5" 38 Mark 28 Twin Gun Secondary Battery from Iowa Class Battleships

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After finding more broken foot rungs, I decided "enough is enough!" and started making them out of metal. Turns out my printed ones have a .025" cross section and I have phos-bronze wire in that diameter. I measured the rung's width on my 45 year-old Channellock needle nosed pliers. I placed some masking tape at the point on the tapered plier nose so I could replicate the width. Once you get ladder tread measure, the rest is straight forward.



The hardest part was preparing the area to re-drill it for the rung. I had to fill some spots with Bondic. After installation they looked acceptable. When painted they even worked better. Should have gone this route in the first place.



Using bare metal foil matte aluminum, I covered the unpainted gun slides and then the curved gun shield facing. I like how this came out. I set the grain to go fore and aft on the slides which is how it looks for real. I may put an overcoat of some transparent color to look like lubricant.



I also painted all the floor plating. First with Tamiya dark iron, and then dry brush some "real metal" from AK Interactive. Now I have proof that the diamond plate texture actually is there and if you look really, really closely, you'll see that the diamond pattern is correct. This is the gun house exit point for the powder cartridges.



I have to paint the UHR's floor which I believe was linoleum, and then the top works are ready for assembly. I'm still working how to do the rest of the model. I'm waiting for an epipheny to steer me in the right direction. For example: how much of the ship's superstructure do I need to add around the gun house? You can see in this image of my Missori model that, there's a lot going on around it, but does it add to the understanding of what I'm trying to convey?



Onward and upward… BTW: My wife's bloodwork was all good. She doesn't need to see the doc until July.
 
That's good news about your wife, must be a relief to both of you. Like the brass fut runs and as for displaying the gun, maybe just have it sitting on the deck with all the below deck parts showing as best you can. In other words, try to keep it simple as it is the gun model and workings you want to display. Just saying.
 
Thank you for the kind thoughts. You are correct. I'm now thinking of making all the intervening stuff out of clear acrylic without any embellishment. Even that will be a bit truncated. The gun and it's systems is the focus and I shouldn't get distracted.

Lots of trim painting, fixing more rungs (one more to go), and installed my new black backdrop paper. What a difference it makes in picture taking. With the dark background the iPhone is not underexosing the subject while trying to adapt to the background.

I'm about one day away from assembling the upper works.



I am really pleased with the photo. I'm going to have to take a lot of pictures of the finished parts and sub-assemblies for use with the AV presentation. Having this look will really help. You can't see the red edges of the cutouts easily in this image, but they're there.
 
Thanks Tom!

The floor of the UHR has a white line demarking the working circle of the loaders and the upper hoists. It's noted as 117" diameter. Remember, unlike the big guns where part of the room rotates with the guns to keep everything in line, in the 5" system, only the hoists themselves rotate with the turret above. The room stays put. That circle tells folks that people are moving around quickly to keep up with the turret's rotation.

I first attempted to do it as a decal. I was trying to match the linoleum brown color by memory, but as we all know, color memory is iffy. Since I didn't get the color right, plan B was to trim out the decal and apply it as a ring. That didn't work so well. The decal was very squirrely and was a mess. I resorted to masking the floor and cutting the circle with a dividers with on arm having a chisel edge which I ground to do this particular kind of task.



It ain't perfect, but the viewing angle is so shallow that it will look just fine. On Monday I'm going to start assembling and photographing.
 
I think I have the final configuration done. I was noodling using clear acrylic, but dropped the idea since it's so hard to work with. I'm going to use styrene and do cutaways. Here's what it's going to look like. Took two days to figure out the runs for the powder and projectile trunks.










I'm not detailing any of the intervening offices in the second deck. They're not the subject of the model and would detract from it. They're only there to show that the magazine is some distance away and not right below.

I drew the splinter deck scheme and will do it in modules, just enough to fill the space of the display. the splnter decks runs almost the entire length of the armored citidal in the ship.

My print was at the extremes of my machine. I did make the wall thickness a bit narrow. While the print was not a complete failure, I've made changes in the object and in the its support scheme.





It will take five of these modules to make the splinter deck section I'm modeiling. I thickened the exterior walls and split it to print in two parts. That has a side benefit. It reduced print time by 3 hours due to having less height in the machine.



I also drew and am printing right now, the single US Navy inclined ladder that is near this particular mount on the real ship. My research found a lot of variations of these and many on the real ships have been replaced so they're not WW2 versions either. I took some license.



I perforated the steps and we'll see how that prints. It's pretty small in O'scale, but it printed the diamond plate flooring so you don't know unless you try.
 
Thanks and it certainly is complex! Wouldn't have it any other way. When I did the 16" gun, I shied away from the 5" system because it just looked too compicated. Some much stuff shoved into the gun house and no dimensioned blue prints. But, my goal is to make each big project more engaging than the last, so what choice did I have

The ladder print came out great! All the perforations in the treads resolved without difficulty. My reprint of the splinter deck modules was so lucky. Something very weird happened in the Slicer (new version of ChiTuBox recently downloaded). On the larger modules, everything worked pretty well. On the smaller one all of my custom-added supports were not in contact with the object. They were just floating in space relegating most of the print to the trash bin. I don't know how this happened. Never had it happen before. It's like the object moved leaving the supports behind. They were all offset by the same amount. I am reprinting the small module and then will do the combined one again.



I thickened the railings so they would print well.



The larger splinter deck module printed well with the changes I made to wall thickness. The small modules (2) are being printed again as I write this.



I spent the rest of the session doing final detail painting. Just about done that. I'll take pictures later. I'm going to start doing the formal layout of the ship structure. I also have to design and print the rest of the racks and panels that go into the lower handling room and the magazine proper. The end is not as far away as it was before, but it's still away.

Here's what that crazy sliced drawing looked like. I didn't pick up this mess before putting it on the machine. Normally, when you position a support, it won't stick unless it's positioned on the part's surface.



I re-opened the slice file and edited all those supports. I deleted all the floaters and then re-added them. You can see in this screen print that all the supports ARE in contact with the object.



It's a constant learning experience. Meanwhile, I writing a book about it.
 
Once you started the print job, how long did it take to get the final product?
 
Great stuff !
I'd have more chance understanding how a woman's brain works, than understanding the complexities and physical requirements of 3D printing, but the final results are fantastic - far, far removed from the almost total lack of any detail accessories from even 30 year ago, never mind the 60 or so years since I first started modelling !!
 
Thanks all! Printing is in direct proportion to the number of layers, the layer thickness and the exposure time for each. The taller object is on the build plate, the longer it takes to print. It does not care how complicated is the object or how full the build plate is. It's just about number and time to create those layers. I generally don't care about print time since I usually print jobs to run at night. Resin printers, when set up correctly, run nicely unattended. When something fails, it's often hard to tell until the job's done anyway, so watching it doesn't do much. That's not the case with the filament additive (FAM) machines. They are sensitive to the amount and complexity on the build plate as well as layer height and numbers of layers. And they also need pretty constant attention becuase when something fails it's usually pretty obvous like when the print nozzles clogs or layers start separating.

I am writing a book on this entire process that also going to include design considerations and using 3D CAD and slicing software. I'm on Chapter three and have many to go.

Built the first splinter deck assembly and number two is in the clamps. Number 3 is in the printer. That means only two more to build and I have that crazy deck ready for final assembly and paint. I've been trying out Gorilla Structural Adhesive. It's clean and has good tack keeping parts kind of where you put them. It doesn't cure fast, but that's not a detriment in this case. And it's good for lots of different surfaces. I'm using it to assembly these splinter assemblies and attaching units to the floors and walls.





Here's the first subassembly joining… not yet glued



I added more goodies into the Upper Handling room. The Gorilla glue really works well and having some working time is really important. CA is just too darn temperamental.



This is the viewer's point of view. When liit it will be nice.

 
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