I've been working on creating a 3-D printed ship based on the ship models in World of Warships. I've gotten an Alabama pretty close to finished, so here she is. A few things about the build strategy: 1. Printed in chunks and pinned together using roll pins for alignment. 13 pieces in total. 2. For strength, there are 4 threaded rods that run almost the full length of the ship. They fit in a slot printed into the hull and are epoxied in place. This gives plenty of strength and continuity along the ships length. 3. Printed vertically so that the layers are along the ribs defining the windows in the hull. This is critical so they are durable in combat. 4. I tried to include everything in the hull so that I don't need to make mounting features for guns, pumps, fire control, etc. Everything is printed in so components drop in place. So far everything is going as planned. I'll update after we have a battle in December.
Looks great! When you say based upon WOW, do you mean you could get into their 3d stuff? I would love to print out some of the detail stuff from their site.
That is very much how I have imagined doing it. Looking forward to hearing how it survives a season of battling. I would be interested in some of your print philosophy. Material, wall thickness etc.
So I found a Russian site that pulls the models out somehow and presents them conveniently. It's also pretty great just to click on the 3-D model and see it in your browser. https://gamemodels3d.com/games/worldofwarships/ I paid them like $5 and became a member. I can see every ship in the game and download a hyper-detailed model. This is the basis of the design, and also will drive how I put detail on the ship. The attached picture shows how the model looks overlayed on my design. Every detail in the ship is there down to small devices like telephones, binoculars, and fire control details. I don't know how accurate this all is, but I think they're pretty good. From the 3-D model page I can download a .stl or .obj file that I can then import into Fusion 360. From a practical perspective you can then use this as a basis for a design. Working directly with their geometry is sometimes dodgy because their models are designed for the game, and are not watertight for printing (technical jargon for mesh quality needed for successful printing). But I've found that you can scale it correctly and create simple shapes that match their model really quickly to create your own. I did this on the main turrets of the Alabama and it worked great. For the hull I worked pretty hard to adapt their mesh directly. On the 3-D printing side, I'm printing in PETG with a 0.4mm nozzle. 3 shells and around 15% infill. Very basic settings that are easy to accomplish. The stringiness of PETG is a downside, but UV and temperature resistance are so much better than PLA that I will never go back. I've been running a Roma with 3-D printed superstructure for around 3 years and it's holding up really well... even in PLA.
I have a High School Tech Ed Teacher in my town who may be interested in speaking with you. we're brainstorming a hydrodynamics project for his class at the moment.
Print time was LONG. Each piece was probably around 12 hours. No big deal though. The printer just runs and runs with no complaints. I buy 10 lb spools from matterhackers to minimize worrying about running out. I went through one of those on this project
It was pretty busy at our annual fleet meeting in the WWCC, so I didn't get a chance. Also needed to fix one of the guns. She's looking good though, and I'll report back after our first battle in 2019.
got some more pics? what's the boat look like when it's equipped? Want to make @NickMyers happy and do a stem-to-stern?
In what way did you manage to "hollow" out the model and create all those internal features through the part itself? Did you split the parts, add some features, and just re-mate them in the assembly?
The process is a bit advanced, but goes.something like this: 1. Import the model into Fusion and scale it so it's length is correct 2. Skin the hull portion by creating a surface that adheres to I created the hull as a single piece with all of the systems in the ship, including guns, propulsion, steering, etc. The hull also had the windows designed in. The very last step was to slice up the hull into chunks that would fit on my 3D printer and put dowel pin holes in so they could be accurately put together after printing.
