1:72 Complete Iowa Battleship 16"-50 cal Turret with interior down to the magazine
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- Thread starter
- #22
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
I'm using 2.5 seconds on the 3. I did an initial time test and 2.5 looked pretty good. I'm using a 85/15 mix of Elegoo ABS-like Gray and Siraya Tenacious. The Tenacious requires a long cure time so I upped the ABS-like a bit to compensate. It's all a guessing game since none of the charts show miss, only pure resins. A shorter time wouldn't bother me as it would increase throughput a bit.
The design/print/print again time is very long! l wish I had a couple more 3s to run them in parallel. They're on sale now for $260 since they've just issued the Mars 3 Pro. I should just buy one and get rid of the Mars Classic sitting next to this one and taking up space.
The design/print/print again time is very long! l wish I had a couple more 3s to run them in parallel. They're on sale now for $260 since they've just issued the Mars 3 Pro. I should just buy one and get rid of the Mars Classic sitting next to this one and taking up space.
Great work so far!
BertUS
Senior Airman
Sounds quit nomal to me, I worked also with 2.5 on 0.05 layer, but I used the washable resin, don't like the smell and dangerous of the iso, still now I found no problems like cracks or something like that in my figures. Wash it with warm water and let it dry over night before curing.
But you know, macropics are killing, I suppose on a normal viewdistance it looks great
Alltough it takes time to design, draw and printing, I really like it, some would it call cheating in scratching, but i call it digital scratching.
But you know, macropics are killing, I suppose on a normal viewdistance it looks great
Alltough it takes time to design, draw and printing, I really like it, some would it call cheating in scratching, but i call it digital scratching.
- Thread starter
- #25
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
It's not cheating any more than using a lathe with an electric motor instead of a treadle or bow with a rope. If our hobby didn't evolve it would eventrually die with only the most skilled carvers and jewelers keeping going. The work to perfect stuff in the 3D printing world is just as challenging as in the past only different. I'm having to make 2, 3 4 iterations of parts in order to get them right. You have to really do deigin engineering to not only make sure each part is worthy, but that whole deal actually goes together. And since I'm not using any true, dimensioned engineering drawings, it just a big guessing game.
I installed a Wham Bam spring plate onto the new Elegoo on Friday and the 3M super adhesive needed until today to cure. I started by attempting to print the main electric deck machinery print, but it failed in about 20 minutes. The file abended and the plate started rising with just the raft and a bunch of support stubs. I don't know what happened. I'm now running the 1-piece newly designed ring gear/upper roller race print. It's very tall and will take almost 11 hours. So I'm spending the time finishing up the design on the remaining parts.
We're going to be back in Philly at the end of the month and I'm going to try and reschedule the Big J tour.
I installed a Wham Bam spring plate onto the new Elegoo on Friday and the 3M super adhesive needed until today to cure. I started by attempting to print the main electric deck machinery print, but it failed in about 20 minutes. The file abended and the plate started rising with just the raft and a bunch of support stubs. I don't know what happened. I'm now running the 1-piece newly designed ring gear/upper roller race print. It's very tall and will take almost 11 hours. So I'm spending the time finishing up the design on the remaining parts.
We're going to be back in Philly at the end of the month and I'm going to try and reschedule the Big J tour.
BertUS
Senior Airman
There could be several things but I would guess on supportlocation and to light ones. Maybe place the support a bit deeper into the model?
- Thread starter
- #27
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
As you'll read, I'vve made some corrections. I also noticed that when you call for light supports, ChiTuBox Pro lowers the offset height. It was this lowering that made the heavy supports too short to form properly. I now start with heavy and go light selectively and then carefully manage the offset height.
I rescheduled the Big J tour for the last week in this month. The way things are going I won't be beyond the point of no return, so if I'm making any horrific errors, I will be ale to fix them. Meanwhile, So much of what I'm modeling is off-limits to the public, whatever I detail is far more than they'll ever see for themselves and if I can't decipher just what's going on in some of the line drawings I have with the hours and hours I've spent reviewing them, not too many other people will be able to discern any errors either. At least I hope so.
Much of my work of late has been print, fix, print again, fail, and print again. With prints lasting 7 to 11 hours, I print them overnight when I can and then see what I got in the morning.
I finally got the powder trunks sized reasonably close. They were too big and when I added the various decks, if I moved them forward, they would stick out through the wall and if I moved them back, they would stick out there. They were interfering with equipment that had to be placed in the various decks. It took hours of trial and error to keep changing their size (and angle) to get them to work. They don't just go straight down from the gun house to the powder flat. They proceed down in an angular path that changes as it goes down.
Changing the size changed the opening in the various decks. SketchUp can be a complete pain in the butt. It has the nasty habit of closing opening in surfaces when you add a line that shouldn't actually do that. And then you can't seem to get the surface to open again. This gets exasperating and can eat up hours of fussing on what should be a simple task. I used the "Interact Faces" with the trunks and decks to have the surfaces in which I want the opening to be. The result is a bunch of rectangles that are shapes that should be actionable. So then one trunk's rectangle works perfectly, but the other is still attached to the existing surface and no matter what I do, I can't get it to behave separately. Often I mess with it so long that I screw up other aspects of the part that have to be redrawn.
I had a couple of weird failures. The roller track assembly had some support failures that caused distortions, but it didn't matter because I created the assembly with the wrong roller track. It should have been the lower, plain track. Instead, I combined the rollers with the track with the ring get, which BTW printed very nicely as a single piece, eliminating the out-of-round creation I made with the four-part gear.
Printing the rollers as a single part saved me a lot of very difficult work if I were to go with my original idea; assemble the roller assembly from separate rollers and pins, which I actually never figured out how I was going to.
This side image shows the distortion from the localized support failure.
I've re-drawn this assembly with the correct race and set it up a bit differently to prevent the support weakness.
The diamter of the parts for this project are literally at the limits of my Mars 3 printer. This is the ring gear when it finished. If I tilted it or rotated it in either direction some portion of the part was out of the print range. It's lucky I'm doing 1:72. Any larger scale would not work. There are bigger LCD printers on the market now, so if there's a 1:48 in the future, it would require a completely revamped shop situation.
Here's the gear flopped on top of the pan deck base with it's pinion gears on the bottom.
A complicated print was the machinery on the electric deck AND the center two partitions, the training machinery and the angled projectile hoist pump assembly for the middle gun. The machinery itself almost printed... the partition walls failed and distorted terribly. The little separate machines (other pump systems and two of the Pointers stations) printed quite nicely and are usable.
Here's a down-the-line view of the partition assembly. You might notice that the big 300hp motor that supposed to be in the foreground, didn't print either. Two factors were at play. I didn't use enough heavy supports and relied on the light ones to do more work holding it all up too much. And the partition walls themselves were too frail at the tiny portion over the too passageways on the foreground end. The walls themselves couldn't withstand the pulling forces in play in this printing process. I redesigned the walls at those weak points and used more heavy supports especially on the bottom end of the big motor. In the foreground is that smaller pump unit. While it was somewhat usable, I scrapped it along with the rest.
The side view shows the massive distortion and the break at the passageway.
It's on the printer now and will be done sometime in the middle of the night. I'll know tomorrow if my solution was the correct one. You can see some of the fine piping didn't make it through the support removal process. I also lost some seats so I'm printing a whole bunch of them with the job that's now on the machine so I'll be able to replace them. They're very delicate.
I printed another batch of machiness. This included the center pointer's station with it's long drive shaft separating the motor from the hydraulics. This is necessitated becuase the port side powder trunk passes through that area. I also printed the re-designed hoist machines complete with their motors, pumps and pipping. I'm finding, that while beautiful, using scale 1 to 2 inch piping is almost too small to work in 1:72 printing.
I had two failures in this print, again due to supports that were too frail. I need two of one hand and one of the other for the hoist machines. I made six, but the two I scrapped were both of the opposite hand. So I have four of the same orientation. I'll pick the best two.
Here are the hoist machines and the center pointers system. You wanted something to show scale. That's my finest point tweezers in the image. All four of those hoist systems are the same orientation.
Wish me luck. I have to print and new electric deck, new pan deck base, two projectile flat inners and one outer, the powder trunks (multi-part due to their length) and the hoist operator's stations.
Here's the hoist station. It is not completely accurate. The operating handle isn't right, and hopefully, I'll be able to view inside that compartment when I take the tour.
I rescheduled the Big J tour for the last week in this month. The way things are going I won't be beyond the point of no return, so if I'm making any horrific errors, I will be ale to fix them. Meanwhile, So much of what I'm modeling is off-limits to the public, whatever I detail is far more than they'll ever see for themselves and if I can't decipher just what's going on in some of the line drawings I have with the hours and hours I've spent reviewing them, not too many other people will be able to discern any errors either. At least I hope so.
Much of my work of late has been print, fix, print again, fail, and print again. With prints lasting 7 to 11 hours, I print them overnight when I can and then see what I got in the morning.
I finally got the powder trunks sized reasonably close. They were too big and when I added the various decks, if I moved them forward, they would stick out through the wall and if I moved them back, they would stick out there. They were interfering with equipment that had to be placed in the various decks. It took hours of trial and error to keep changing their size (and angle) to get them to work. They don't just go straight down from the gun house to the powder flat. They proceed down in an angular path that changes as it goes down.
Changing the size changed the opening in the various decks. SketchUp can be a complete pain in the butt. It has the nasty habit of closing opening in surfaces when you add a line that shouldn't actually do that. And then you can't seem to get the surface to open again. This gets exasperating and can eat up hours of fussing on what should be a simple task. I used the "Interact Faces" with the trunks and decks to have the surfaces in which I want the opening to be. The result is a bunch of rectangles that are shapes that should be actionable. So then one trunk's rectangle works perfectly, but the other is still attached to the existing surface and no matter what I do, I can't get it to behave separately. Often I mess with it so long that I screw up other aspects of the part that have to be redrawn.
I had a couple of weird failures. The roller track assembly had some support failures that caused distortions, but it didn't matter because I created the assembly with the wrong roller track. It should have been the lower, plain track. Instead, I combined the rollers with the track with the ring get, which BTW printed very nicely as a single piece, eliminating the out-of-round creation I made with the four-part gear.
Printing the rollers as a single part saved me a lot of very difficult work if I were to go with my original idea; assemble the roller assembly from separate rollers and pins, which I actually never figured out how I was going to.
This side image shows the distortion from the localized support failure.
I've re-drawn this assembly with the correct race and set it up a bit differently to prevent the support weakness.
The diamter of the parts for this project are literally at the limits of my Mars 3 printer. This is the ring gear when it finished. If I tilted it or rotated it in either direction some portion of the part was out of the print range. It's lucky I'm doing 1:72. Any larger scale would not work. There are bigger LCD printers on the market now, so if there's a 1:48 in the future, it would require a completely revamped shop situation.
Here's the gear flopped on top of the pan deck base with it's pinion gears on the bottom.
A complicated print was the machinery on the electric deck AND the center two partitions, the training machinery and the angled projectile hoist pump assembly for the middle gun. The machinery itself almost printed... the partition walls failed and distorted terribly. The little separate machines (other pump systems and two of the Pointers stations) printed quite nicely and are usable.
Here's a down-the-line view of the partition assembly. You might notice that the big 300hp motor that supposed to be in the foreground, didn't print either. Two factors were at play. I didn't use enough heavy supports and relied on the light ones to do more work holding it all up too much. And the partition walls themselves were too frail at the tiny portion over the too passageways on the foreground end. The walls themselves couldn't withstand the pulling forces in play in this printing process. I redesigned the walls at those weak points and used more heavy supports especially on the bottom end of the big motor. In the foreground is that smaller pump unit. While it was somewhat usable, I scrapped it along with the rest.
The side view shows the massive distortion and the break at the passageway.
It's on the printer now and will be done sometime in the middle of the night. I'll know tomorrow if my solution was the correct one. You can see some of the fine piping didn't make it through the support removal process. I also lost some seats so I'm printing a whole bunch of them with the job that's now on the machine so I'll be able to replace them. They're very delicate.
I printed another batch of machiness. This included the center pointer's station with it's long drive shaft separating the motor from the hydraulics. This is necessitated becuase the port side powder trunk passes through that area. I also printed the re-designed hoist machines complete with their motors, pumps and pipping. I'm finding, that while beautiful, using scale 1 to 2 inch piping is almost too small to work in 1:72 printing.
I had two failures in this print, again due to supports that were too frail. I need two of one hand and one of the other for the hoist machines. I made six, but the two I scrapped were both of the opposite hand. So I have four of the same orientation. I'll pick the best two.
Here are the hoist machines and the center pointers system. You wanted something to show scale. That's my finest point tweezers in the image. All four of those hoist systems are the same orientation.
Wish me luck. I have to print and new electric deck, new pan deck base, two projectile flat inners and one outer, the powder trunks (multi-part due to their length) and the hoist operator's stations.
Here's the hoist station. It is not completely accurate. The operating handle isn't right, and hopefully, I'll be able to view inside that compartment when I take the tour.
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
Wow.
Vic Balshaw
Major General
I'm just in awe of what your achieving. 
- Thread starter
- #31
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
Thanks for the nice words!
The center section print(s) were 95% successful and I'm using it. I made two so I can choose the best. Here's the support scheme. As comprehensive as it appears, I missed one surface that failed to form: one of the lobes of the hydraulic manifold. I am in the process of sort-of restoring it with Bondic. It's buried in the assembly and will not be visible regardless of how I cut away the walls. You see the missing lower part of the cylinder. The slicer shows susceptible failure areas by highlighting them in red, but this one was hidden from any angle that I tried to view it.
Here's the finished print cleaned, and post-hardened showing the Bondic rough filler. Some careful Dremel sculpting will make it presentable.
This section nestled up into the pan deck floor perfectly especially around all the stiffening ribs in the pan deck floor. By using one shape to cut into another in SketchUp, you get perfectly aligned and matched surfaces. This view also shows the manifold piping is non-aligned with the hydraulic training motors. I will remove the resin lines and pipe with solder wire or bent sprue of the correct diameter.
Viewed from the top you can see where the pipes should actually go.
This next view shows the fragility of the tiny piping that I drew. It's a bit more than 1 scale in, but that's only 0.014" in 1:72. I think 2" piping would work. Just becasue I can draw it doesn't mean that it should be printed that way. BTW: I added stiffening ribs in the passageways on the left of this image. That added the stregth needed to keep the walls together in that very weak spot.
Meanwhile, I got a near perfect print of the entire electric deck. The revised support scheme did the trick and there were no collapsed or distorted areas. Here's the forest of supports needed to print it. I had already removed the massive group of them holding the bottom to the printing raft. I couldn't get it into the Ultrasonice Cleaner with the raft still attached.
Here it is de-suppoorted (word?) with the center section test fit before post-curing. After curing I remove all the nubs with the sanding tools. Semi-cured resin doesn't sand well since it's too soft and pliable. The Trainer's station is at the top of the that mid-section. You can see the hand wheels that would "supposedly" manually crank around a 2,500 ton turret if the hydraulics failed. As I noted before, imagine sitting in that space surround by hydraulic and electric machinery whining away. I must have been like Hell on earth.
With a successful electric deck print all the equipment for it printed, I'm ready to start painting and assembling it. I do see some interference with the center section of the projectile hoist trunk holes. I will open that up before moving along. It's blocked by more false flooring on the center that I added to support the big motor. I will remove some of that.
I made a vertical screen print showing the equipment placement. I also made 1:1 scale prints of the six partitiion walls that extend from the gun house roof to the pan deck floor. Some of these will be cut from 0.040" styrene and others will be thin clear acrylic to be see thru.
The electric deck was a huge milestone! It was one of the aspects of this job that had me most concerned since I had no photos of anything taken directly in this space.
The center section print(s) were 95% successful and I'm using it. I made two so I can choose the best. Here's the support scheme. As comprehensive as it appears, I missed one surface that failed to form: one of the lobes of the hydraulic manifold. I am in the process of sort-of restoring it with Bondic. It's buried in the assembly and will not be visible regardless of how I cut away the walls. You see the missing lower part of the cylinder. The slicer shows susceptible failure areas by highlighting them in red, but this one was hidden from any angle that I tried to view it.
Here's the finished print cleaned, and post-hardened showing the Bondic rough filler. Some careful Dremel sculpting will make it presentable.
This section nestled up into the pan deck floor perfectly especially around all the stiffening ribs in the pan deck floor. By using one shape to cut into another in SketchUp, you get perfectly aligned and matched surfaces. This view also shows the manifold piping is non-aligned with the hydraulic training motors. I will remove the resin lines and pipe with solder wire or bent sprue of the correct diameter.
Viewed from the top you can see where the pipes should actually go.
This next view shows the fragility of the tiny piping that I drew. It's a bit more than 1 scale in, but that's only 0.014" in 1:72. I think 2" piping would work. Just becasue I can draw it doesn't mean that it should be printed that way. BTW: I added stiffening ribs in the passageways on the left of this image. That added the stregth needed to keep the walls together in that very weak spot.
Meanwhile, I got a near perfect print of the entire electric deck. The revised support scheme did the trick and there were no collapsed or distorted areas. Here's the forest of supports needed to print it. I had already removed the massive group of them holding the bottom to the printing raft. I couldn't get it into the Ultrasonice Cleaner with the raft still attached.
Here it is de-suppoorted (word?) with the center section test fit before post-curing. After curing I remove all the nubs with the sanding tools. Semi-cured resin doesn't sand well since it's too soft and pliable. The Trainer's station is at the top of the that mid-section. You can see the hand wheels that would "supposedly" manually crank around a 2,500 ton turret if the hydraulics failed. As I noted before, imagine sitting in that space surround by hydraulic and electric machinery whining away. I must have been like Hell on earth.
With a successful electric deck print all the equipment for it printed, I'm ready to start painting and assembling it. I do see some interference with the center section of the projectile hoist trunk holes. I will open that up before moving along. It's blocked by more false flooring on the center that I added to support the big motor. I will remove some of that.
I made a vertical screen print showing the equipment placement. I also made 1:1 scale prints of the six partitiion walls that extend from the gun house roof to the pan deck floor. Some of these will be cut from 0.040" styrene and others will be thin clear acrylic to be see thru.
The electric deck was a huge milestone! It was one of the aspects of this job that had me most concerned since I had no photos of anything taken directly in this space.
Excellent work so far!
BertUS
Senior Airman
Normally, builders should have a lot of patience by building, but you must have a lot of patience during printing. I reckonize the frustration after a printsession of 11 hours and the print went wrong. My wife said a couple of weeks ago, "If you will stay using badwords, I'll sell the printer"
But you show outstanding work, I said it again, I knew what kinda time it cost for drawing, designing, but als troubleshooting after a misprint. You make very completed parts, I probably should cus the parts in several small parts, for printing. But however, full respect
But you show outstanding work, I said it again, I knew what kinda time it cost for drawing, designing, but als troubleshooting after a misprint. You make very completed parts, I probably should cus the parts in several small parts, for printing. But however, full respect
PlasticHero
Senior Airman
I got to do a weekend camp out on the NJ and will highly recommend the tour of the ship. While cad and 3d printing is not the same as scratch building, it sure seems to be the same level of commitment, skill and art. Well done!!
- Thread starter
- #35
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
Thanks guys. It's wonderful to get comments from people who really understand the thrill of victory and agony of defest. It's not too bad since i print a lot of the long jobs overnight, so I don't get the good or bad news until the morning. It's no big deal since every failure is a problem solving activity and a learning opportunity, but it sure consume a lot of resin at $40/kilo. That starts to pinch a bit. I could choose to make a lot of small sub-assemblies, but have chosen composite prints whenever assembling and/or aligning the components would be more difficult that the complicated support scheme and challenging cleanup that the compllicated parts entail.
For the trip this coming week to the ship, I'm bringing a sketch pad and tape measure. Then I realized that I have a digital LIDAR Scanner on my iPhone 12 Pro. It's one of the reasons I bought the phone in the first place. I tried using it on model-sized objects, but the resolution was way too large. This morning it dawned on me that i could use to take direct 3D images of the 1:1 appliances on board ship that I needed to model. Case in point, the complex projectile hoist. I will have full 360° accessibility to it and could maybe get a reasonable scan. It's definitely worth trying, and, if it works, could produce marvelous results. I'm going to put this feature to work on another project: a 1:48 scale model of the historic hardware store in our home town back in PA. I wanted to model some of the interior, and I realized, I could just do LIDAR scans of it and bring them directly into SketchUp. BTW: I'm now using SketchUp Pro 2022 which solves a lot of the problems I was running into with my clunkiy SketchUp Make 2017. They were no longer supporting Make and it was showing its age. fortunately, I can now sell anything I produce without violating copyright agreements. Unfortunately, the stuff is expensive and I don't see very much stuff and can barely pay for it. This project is being GIVEN to the USS New Jersey Museum. It will be a decent tax write off.
For the trip this coming week to the ship, I'm bringing a sketch pad and tape measure. Then I realized that I have a digital LIDAR Scanner on my iPhone 12 Pro. It's one of the reasons I bought the phone in the first place. I tried using it on model-sized objects, but the resolution was way too large. This morning it dawned on me that i could use to take direct 3D images of the 1:1 appliances on board ship that I needed to model. Case in point, the complex projectile hoist. I will have full 360° accessibility to it and could maybe get a reasonable scan. It's definitely worth trying, and, if it works, could produce marvelous results. I'm going to put this feature to work on another project: a 1:48 scale model of the historic hardware store in our home town back in PA. I wanted to model some of the interior, and I realized, I could just do LIDAR scans of it and bring them directly into SketchUp. BTW: I'm now using SketchUp Pro 2022 which solves a lot of the problems I was running into with my clunkiy SketchUp Make 2017. They were no longer supporting Make and it was showing its age. fortunately, I can now sell anything I produce without violating copyright agreements. Unfortunately, the stuff is expensive and I don't see very much stuff and can barely pay for it. This project is being GIVEN to the USS New Jersey Museum. It will be a decent tax write off.
Vic Balshaw
Major General
Good luck with your coming visit and the planned scans.
- Thread starter
- #37
Builder 2010
Staff Sergeant
Well gang, I'm back! It was a very nice trip all the way around including all the family visits. The Big J tour exceeded my expectations. Ray was unable to join us, but he assigned two guides to me and my friend, Bruce. The first was Libby who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the ship and is their media director (she helps Ryan put together those 800 videos), and the second was James, who was an ex-navy man, (although on carriers) and was near my age.
Here's the proof we were there. This was from the 5th level up in front of the Auxiliary plot bridge. That's the Ben Franklin Bridge and Society Hill area of Philadelphia. The weather was PERFECT! It was in the low 70s with no humidity. it made crawling around in non-climate-controlled areas very acceptable.
We were given carte blanche and access to anywhere we needed to be. I did get into the sighter's compartment on turret #3 which is NOT open to the public. The hatch was secured with a padlock which was opened for us. This turret was not restored and you were quickly made to realize just how much work restoration entailed. I answered almost all my questions about the sighting compartments and the missing data about the gun compartments themselves. I will elaborate as I go on.
I was so concerned to remember my tape and clipboard that I forgot my iPhone in the car. The car park was quite a walk from the pier. I was at the hatch to the sighter's compartment when, reaching for my phone, realized that I didn't have it. DOH! Bruce was kind enough to go back and get it. Meanwhile, I was able to study what I was seeing in greater detail. As it turns out, the tape and clipboard were completely unnecessary. All of the measures I needed to make were right on my phone. I have measuring apps in addition to the scanning one.
The ship is getting all new teak decking on the main deck. It's an $8mm project. Here's the mid-ship decking. It's beautiful. The foredeck teak is a wreck and is slated to be installed next.
We were able to get to the powder and projectile flats easily in the restored #2 turret. This is the one that has the normal stair cases installed to handle the public. If it weren't for them, it wouldn't have been possible for me (I think) since access from the powder flat upwards to the projectile decks is via a set of metal rungs welded to the central column leading to a small hatch in the projectile deck center compartment's floor. In the case of #2 turret, which is one deck deeper, the ceiling height in the powder flat is two decks. There is a storage mezzanine that surrounds the powder flat where additional shells were stored. That would amount to about 20 feet of vertical rung ladder to ascend to the lowest projectile flat and that wasn't going to happen. We did walk through to the un-restored powder flat in #1 turret just for fun. We also got a tour into one of the magazines.
I found that there is only ONE access pathway from the turret hatch into the ofc's booth. For some reason, I assumed (incorrectly) that since there were two hatches underneath the turret's rear that there were two paths. No one knew what that 2nd hatch on the right side was for and it's never opened. That means I have to reprint the entire ofc's booth assembly. I also got a nice vertical picture of the instrument face of the ballistic computer and will be able to make a decal out of it.
I cropped it and did some photo enhancing of it.
We toured all the flag officers' compartments, the flag bridge, nav bridge and finally the open roof at level 5. We didn't climb into the air defense tower, although we could if we wanted to. We were supposed to be there for one hour. Instead we were there for 2.5 hours.
At the end, we finally met up with Ryan and discussed where the finished model will be displayed. We decided that it should be on the main deck so it could be seen by all visitors, especially those with disabiliities who may not be able to negotiate to other levels.
My first use of the scanning app was in the projectile flat. I was able to take a reasonably accurate scan of the entire projectile hoist (360°). In addition to James, there was a volunteer mechanic working on some stuff. Both gentlemen were completely gobsmacked that I was able to made that image. They'd never had a tour client that a) had such capability, and b) knew so much about the subject. James was very happy because of our access he was able to tour places he is normally not allowed to enter.
I found that the hoist has three legs, not four. I am able to make measurements directly on the 3D scan in the phone, so I now know that the leg width is 8" and 7" deep. I found that the middle rotating deck is 30" across. I had it at 29" on my prints so we're really close on that one.
Here's a screen print of some of the projectile scan.
The app also lets you export the scan as a movie. I've made a compilation of the projectile hoist and the powder trunk, loading area and operator's booth and turned it into a movie. It's now on YouTube albeit a lower resolution. The real version is very sharp. You see a lot of partially formed shapes in the images. They don't matter. All I cared about was the hoist in the center of the display. Same goes for the powder trunk. There's a lot of garbage in the image, but I'm not looking at that.
I've already started re-drawing this critical piece to make a more accurate print.
I was completely off regarding access to the side gun compartments and the sighter's stations flanking the side. While my actual sight equipment was scaled pretty close, I had the positioning in the compartment in which they sit not so correct. I also had the access to the gun chamber from that side aisle completely misunderstood. There is NO side door or hatch opening to the compartment. It's actually a large squared-off opening in the entire bulkhead. And I knew there had to be steps of some sort to get from deck level down to gun loading platform level, so I drew steps. But they didn't actually fit. That's because, instead of steps, there are three welded ladder rungs projecting out from the lower side wall of the gun girder.
This image is of the right gun compartment standing on the gun girder in the side aisle big opening looking straight down to the ladder rungs (arrow). You can clearly see that this is an un-restored place and generally never open to the public. The paint peels due to the changes in temparature and humidity in the un-climate-controlled space.
The middle gun also needs steps leading down from the ofc's booth door, but it's not a solid stair. Instead is a lightly constructed metal inclinded ladder. As a result of these discooveries, I will have to reprint all three of the rear gun chambers.
This is a highly distorted pano shot of the entire center gun compartment taken from standing on the gun captain's loading platform. You can see on the left the metal ladder coming from the door to the ofc's booth. I was finally able to measure the width of the powder door that's open in this picture. It's 52" across and a littel over 28" wide.
The gun captain's controls and communication devices are on the edges of the side compartment access portal. The center gun was even more interesting. There is a long alcove where a person can stand on the side opposite the powder door. Within this alcove are all the same devices plus a weird little hatch nestled into the foreward corner. These layout details were unmarked on the floor plans I had. It's no wonder I missed them.
The sighting compartment access door was much smaller than I had. Very little! And the telescopes went clear from one side to the other so you can't walk around them. To access the forward two operator positions you walk UNDER them. The sighting compartment floors are on the same low level as the gun compartment's and again, there are ladder rungs welded below the door to climb down inside. There are two more tranverse bulkheads in this compartment that have arches under them so the crew can pass underneath, and the sight regulator's position far forward, is reached by stooping under the forward telescope. You CANNOT have claustrophobia and survive in turret operations. Nor can you be fat! These ships were manned by skinny 18 year-olds.
I didn't climb inside. It wasn't necessary nor did I want to. But this view shows the way under the telescopes. I did reach in and get a tape measure on the telescope. This is an un-restored space. Note the brass seat. Must have been a tough place to work in the South Pacific when the big guns were firing. They're supposed to sound as loud as a shotgun blast from inside.
This is the pointer's handwheel. Notice it has a gun trigger on the handle. All the sighting stations, both in the gun house and those on the electric deck have firing triggers. The 6-light innuciator shows the firing status of the guns. These handwheels are geared to the sight systems below in the electric deck and probably to the firing computer in the ofc's booth.
These findings filled in some gaps in my understanding and will make a better model.
I made a full view scan of the entire powder-deck-level of the powder hoist chutes, powder loading trays and the lower powder hoist operators station. I found that the center and right powder trunks (and their operating booths) share a common metal sheet between them. This is an important finding which renders my current prints of the operating booths wrong and explains some of the reasons why i couldn't get the spacing correct. The other reason is simply the thickness minimum that I have to hold to make viable parts.
The door bulkhead is a single sheet also meaning both booths must be printed as a single print.
The loading trays, which I though were free-standing pieces of equipment are actually built right into the side of the powder trunk and made of brass. Again, this changes my powder trunk print. I was going to reprint the entire trunk anyway so I'm not losing anything here. I may have to print the gun girders over again to accomodate some of the changes and that's a bummer since it uses a ton of resin.
I got a detailed shot of the annular space between the magazines and the inner powder deck walls including the input side of the powder scuttles and the air bottles lining the walls. The air is for the ejection jets in the guns themselves. I also got a scan of the dunk tanks used to deactivate any powder bags that rupture. With these images, I think I can finally get all the aspects of the build right. I believe they install a chute across the space from out outlet of the magazine scuttle to the inlet of the powder room scuttle so they don't have to lift the 110 pound bags any more than they have to.
I also learned that the crew could only work in the powder flats on 15 minute intervals. Apparently, the smokeless powder in the bags gave off ether that would render the crew senseless if they remained there for longer periods.
Turrets are tough places to work. Although one could imagine working in the fire rooms of the 8 boilers, being station in the shaft tunnels, or having to load the quad 40mms on the upper decks wasn't much fun either.
All in all, the tour did exactly what I wanted it to do. I had developed a whole list of questions and had them on my iPhone. I answered all of them. I also realized at about the same time I started using the scanner, that I could put all the answers directly next to the questions and didn't need the stupid clipboard either. It made going up and down inclined ladders much more difficult having to hold the railing AND the clipboard at the same time. It was my traditional brain getting in the way of my digital one.
Now I've got to get back to the drawing board, literally and figuratively.
Here's the proof we were there. This was from the 5th level up in front of the Auxiliary plot bridge. That's the Ben Franklin Bridge and Society Hill area of Philadelphia. The weather was PERFECT! It was in the low 70s with no humidity. it made crawling around in non-climate-controlled areas very acceptable.
We were given carte blanche and access to anywhere we needed to be. I did get into the sighter's compartment on turret #3 which is NOT open to the public. The hatch was secured with a padlock which was opened for us. This turret was not restored and you were quickly made to realize just how much work restoration entailed. I answered almost all my questions about the sighting compartments and the missing data about the gun compartments themselves. I will elaborate as I go on.
I was so concerned to remember my tape and clipboard that I forgot my iPhone in the car. The car park was quite a walk from the pier. I was at the hatch to the sighter's compartment when, reaching for my phone, realized that I didn't have it. DOH! Bruce was kind enough to go back and get it. Meanwhile, I was able to study what I was seeing in greater detail. As it turns out, the tape and clipboard were completely unnecessary. All of the measures I needed to make were right on my phone. I have measuring apps in addition to the scanning one.
The ship is getting all new teak decking on the main deck. It's an $8mm project. Here's the mid-ship decking. It's beautiful. The foredeck teak is a wreck and is slated to be installed next.
We were able to get to the powder and projectile flats easily in the restored #2 turret. This is the one that has the normal stair cases installed to handle the public. If it weren't for them, it wouldn't have been possible for me (I think) since access from the powder flat upwards to the projectile decks is via a set of metal rungs welded to the central column leading to a small hatch in the projectile deck center compartment's floor. In the case of #2 turret, which is one deck deeper, the ceiling height in the powder flat is two decks. There is a storage mezzanine that surrounds the powder flat where additional shells were stored. That would amount to about 20 feet of vertical rung ladder to ascend to the lowest projectile flat and that wasn't going to happen. We did walk through to the un-restored powder flat in #1 turret just for fun. We also got a tour into one of the magazines.
I found that there is only ONE access pathway from the turret hatch into the ofc's booth. For some reason, I assumed (incorrectly) that since there were two hatches underneath the turret's rear that there were two paths. No one knew what that 2nd hatch on the right side was for and it's never opened. That means I have to reprint the entire ofc's booth assembly. I also got a nice vertical picture of the instrument face of the ballistic computer and will be able to make a decal out of it.
I cropped it and did some photo enhancing of it.
We toured all the flag officers' compartments, the flag bridge, nav bridge and finally the open roof at level 5. We didn't climb into the air defense tower, although we could if we wanted to. We were supposed to be there for one hour. Instead we were there for 2.5 hours.
At the end, we finally met up with Ryan and discussed where the finished model will be displayed. We decided that it should be on the main deck so it could be seen by all visitors, especially those with disabiliities who may not be able to negotiate to other levels.
My first use of the scanning app was in the projectile flat. I was able to take a reasonably accurate scan of the entire projectile hoist (360°). In addition to James, there was a volunteer mechanic working on some stuff. Both gentlemen were completely gobsmacked that I was able to made that image. They'd never had a tour client that a) had such capability, and b) knew so much about the subject. James was very happy because of our access he was able to tour places he is normally not allowed to enter.
I found that the hoist has three legs, not four. I am able to make measurements directly on the 3D scan in the phone, so I now know that the leg width is 8" and 7" deep. I found that the middle rotating deck is 30" across. I had it at 29" on my prints so we're really close on that one.
Here's a screen print of some of the projectile scan.
The app also lets you export the scan as a movie. I've made a compilation of the projectile hoist and the powder trunk, loading area and operator's booth and turned it into a movie. It's now on YouTube albeit a lower resolution. The real version is very sharp. You see a lot of partially formed shapes in the images. They don't matter. All I cared about was the hoist in the center of the display. Same goes for the powder trunk. There's a lot of garbage in the image, but I'm not looking at that.
I've already started re-drawing this critical piece to make a more accurate print.
I was completely off regarding access to the side gun compartments and the sighter's stations flanking the side. While my actual sight equipment was scaled pretty close, I had the positioning in the compartment in which they sit not so correct. I also had the access to the gun chamber from that side aisle completely misunderstood. There is NO side door or hatch opening to the compartment. It's actually a large squared-off opening in the entire bulkhead. And I knew there had to be steps of some sort to get from deck level down to gun loading platform level, so I drew steps. But they didn't actually fit. That's because, instead of steps, there are three welded ladder rungs projecting out from the lower side wall of the gun girder.
This image is of the right gun compartment standing on the gun girder in the side aisle big opening looking straight down to the ladder rungs (arrow). You can clearly see that this is an un-restored place and generally never open to the public. The paint peels due to the changes in temparature and humidity in the un-climate-controlled space.
The middle gun also needs steps leading down from the ofc's booth door, but it's not a solid stair. Instead is a lightly constructed metal inclinded ladder. As a result of these discooveries, I will have to reprint all three of the rear gun chambers.
This is a highly distorted pano shot of the entire center gun compartment taken from standing on the gun captain's loading platform. You can see on the left the metal ladder coming from the door to the ofc's booth. I was finally able to measure the width of the powder door that's open in this picture. It's 52" across and a littel over 28" wide.
The gun captain's controls and communication devices are on the edges of the side compartment access portal. The center gun was even more interesting. There is a long alcove where a person can stand on the side opposite the powder door. Within this alcove are all the same devices plus a weird little hatch nestled into the foreward corner. These layout details were unmarked on the floor plans I had. It's no wonder I missed them.
The sighting compartment access door was much smaller than I had. Very little! And the telescopes went clear from one side to the other so you can't walk around them. To access the forward two operator positions you walk UNDER them. The sighting compartment floors are on the same low level as the gun compartment's and again, there are ladder rungs welded below the door to climb down inside. There are two more tranverse bulkheads in this compartment that have arches under them so the crew can pass underneath, and the sight regulator's position far forward, is reached by stooping under the forward telescope. You CANNOT have claustrophobia and survive in turret operations. Nor can you be fat! These ships were manned by skinny 18 year-olds.
I didn't climb inside. It wasn't necessary nor did I want to. But this view shows the way under the telescopes. I did reach in and get a tape measure on the telescope. This is an un-restored space. Note the brass seat. Must have been a tough place to work in the South Pacific when the big guns were firing. They're supposed to sound as loud as a shotgun blast from inside.
This is the pointer's handwheel. Notice it has a gun trigger on the handle. All the sighting stations, both in the gun house and those on the electric deck have firing triggers. The 6-light innuciator shows the firing status of the guns. These handwheels are geared to the sight systems below in the electric deck and probably to the firing computer in the ofc's booth.
These findings filled in some gaps in my understanding and will make a better model.
I made a full view scan of the entire powder-deck-level of the powder hoist chutes, powder loading trays and the lower powder hoist operators station. I found that the center and right powder trunks (and their operating booths) share a common metal sheet between them. This is an important finding which renders my current prints of the operating booths wrong and explains some of the reasons why i couldn't get the spacing correct. The other reason is simply the thickness minimum that I have to hold to make viable parts.
The door bulkhead is a single sheet also meaning both booths must be printed as a single print.
The loading trays, which I though were free-standing pieces of equipment are actually built right into the side of the powder trunk and made of brass. Again, this changes my powder trunk print. I was going to reprint the entire trunk anyway so I'm not losing anything here. I may have to print the gun girders over again to accomodate some of the changes and that's a bummer since it uses a ton of resin.
I got a detailed shot of the annular space between the magazines and the inner powder deck walls including the input side of the powder scuttles and the air bottles lining the walls. The air is for the ejection jets in the guns themselves. I also got a scan of the dunk tanks used to deactivate any powder bags that rupture. With these images, I think I can finally get all the aspects of the build right. I believe they install a chute across the space from out outlet of the magazine scuttle to the inlet of the powder room scuttle so they don't have to lift the 110 pound bags any more than they have to.
I also learned that the crew could only work in the powder flats on 15 minute intervals. Apparently, the smokeless powder in the bags gave off ether that would render the crew senseless if they remained there for longer periods.
Turrets are tough places to work. Although one could imagine working in the fire rooms of the 8 boilers, being station in the shaft tunnels, or having to load the quad 40mms on the upper decks wasn't much fun either.
All in all, the tour did exactly what I wanted it to do. I had developed a whole list of questions and had them on my iPhone. I answered all of them. I also realized at about the same time I started using the scanner, that I could put all the answers directly next to the questions and didn't need the stupid clipboard either. It made going up and down inclined ladders much more difficult having to hold the railing AND the clipboard at the same time. It was my traditional brain getting in the way of my digital one.
Now I've got to get back to the drawing board, literally and figuratively.
Excellent stuff!
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
WOW!
