the foot rungs while it's all in the flat. I have to do some finish sanding on the edges and the gun slots. I also have to sand bevels on the mating surfaces of the angle pieces so they mate properly. All joints will have 3/16" styrene angle as does the prototype.

[attachment=2]5IP Gun House Parts.jpg[/attachment]

Meanwhile, while printing parts for another project a calamity happened. After a major print failure... and I mean "major" in the sense that the only thing that printed on the build plate was the base raft. All the rest was a series of variously shaped blobs stuck to the FEP teflon film at the resin vat's bottom.

[attachment=1]Big Print Failure.jpg[/attachment]

I was able to remove the crap on the bottom without destroying the FEP (I hope), then I looked at the LCD protective plate and saw a series of bad cracks propagating across the LCD. I thought it was the tempered glass protective plate that I bought to protect the delicate LCD below. But when I removed the undamaged cover plate, I realized that the cracks were in the LCD itself. I did a light test and it failed miserably. Half the screen was disfunctional. The cracks are quite obvious in this image. I need to understand why the print failure happened in the first place. I've tried printing this part three times with not very good success before the complete mess that this attempt was.

[attachment=0]LCD Failure.jpg[/attachment]

I ordered a new screen from Amazon which will be delivered soon and I'll install it on Monday and hopefully, all my projects will continue uninterrupted. Elegoo has a new machine out that uses a Texas Instruments DLP chip. This device has been around for a long time and since it projects its pixel image though lenses and mirrors to the resin vat and doesn't get any physical pressure from the z-axis lead screw and stepper motor. It was the plate attempting to compress those hardening lumps on the vat's bottom that caused the damage to the LCD screen. I think my next printer is going to that technology. So this summer I've added a new motherboard, new touch screen and now a new LCD screen. Wish me luck. I can continue to build the sheet work without the printer running, but I really need it.

I found out from Ryan today that the splinter deck is only 30" high, made up a massive series of square compartments with manholes separating each of them. I will only be showing a little bit of that detail. It's only function is too isolate the magazines below from any shrapnal that may attempt to get there from action above. I don't believe any of the Iowas saw any action that involved this structure.

Thanks for the comments!

Hope everyone had a nice Labor Day weekend!

I machined the metal trunnions along with the seal for the trunnion bearings on the real thing. Simple turning operation. The pin size was .147" and I had to deepen the holes on the gun housings to give more meat in the junction. I made the pin's depth is just about .200". I machined the first set using a collett for the 1/4" aluminum stock. The collett did not have a thru-hole, so I had to cut the stock fairly short so it wouldn't extend too far out of the collett. I machined the trunnion pin diamter first and the inner surface of the seal. I then mounted the pin in a three-jaw chuck and finished the outside of the seal face. He I'm test fitting the gun frame onto the pin. My little Taig Lathe is in need of a new motor. The lathe is at least 30 years olds and the motor's bearing are shot. There is about 1/4" end play and it's vibrating like crazy. It's amazing that it's not destroying the cut quality, since the whole machine is vibrating together so the cutter and the stock are also vibrating together. It's just very annoying. I can get a new motor from them for about $160.00.

[attachment=3]5IP Turning Trunnions.jpg[/attachment]

I tried the finished part on the gun in the mount.

[attachment=1]5IP Trunnion Cap Fit.jpg[/attachment]

There are screws around the seals perimeter, but I'm not going that far.

Here are the four trunnion pins/seals. The two with the holes will accept the manual firing mechanism that feeds through the trunnion center so the gun can elevate without disturbing the mechanism. The manual firing mechanism is quite complex due to the interrupt system that prevents firing the gun when it's pointing at any part of the ship. The gun is only firing mechanically when the entire firing system is out of commission. Normally the firing is electrical and remotely activated from the secondary plotting rooms.

[attachment=2]5IP Trunnion Caps.jpg[/attachment]

I finished the metal hydraulic tubing on the guns. I removed the one I did last week. It was not the accurate and needed replacement. I also finished opening up the bore for insertion of the gun barrels and the cylindrical loading tray. The hand levers are breaking off due to all the pushing and shoving I've had to do to fit the guns. I will replace with metal.

[attachment=0]5IP Hydraulic Tubing In.jpg[/attachment]

I need to design more parts before I can go further.