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

As I've said too many times to count, the ying and yang of custom designing and 3D printing models is there are very few excuses for not getting it right. Case in point… the foundation that surrounds the Main Condenser. I chose to print it as three parts with the upper foundation, the flanges and lower foundation as separate. When I attempted to test assemble the flanges to the upper works, the fit was terrible. I had to cut and chop, force and otherwise mess around with it and the results looked it. I've recast the print to integrate these two parts. I'm going to print that this morning.

It's not easy to seein the photo, but it's not very good.


Here's the modified integrated part on the slicer before adding supports. In this orientation the supports will all be on the bottom and not foul any of the details. Previously, I printed it in the reverse and was not happy with the support removal.



The LP turbine drawing continues to grow. It's 90% complete. All that's left is the shroud and details on both ends.




Drawing it is one thing… getting it to print is an entirely different problem. I will be printing the back upper cutaway as one part, the entire rotor as another, and the entire lower section as the last. I'm not sure how the end details will be printed… maybe integrated, maybe separate. We'll see. This is uncharted territory.

That turbine sure looks complicated. Good luck with the printing.

The revised condenser foundation print was successful. Here is the entire condenser assembly held together with tape. The main is a true 1:48 figure to give some scale to this device. I will paint the insides and then assembly can begin. Meanwhile work continues on the LP turbine. The geometry is NOT simple and intersecting angled pieces, while doable in SketchUp, take a lot of time.

Here's the integrated foundation on the housing.




And the entire unit. Two handwheels broke, requiring reprinting a bunch more and fastening them with 1/32" brass. The condenser is a really big piece of apparatus. BTW: all of the propulsion equipment was installed in the hull and the ship build around it all. It was not meant to ever be removed.



The non-shaft end of the turbine is finally almost finished. Shown behind is an image of the LP turbine in #1 engine room. You can see that the facing is not vertical. It would all be much simpler if I wasn't insisting on doing the cutaway. But then it wouldn't be as much of a challenge. Printing this is going to be an exercise in insanity, i'm predicting.

Great work so far!