Excellent work so far!
1:32 Animated Model of the Battleship New Jersey Steering Gear Systems (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Builder 2010
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Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
Thanks!
Hi there! Things are still moving along, albeit, slowly. The trip to Charleston was nice, but I came home with a cold that shut down activities for a week. I then spent a ton of hours refining and fixing all the frames. My first print was of a poorly designed/scaled frame and it was scrapped. I started printing frames in earnest this week. Of course, I reprinted an entire set not realizing that my numbering system created some confusion. Yesterday I got frames 190 and 191 finished. Frame 189.5 finished printing last night and is hanging on the machine. That means 3 down and 15 to go. It takes one to one and half loads per print to do the larger foreward frames. As they go aft they get smaller and I can fit more on the printer at one time. Regardless, each print roughly takes a day, so that's about two weeks of just printing frames. My scheme of splitting them to fit on the machine works nicely and epoxying them is a good solution.
Even with going back and editing all the drawings, errors still remained and I had to some minor field mods to get things to fit just right. The longitudinals are designed to nestle exactly into the adjacent frame to feed the illusion that they're continous plate steel. Here are two places where some selective cuts need to be made. The first is where the longitudinals were a tad too high to get under the frame flange.
The other was where I forgot to modify the frame bottom to accommodate the flat plate keel that's going on as a separate part. I'm going to rely on this keel to give structural integrity to the assembly.
In addition to taking a lot of time, the frames are consuming a ton of resin. I'm getting about three to four per kilo. That's $17.00 for 1 kilo bottles. And that's not accounting for bad prints of which I've had a few.
I've been spending a lot of thinking time on how to assemble this beast. I'm not too concerned if the frames' front edges don't align perfectly, but I am concerned to get their square back ends all straight and firmly attached to the back plate. As it stands now, the angular support structure is going to be 1/4" plexiglass with plexiglass brackets and base that's screwed to the wooden sub-base. I've been toying with the idea to make the back plate mirrored plexiglass so the frames will appear as they are all the way across the ship. The challenge with be what to glue them to the mirrored surface that won't make a mess. Even the transparent plexi will be a challenge to glue.
The other challenge is when to paint the frames. Ideally, they should be painted before assembling. That means gluing on painted surfaces which I don't think is structurally sound or scraping paint off of a myriad of contact points. Painting when assembled would be easier, but getting paint down into the intra-frame spaces would be difficult and waste a lot of paint. Frames are going to be painted Rust-oleum flat primer red which looks very much like the red lead paint used in the 1940s. Any suggestions? I don't think people will be able to see where the paint can't reach though.
That wasn't the only project I was working on while the printer was doing its thing. I had a strange leaking problem over the town on my massive O'scale model railroad. It was residue from a dishwasher leak that happened several years ago. I have Dupont Tyvek covering the basement ceiling to lighten the space, stop dust from falling (spiders too), and it provided a path for the leak that saved the town and my custom-built structures. The leak leached sap out of the floor joists and that sap had found its way through the sheeting. I got the plumber and we tore open the ceiling to see if any active leaking was still taking place. There was none, but the ceiling needed repair. I had lots of extra Tyvek.
I was afraid to do the repair myself being 81 years old. When I started this railroad project in Germany when I was on an expatriat assignment with Henkel, I was 54. I attempted to get help, but was striking out and my two grandsons who DID help build this were now 25 and 23 years old respectively and working as mechanical and systems engineers in Chicago. Bums! Left me high and dry.
However, the layout is 42" off the floor. The height enabled me to sit on the layout and reach up to the ceiling with a staple gun. But first all the buildings had to be removed and the remaining platform protected with ply. Where the trains run the layout could support 1,000 pounds, but the village has lighter construction and the ply helped distribute the load (my 182 pound load to be exact).
I was told by a great modeler years ago to "never glue your structures to the layout". You may need to move them, repair them or sell them, of which I've done all three. But first I had to go under the platform on my scooter—a four-castered flower pot stand I bought in Germany—and disconnect all the electrical wiring for the lights. That took at least 8 cycles of getting on the scooter and off.
With a utility knife I debrided all the damaged sheeting.
I was able to handle the Tyvek sheet by myself and staple it up. It's not as pretty as the original work. I did that before there was a layout in the room and ran the sheets in continuous bands in the other direction.
The buildings still removed enables me to repair some things and fill an empty space where I previously sold a building (along with its base). I dreaded climbing on the layout with all the buildings in place to measure that hole to fill it properly, but with everything open that's no longer a challenge. I also cleaned and polished all the fire trucks and am replacing the gutters and downspouts on the firehouse to my upgraded standard. The fire trucks were "actually" weathered due to water that leaked and splashed on them. I also have "street repairs" where the water created a real pothole. Who would have thunk it??
I have several other building designs planned for the now-vacant improved lot in the town. They're all ornate victorian era structures which I'm getting good at creating.
Hi there! Things are still moving along, albeit, slowly. The trip to Charleston was nice, but I came home with a cold that shut down activities for a week. I then spent a ton of hours refining and fixing all the frames. My first print was of a poorly designed/scaled frame and it was scrapped. I started printing frames in earnest this week. Of course, I reprinted an entire set not realizing that my numbering system created some confusion. Yesterday I got frames 190 and 191 finished. Frame 189.5 finished printing last night and is hanging on the machine. That means 3 down and 15 to go. It takes one to one and half loads per print to do the larger foreward frames. As they go aft they get smaller and I can fit more on the printer at one time. Regardless, each print roughly takes a day, so that's about two weeks of just printing frames. My scheme of splitting them to fit on the machine works nicely and epoxying them is a good solution.
Even with going back and editing all the drawings, errors still remained and I had to some minor field mods to get things to fit just right. The longitudinals are designed to nestle exactly into the adjacent frame to feed the illusion that they're continous plate steel. Here are two places where some selective cuts need to be made. The first is where the longitudinals were a tad too high to get under the frame flange.
The other was where I forgot to modify the frame bottom to accommodate the flat plate keel that's going on as a separate part. I'm going to rely on this keel to give structural integrity to the assembly.
In addition to taking a lot of time, the frames are consuming a ton of resin. I'm getting about three to four per kilo. That's $17.00 for 1 kilo bottles. And that's not accounting for bad prints of which I've had a few.
I've been spending a lot of thinking time on how to assemble this beast. I'm not too concerned if the frames' front edges don't align perfectly, but I am concerned to get their square back ends all straight and firmly attached to the back plate. As it stands now, the angular support structure is going to be 1/4" plexiglass with plexiglass brackets and base that's screwed to the wooden sub-base. I've been toying with the idea to make the back plate mirrored plexiglass so the frames will appear as they are all the way across the ship. The challenge with be what to glue them to the mirrored surface that won't make a mess. Even the transparent plexi will be a challenge to glue.
The other challenge is when to paint the frames. Ideally, they should be painted before assembling. That means gluing on painted surfaces which I don't think is structurally sound or scraping paint off of a myriad of contact points. Painting when assembled would be easier, but getting paint down into the intra-frame spaces would be difficult and waste a lot of paint. Frames are going to be painted Rust-oleum flat primer red which looks very much like the red lead paint used in the 1940s. Any suggestions? I don't think people will be able to see where the paint can't reach though.
That wasn't the only project I was working on while the printer was doing its thing. I had a strange leaking problem over the town on my massive O'scale model railroad. It was residue from a dishwasher leak that happened several years ago. I have Dupont Tyvek covering the basement ceiling to lighten the space, stop dust from falling (spiders too), and it provided a path for the leak that saved the town and my custom-built structures. The leak leached sap out of the floor joists and that sap had found its way through the sheeting. I got the plumber and we tore open the ceiling to see if any active leaking was still taking place. There was none, but the ceiling needed repair. I had lots of extra Tyvek.
I was afraid to do the repair myself being 81 years old. When I started this railroad project in Germany when I was on an expatriat assignment with Henkel, I was 54. I attempted to get help, but was striking out and my two grandsons who DID help build this were now 25 and 23 years old respectively and working as mechanical and systems engineers in Chicago. Bums! Left me high and dry.
However, the layout is 42" off the floor. The height enabled me to sit on the layout and reach up to the ceiling with a staple gun. But first all the buildings had to be removed and the remaining platform protected with ply. Where the trains run the layout could support 1,000 pounds, but the village has lighter construction and the ply helped distribute the load (my 182 pound load to be exact).
I was told by a great modeler years ago to "never glue your structures to the layout". You may need to move them, repair them or sell them, of which I've done all three. But first I had to go under the platform on my scooter—a four-castered flower pot stand I bought in Germany—and disconnect all the electrical wiring for the lights. That took at least 8 cycles of getting on the scooter and off.
With a utility knife I debrided all the damaged sheeting.
I was able to handle the Tyvek sheet by myself and staple it up. It's not as pretty as the original work. I did that before there was a layout in the room and ran the sheets in continuous bands in the other direction.
The buildings still removed enables me to repair some things and fill an empty space where I previously sold a building (along with its base). I dreaded climbing on the layout with all the buildings in place to measure that hole to fill it properly, but with everything open that's no longer a challenge. I also cleaned and polished all the fire trucks and am replacing the gutters and downspouts on the firehouse to my upgraded standard. The fire trucks were "actually" weathered due to water that leaked and splashed on them. I also have "street repairs" where the water created a real pothole. Who would have thunk it??
I have several other building designs planned for the now-vacant improved lot in the town. They're all ornate victorian era structures which I'm getting good at creating.
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