1:48 Engine Room #3 Battleship USS New Jersey for Permanent Display on Board.

To a novice like me this is amazing and mesmerising stuff.

It's the same to me. And things just got a bit more confusing. John sent me some more drawings about the LP turbine tonight. The LP turbine is different than the one that I've been working. Here are the two versions. Version 1 has a complicated spool shaft with many varying diameters and three reverse turbine wheels at each end. The other has a relatively smooth spool and two reverse turbines on each end. It also has a much more defined input for reverse steam. And the rest of the drawings he sent have more details about the housing. I've asked him to see if he can clarify. They both have 53,000 hp classification. I'm learning on doing the one with the drawings.
This is the one that I've been drawing:



And he's the simpler one: The entire housing seems simpler. When it comes to building a model I should choose the simpler design.





This image might help. This is a pic i took when visiting the ship in August. It's the LP turbine in engine room #1. Notice how the reverse steam pipes lead directly down to the top from each end just like the diagram above. That tells me that the above is the correct version. I'm going to model them without the insulation. BTW: steam pressure entering the LP turbine is 46psi and leaves to 22 inches of hg vacuum.

Great work so far!

I'm going with the simpler-spooled turbine based on the header on the drawing and the photos of the real machine. This time I wised up and formed the complex shaft contours using SU's Follow-Me tool instead of drawing a series of connected cylinders. Follow-Me works by drawing the outer contour as a filled, ungrouped, surface, setting up the path the shape's to follow, clicking the Follow-Me icon and then selecting the profile. It instantly forms a lathed object (in the case of a circular path). I used the same technique for the casing contours the bearing housings on the two ends and the steam inlet fittings.

The turbine blades are SU Components which has the abillity to change every one of the same components if a change is made to any one of them. Blade dimensions were taken from the profile section drawing. Notice that I'm not displaying 360º of the shapes, but am truncating them to just show a cutaway portion. A lot of the casing appears to be welded sheet steel to support the forged/turned/cast components. The drawing looks pretty good. Not sure how well this mass of fine details are going to print. Won't know until I try...

There are stator blades protruding from the lands on the shell cylinder. I'm not sure They will work. I may draw a small test set with rotor and stator blades and see what prints before attempting to print the whole deal.



I've decided to scrap the bad condenser end cap. It's not only warped, but mishapen to a degree that it won't assemble correctly. I've already got the new one loaded into the printer. I'll run it tomorrow.



I did get one good one. It too has a slight sag in one edge, but I'll get it to work. This ones only partially cleaned up.



And I'm happy to report that I got a beautiful print of the Condenser Shell and the Tube Assembly. It's on the printer in the drip fixture and I'll clean it up tomorrow. Noticed some delamination of the base layers, but they held together and the entire job printed perfectly. The hole is on purpose for additional cutaway viewing.



The new printer is quite astounding, I was able to watch the print job on it's included video system, while sitting upstairs in the great room. I also made a stop action movie of the whole job and will post when I retireve it.



The condenser and LP turbine are among the most complicated systems in the room. if they come out well, the rest of the project should be splendid.

Cool.

Looks great so far!

The condenser is coming together… literally…. The new printing of the other end cap will be done in less than a half hour. The tube bundle needed more trimming to wiggle over the added tabs I put on the housing to provide more alignment for the end cap. But it looks as I thought it should.



Assembled… it works.



Taken with the flash on shows the tube better.



The insides will have to be painted before I can glue it together. There is a holding tank on the bottom not shown in this view. That will be almost invisible since the major foundation members cover most of it up. You'll see the condensate return pipe passing through a hole in the foundation's side, but that's about it. Drawing the cutaways and printing them is much less stressful than cutting them afterwards.

Your popping these parts out thick and fast now.

Yes! The new printer is a step change. Besides being so much faster, it's got terrific resolution. The lighting system is so much more sophsticated that you can actually have different exposures for different areas of the build plate. I'm not do that, but the print accuracy is terrific and I'm running at 2.5 s/layer and with the tilt vat tech, only 5 seconds elapses before it's making a new layer. The walls of the housing are quite thin, but they're strong enough to be structurally sound.

The second try to create a good condenser end cap wasn't successful either. The thin walls are prone to warping, and as shown below, the distortion was too great to compensate using clamps and glue.



A redesign was called for. I added cross-bracing to add structural integrity to the part. The odd placement is to account for the tabs on the condenser housing. It's on the machine now.



I just pulled off a very successful print of the remaining induction and discharge piping including the centrifugal pump, and the upper foundation that will support the low pressure turbine. In addition to the 3rd try for a successful cap, are the remaining lower condenser oundation pieces. With those being done in a little over four hours, all the major condenser pieces will be created.

I should have the LP turbine drawings finalized in a couple of days and then we'll see if it's possible to print any kind of turbine blading in resin printer. I've even added the stator blades. What I drew may be so fine that they won't survive very long. I may have to make solid discs with blade impressions on them. But I won't know the answer to this question until I run a small, quickly printing test piece. If you stare at this drawing, you'll come to the conclusion that, if the rotor is going to be a separate piece (and it will)), you won't be able to asseble it. The answer will be to split the cases just like the real thing. That will require making three copies of the drawing. One will be the master drawing, another will have the lower case half removed leaving the upper, and the last will have the inverse leaving just the lower. Assembly will be like building the real deal. Happy Saturday!

I was copying my post yesterday to use on another site, but forgot to close the edit and therefore, the images timed out. Sorry. It's fixed now.

Meanwhuile, the 3rd reprint of the condenser cap worked. I hadn't done the final finishing but as you can see, its geometry is clean and it fits as it should. I need to add this to my book (still being edited) that deals with design vis a vis 3D printing success.




The LP tubine foundation printed beautifully. It just slips over the condenser housing without any trouble and that was without any final finishing. The lower frames are done too, successfully and are in the post-cure box. With them, all the major parts of the condenser are printed. I'm designing the LP turbine almost like the prototype, partially because I drawing it from prototype drawings. That many change when I find out whether it prints or not.

Here's the upper foundation as it printed.



And tried on for fit on the condenser. Clearly it's not final sanded, but notice that the upper surface is completely covered by the LP turbine's base. And the nubs on the vertical pieces are very easily sanded smooth. Notice also that I matched the cutaway to the that on the housing. It would have been more touchy to cut that after the part was formed. When possible put the cutaways into the drawings. I'm very happy with the ability of this printer to create small cross-section parts that have enough strength to hold together. I'm going out on a limnb and assuming that it may have to do with two factors; the intensity and eveness of the UV exposure light and the 12k horizontal resolution created more finely rendered parts.



I'm getting pretty close to doing some trial prints on the turbine parts. Depending on their outcomes will determine more of my build strategy.

A question. Could the unsuccessful condenser end caps have been corrected using a hair dryer or other heat source. I ask because all this is new to me. I have read of this type of 3D printing, but your tutorial is excellent, which leads me to other questions.

You and your printer are on fire at the moment.

Just a thought looking at the top photo, post #34.
Could you have done some "I" beam shapes across the opening.
Like floor joists, sacrificial pieces that would be cut off?
A netting looks like it might be too thin and accomplish nothing.

Great work so far!