I have finally gone through the process of creating and printing a part for the turret. My first problem was to figure out what to make and what to leave alone. Since only half the ball turret will be visible and only that part that sticks out from the bottom of the aircraft, I decided to leave the mechanism between the gun alone since it was already present and I didn't want to reinvent the wheel so to speak. So what I will make is the internal ammo drum, the ejection chutes from the guns to the bottom of the turret, the gunner's seat, and the support system holding the ball since what the model company made looks awful.
So I started with the ammo drum. FreeCad allows you to put the image of what you are drawing onto the work space so you can trace it if you want to. I tried this first but the drawing was not head on, it was at an angle. Still I had the basic shape.
Then I took lots of measurements to determine what would both fit on top of the guns and fit inside the space I was given inside the ball turret. Once I had this figured out I then added constrictions to each line and curve. Until the 2d drawing is 100% constricted, It will move and can not be made into a 3d model.
From there I gave the part a measured depth and added some depression features. It ended up looking like this... Granted it's not perfect but it was a major step forward.
Once the part was completely defined, I had to save it as an STL file. This is done by highlighting every surface and I mean every visible surface and saving it while all surfaces are highlighted. As an STL file, I then transferred it to Chitubox slicer program and sliced it.
Finally I brought it into the printer program and loaded it for printing. It came out real nice.
What was even better was the fit was perfect!
I've already started on the ring portion. More to update as I figure this stuff out but hopefully it won't take too long.
Thanks for following and if anyone wants a copy of the STL files I've created let me know.