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

Great work so far!

Just because it's Saturday doesn't mean that stuff isn't geting done. Besides some exercising I worked on creating correctly sized and detailed ladders, started placing ladders and floor grating into perspective places. I also applied steam lines to the main condensate pump. Yesterday I added the steam lines to the turbogenerators. Gratings won't hide too much detail, nor will the minimalist piping that I'm including. The grating supports on the lower level are pretty close to prototype. I haven't decided how to support the upper gratings. I will have to study the drawings and photos to figure it all out.



The steam inlet to the pump has to come off the main steam pipe, but I'm really not sure how all these pipes do that. My photos are totally confusing, so I'm taking modeler's license to put them where they make sense to me. I do know that every piece of equipment has a steam input and a discharge that has to go to a condenser. For the discharge of the pump, the only place to tie into a condenser was (I thought) would be into one of the TG condensers and ran a pipe to it.



Then…. while looking at this image and writing this post, I realized that there's a pipe stub sticking out of the main condenser that—most likely—was actually the place where this condensate line would enter. So I re-routed the line to this stub and it makes a lot more sense. You'd be surprised how many insights I get when writing all this stuff.



Lots of things to print. I've started printing the piping. I have to design and print the two lubricant pumps (one electric and one steam turbine), one large and two small air ejectors that removed dissolved gases from condensate before it goes into the boilers as feedwater, and the electrical cabinets and two control panels. None of these are big or show stoppers.

Excellent work so far!

Thanks gents!

I'm reprinting one of the TG condenser frames due to a leg breakage and the one that I had to glue on. It was time to just redo it. All it costs is some time and resin. Meanwhiile I fiddled with the opening in the condensers to accept the large exhaust flange. The hole needed to be englarged a bit so nothing had to be forced. Getting this all to fit together and stay together is not a given.



It was a gorgeous day here in Louisville topping out in the mid-70s (F) and with a slight breeze. I took advantage of this and started some of the solvent-based painting. I got the turbine rotors and MRG gears painting with Humbrel spray chrome. It's a very nice, bright metallic paint. I also painted the bull gear. I was going to start doing all the primer painting of all the other parts now printed, but a lot of them had to be touched up with sanding and cleaning, and I was running out of time and didn't want to rush it. I make bad mistakes when I rush. The gears look pretty good and will look even better when in the gear box. Speaking of which, I'm working on getting the main parts to fit better and preparing for the assembly screws before any painting.



I still find it hard to believe that I drew and printed those gears...

I spent the rest of the workshop time working over the piping and getting them converted for printing. I've also set up for printing of the "angle iron" frames that support the floor gratings. I'm printing a bunch of each type and size. I got the ladders ready for printing as well. Parts count is rising! I have to study how the upper floor gratings are supported. There is a mezanine level on the port side wall that holds all the electrical cabinets and the electrical distribution control panel. None of this is complicated, but it has a flooring frame and lots of gratings.

I'm holding off on designing the main control panel. In 1:48, my ability to do decal faces is difficult. I can produce them on clear background paper and paint the gauge faces white before application. That simplifies the process. And I just thought of it while writing the last sentence. I need Ryan to get me some good images of the panel that I can use.

Great stuff

Builder 2010 said:

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I still find it hard to believe that I drew and printed those gears...

Click to expand...

So am I!!! It's uncanny.

Great work so far!

Printing lots of stuff. Had a pipe print failure due to insufficient support strength. Will reprint with changes. Printed a gaggle of flooring frames and even more walkway gratings. When I decided to undertake this massive project, one of my main decision points was if I could print respeactable floor gratings. The new printer produced stunning gratings that eliminate the need to create these kinds of things using photoetched. They are ephemeral and very fragile, but when glued to the floor frames they will hold up nicely. I finished the turbogerator condensers with most of their piping. On the printer right now are all the ladders needed in this space. There are five different varieties.

First the condensers.

I pre-located the drill holes in the drawings and subsequent printings, so the holes just had to be opened up to 1/16". A piece of 1/16" brass tubing made a very secure connection with CA adhesive.



Here are the condensers with all minus two pipes.



I printed a bunch of single and double floor frames. There's one leg that I designed without enough integration and it's not very strong. I reinforced its interior with Bondic making it more secure.



I also have a ton of worthy floor gratings. Took close to an hour to carefully separate them from their support system. This new printer will reproduce just about anything.



Some of the bars are damaged on the edges, but they're bigger than the frames. When trimmed they loo pretty darn good if I do say so myself. When painted oxide red they will be great.



And they look great (no pun intended) from above being almost transparent due to the thin bars.



I'm designing the lube pumps. There are two: one electric powered that was installed in the 1980s refit, and the other steam turbine driven that appears to be the original design. When I dropped their foundations into the master drawing, I was concered that there seemed to be no room to move around them. I remember walking next to the pumps with lots of room. Did I make a scaling error?

Nope!

Based on this analysis, the configuration of the equipment in ER #2—the one open to the public—and ER #3 shows very little clearance around the pumps in the one I'm doing. It's the position of the MRG in #2 driving an outboard properller shaft #4 and ER#3 driving an inboard shaft #2. Shafts are numnbered from startboard to port, whereas engine rooms are numbered from fore to aft. The drawing tells the story. Notice that the ladder to the upper lever is very tightly fitted, versus the wide-open-spaces in ER#2.



In this picture that Er#2 roominss is on full display. That space does not exist in ER #3. That old dude walking is me...



So I will be trued to the plans a shoehorn the pumps into their repestive spaces. Onward and upward.

Excellent work so far!

The ladders came out as nice as the gratings did… maybe better. Here's some pictures that show. The stair railings are only 0.020" or about 1 scale inch. Actually scale! By not curing the resin more than 3 minutes and with my resin blend, the railings still have a lot of sprint to them. You can bump them without breakage.



Below: this was before I did some very delicate sanding to remove the slight support nubs that remained.



This is the five step stair.



And I threw some grating next to the tgs just to see how it looked.



Gratings was one of the things I thought about when I decided to build this ridiculous project.

I'm continuing work on the lube pumps. Don't have any good drawings of these so I'm working only from photos. Electric pump is one the left and steam turbine pump on right. Steam pump is OEM from 1943. Electric was swapped in 1980s refit. Steam piping is complex and I'm trying to interpret. Couldn't get close to them in ER #3. Work platform grating is where the legs top out. The legs rest on the 3rd bottom (hold floor). Still have to fit them between the main reduction gear supports. Probably will need to modify.



This is what I'm talking about… it would be a bit easier if it wasn't for all the insulation.

That all came out well.

Great work so far!

This is absolutely fascinating and outstanding workmanship!

Thank you.
I'm just about finished designing the main air extactor. The first thing I had to do was learn what an air extractor is and why is it there. There are three of these in the engine room; a large Main Air Extractor (MAE) and two auxiliary air extractors. The main is pulling vacuum from the main condenser and the auxiliaries are pulling vacuum from the turbogenerators condensers. They look the same except for their size. For steam turbines to function effectively, the exhaust steam must be drawn out of the machine into vacuum. The steam is depleted to a point where it would lose all forward momentum without the vacuum. There is some negative pressure created just by condensing the volume of steam to water in the condenser, but it's not enough since there is leakage in the system.

The main air extractor works on Benoulli's principle that pressure on a surface is reduced inversely proportional to the speed of a gas over the surface. 600psi steam is applied to a venturi where the suction line is attached to the gases in the condenser further reducing its internal pressure. Very high vacuums can be drawn this way. The MAE outputs the extracted air to atmosphere and any condensed feedwater is fed back to the main condenser hot well. Further feedwater prep is done in the firerooms and is not part of the model. There is also condenser coolant water in and out that is used in the internal condensers in the MAE. It's really a complicated piece of equipment.

I am totally guessing exactly where the piping goes for this thing. Here's the a picture showing why that is.





Given that, here's a rendering showing it in place on the upper level. I don't have any detailed drawings about the MAE or its foundation. I have four images inclduing these two.



I've got requests into Ryan asking for more information about this. Regardless, I'll do something respectable.

I printed the lube hand wheels separately and applied them with 0.025" phos-bronze wire. Look much better than the partially deforemed ones that were printed on the part.



I removed all the tall angle supports from the MRG frame to accept the smaller version that is now printed integral with the Lube Pumps. After prepaing the surfaces I used the rubber-infused CA to adhere the electic lube pump. The modified (fixed) steam lube pump will be printed along with the MAE today or tomorrow. The electric motor came out beautifully with the cooling ribs perfectly defined.



While the steam pump print has some errors there were some spectacular print features that blew me away! This is an extreme closeup of a spring that I downloaded from the SketchUp 3D Warehouse. I reduced its size, but did nothing else to it when I determined it was printable. It has some loops at the end.



Here it is on the pump.



And if you look closely, the printer reproduced those loops. This isn't supposed to happen… or at least it didn't happen with previous versions of the LCD resin printers. With the naked eye, those parts are tiny. They're 0.010" or less.



I printed more ladders. I found that the short ones were also with full treads and I needed a ladder with 9 rungs.



Getting good at making ladders. Till next time...

Incredible stuff