That would be really cool brother. I am hopeful that I will have time to get more done this season. Last year was almost a total loss for me on getting time to do anything shipyard related.
I have time to type because I'm trapped in a 2015 Toyota Tacoma riding shotgun on my way to battle. Literally a captive audience. The ability to disagree does exist in this hobby. An example being I was told repeatedly how much of a moron I was for building non competitive French battleships and I did it anyway and got my ass beat on the water plenty. But I showed up. Xanthar started the drama with his baseless accusations and name calling. I have 4 years, 11 different ships across 8 different captains, and now 2 whole 3d printed hulls under my belt. All of which have been shot to shit and improved upon every iteration to find what worked. I walked the walk. I was even willing to test the 3d printed targets to prove my point. But the inexperienced typist decided to get an attitude. The same inexperienced typist who was lent a $700+ model ship and told to have fun, who was brought to the house of the guy whom he called a stealing cheat, etc. That doesn't fly. We in this hobby are open to new ideas, disagreements, and can sometimes aggressively ballbust if we think your idea is dumb (see the French battleships comment above). Also, what veterans have left? Just curious, the 35 year vet next to me in the truck wants to know if he knows any of them. This is my last bit about the Xanthar drama. Let's clean this up and get back on topic. 3d printing and damage resistance from here out.
Wish I was on the road with ya. I start driving a log truck Monday for a new employer. So time off is probably not in the cards anytime soon lol. I envision quite a few 80+ hour weeks ahead. However it will hopefully allow me to bank some seed money to start my own little gig that will hopefully turn into something. It is not hobby related and will not be discussed here. However it is the direction our family has decided to go. It is a risk bit what in life is truly no risk.
You really need to get your facts straight. I didn't start with the insults : that was Carl. I went to Carl's house to help with with a project that involved 3D printing and files that he couldn't convert. The next day he's blasting me for not molding things and then implying that I'm stupid and don't know what I'm doing. This isn't the first time he's done that so, I'm done trying to work with him. No one loaned me a $700 ship. Steve Andrews was kind enough to let me drive his NC, for an afternoon, a few years back. After that I bought 2 ships of my own. When Carl was in a seemingly good mood, he did let me take a Kongo hull with me to see what I could do as far as laser cutting a deck for it. That will be packed up and sent back to him, this weekend. I've put my money where my mouth is : roughly $2000 dollars invested in 2 serviceable ships, other hulls, and various parts. Then there's the 2 lathes, the band saw, the drill press, and all the other tools I've purchased to make parts for ships. To get back to testing of 3D printed parts, I've shared more information here than most people have. I have 5 printers and have extensively customized the hardware and the software to my needs. I've been doing that for more than the 4 years you claim make you the expert. Probably close to decade with work I did while earning my Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering. I was one of the first people to bring a 3D printed hull to a battle, on this coast, and I did a lot of testing in the past with various temps and layer settings. I've been working on techniques to make 3d printed parts stronger including my own custom gcode. I did refute your statement that the testing I've proposed isn't needed, which I guess you construed as attitude? I was glad that you finally agreed to try testing in a more scientific way. I even updated the targets for your use but, you seem to not be following through, now. I am, though, I've got a box of 30 test targets headed to Texas.
Let me rephrase that, the ability to disagree and move on. As for 3d printing, since all the experts are here, which would be better for secondarty turrets, and maybe main turret caps, PETG or Polycarbonate? For damage resistance.
I printed my entire KE7 SS out of good quality ABS that was printed well and acetone smoothed afterwards. The main turrets are just a few perimeters thick and have taken plenty of hits with no breakage and barely even dents. The rest of the SS has held up well too. The thicker stuff has taken more damage which I presume is because of the greater rigidity, but no catastrophic failures. I'm inclined to believe that ABS will be fine for SS if it's well printed and properly treated afterwards. No need for more exotic plastics. Not that the exotics might not do better, but ABS isn't to be forgotten or passed over as subpar. Imo. This is just my opinion. No formal testing done, just battle. Take it with a grain of salt. Do as you please. No insults taken I hope.
I'm not really sure what all the difference is between materials. I knew ABS was fine though. There is a local 3d print shop and I was wondering what they could do. They can print with those (petg and polycarbonate) and PLA.
Carl has been so insulting and so condescending so many times that I missed this one ... You only paid for 1 and there are 4 on a Kongo. How about purchasing the other 3? That would be the honest thing to do. I'm not sure why you seem to want to think that I've never molded anything and know nothing about it? Just because I was polite and didn't dare to question or contradict you, maybe? In any case, hot gluing a part to a piece of glass and building walls around that with Lego has worked very well for me. I've never needed to raise a part up that high. Are you sure it wasn't about the extra height? The fact that you complained about it in another thread wouldn't have anything to do with that, would it?
They're supposed to be stronger and more impact resistant I believe but I've never worked with them. What ship is this for?
French Verite. I only need 2 secondaries, but I figured I'd just get a whole set and mains made up as well, since there's files in the resources for them. They only have black PC, but do have white petg. I can just have them print in that and sounds like I'll be fine then
I've been kind of keeping this to myself, but ... yeah, I printed up a bunch of test cubes last spring, with various side thicknesses (1/32, 1/16, 3/32, 1/8) and materials (PLA, PLA Tough, PETG, ABS, TPU) and we tested them out with a cheap daisy (250fps) bb pistol, and eventually with a multi-pump Crosman. The PLA was a joke, and shattered easily. The PETG wasn't that much better. The PLA Tough wasn't so bad (oven baked) The ABS was fine. The TPU laughed at everything we threw at it. Personally, if TPU wasn't such a pain in the behind what with stringing, etc., I'd use it for everything. As it is, I'm mostly inclined to use ABS. More importantly, I'm inclined to not waste so much time making pretties this Spring and see if I can actually have a boat prepared to battle rather than just grabbing something off the shelf and crossing my fingers. (Although, I must admit that sometimes, that is a deliberate strategy. Sometimes I just want to go, goof off and have fun and not care about what happens on the water) Edit: I figured maybe I should share, so I posted the STL at: https://rcwarshipcombat.com/resources/3d-printer-material-test-cube.144/ Enjoy!
Been looking at all the different types of filament. So far I have done PLA and one type of flexible from 3DSolutech. Printed a phone case for a coworker. It came it pretty good. Took a few tries to get the temp and feedrates close but then it was good. Had one massive jam up in the extruder. Literally over a meter of filament jammed and wound up in there. Had to take it apart to clear it.
That particular flexible was also extremely strong in tension. It looked almost like strands of glasscloth in it when extruded and pulled thin while hot. Very hard to break or tear. I like it. May try to print some super structure parts in it. Hehe.
Going to knock up a temporary enclosure tomorrow afternoon or Saturday morning. I need to print some parts in ABS for my new frame upgrade. Any pointers appreciated as I have not yet tried ABS.
ABS loves an ambient air temp around 100F. No part cooling fan unless you are bridging. Really make sure your extruder is calibrated correctly along with your extrusion multiplier. 1mm of filament really needs to be 1mm and a 1mm wall needs to actually be 1mm. Then print some test parts and check overall dimensions along with interior dimensions like the insides of bolt holes so you can figure out your actual manufacturing tolerance and then adjust your part designs to match. Might not be quite as simple as just scaling the whole model up. My ABS prints overall come out good, but bolt holes are always too tight. So I had to change my clearances a bit and now we're good. ABS can be kinda shrinky, so it'll take a bunch of leg work to make dimensionally accurate parts. Luckily, we don't need perfect. But if you do said leg work, you will print well.
My experience has been that damage tolerance is as much about getting proper layer and intralayer adhesion as it is about raw material properties. Abs hates airflow. I run 110c heated bed for 1st later, 100 after that on a approx .3 inch thick aluminum plate with pei surface. Enclosure killed off all warping problems. I also have found that tuning extruder flow so that I get .4mm single layer wall that is .4mm thick, then setting cura to .38mm gets a really nice intralayer bond
