I believe in technology and was wanting to try something new, how dose the community feel about 3d printed ships and parts? With in the build rules of R/C N combat. I have built some wooden airplanes growing up so I halfway know what I'm doing and was looking towards this new project. I was weighing constructions options as I live in an apartment so I'm trying to keep my work space down to a minimum, don't want wife to kill me figuratively speaking.
There has been a lot of discussion about it, mostly in favor. One person on this forum already has a printer ready to go for test printing of various ship superstructure parts. He also has an eye on attempting to print out a hull.
My print envelope is 8"x8"x5.5"... the new computer to run the 3D printer gets here this week and I can finally run the damn thing. I have received several turret files from people, and I've drawn up some superstructures to print. After that, I'm open to projects. But first, printing turrets for the people who sent them, and a SS for HMS Malaya and her sister, QE.
Let me know if you get any Bismarck files, the task is daunting for me right now and I haven't really tried cad yet other then having a drafting class in high school this is going to be one heck of a project. lol. but I'm up for it and determination goes a long way.
Bismarck is too big, unless I did the ribs in 2 pieces for the group of them amidships. The printer time would make it a fairly costly endeavor, to say nothing of the time (in CAD work) to break down the ribs into two pieces that mate nicely with each other. I could print a smaller ship in a series of 'superlifts', like they do real warships these days. HMS Dreadnought could be printed in 6 sections (hull only, deck SS are separate), in 5 print runs counting decks and superstructure, and that would be much easier than basically printing the frames of a wood hull in plastic. So, the upper limit is a beam of about 96 feet on a ship to be printed. Have to leave a little area around the perimeter to use a raft, which improves the print quality of the printed object. The sections, printed in ABS can then be slotted together, and acetone then used to make the joins permanent (i.e. chemical welding). So the big picture answer is YES, someone is planning to do it, and once the first one is worked out, they won't be horribly expensive, I don't think.
Shapeways can print 25.5 in X 13.7 in 21.6 in 1/144 bismark by my calcs is 66 in. waterline 9.8 in. Beam 2.5 in. Draft so it is printable in 3 pices minimum Fore, Mid, and Aft. let me know if you want a balsa wood substitute I came up with.
as an aside, I have the tirpitz superstructure fully 3d modeled already from a previous project.. Tug can have the files when he is done playing with the littorio files
thats cool, I'm having to buld the cad files from scratch cous I could not find aney online both being the same class of ship.
@Greg, THAT's an incentive to get moving If the ABS didn't give off fumes while printing, I'd be doing it on my gaming computer in the den, but the wife is not keen on fumes... I'm angsting for the new laptop to get here so I can get the printer to earn its keep. For the record, you were the first to send me a file to play with so you get toys first, followed by Ron Hunt : ) @Firebaugh, Shapeways is way more expensive than I would care to think about. They can do really cool stuff, but when a Bismarck hull in fiberglass costs $190, there's no commanding reason to 3D print one. For $190, you could get a 60cm x 1cm x 1cm bar of plastic printed. And that's not enough to do a set of turrets for Bismarck. On a home machine, I don't have to pay labor nor amortize the high price of the really awesome machines that Shapeways or their competitors use. The smaller print volume (actually pretty good for a home machine) is not a big issue apart from really big ships. Once you chemically weld two pieces of ABS, it's one piece of plastic. So you design the pieces of a ship to lock together, kind of like legos, and you can assemble much bigger structures (like the SS for Bismarck or Tirpitz)
