What's one more build thread when I have 2 started and unfinished build threads already?? I've been a little under the weather recently which has been keeping me in the nice warm office and out of the kinda chilly kinda drafty kinda damp garage. This means I've been at the computer a lot. I decided to really work on my Fusion360 skills by modeling the superstructure of USS Des Moines as it is a very popular allied heavy cruiser and a relatively good rookie boat, being the physically largest cruiser ever made it's very forgiving in terms of construction and battling. I'll probably upload those files after posting this, still waiting on a reference measurement off of the ship's plans so I can scale the files properly. After working on Des Moines and the plug work for HMS Erin, I knew I wanted to make a truly 3d printed boat. @thegeek had mentioned how it seemed to be kinda wasteful to 3d print a plug, to make a fiberglass hull, to cut 85% of that fiberglass out and throw it away. I agree, and had agreed from the beginning, but HMS Erin was not the boat to experiment with. She is same old idea, slightly new method. Now comes Mogador. This is supposed to be the pinnacle of my limited 3d modeling/engineering skill. I want to remind everyone, I'm a government IT guy who works on Jeeps in his free time. I have absolutely no engineering/CAD/etc background. I started with the French plans for the ship and a downloaded World of Warships 3d model. Surprisingly, once everything was scaled properly, the WOWS model was entirely accurate. At that point I basically disregarded the actual ship's plans and focused on the WOWs model. Video game models are not 3d printable objects, video game artists can use texture tricks and shadows to fool your eyes into thinking something is a solid object. So you need to do some clean up work to make the hull an actually editable object. There are many methods. Sooner or later, you end up with something like this: You'll notice a "belt" all the way around the hull. That was where I added the 1/2" of extra depth. I wasn't entirely sure how much to add, so I guessed at 1/2" and if she has some extra freeboard then whatever. The next thing I did was model the interior volume of the hull and then render it as liquid water, from there I then cut away at the interior volume model until I hit 4.88lb of water, the ship's maximum weight per the shiplist. At that point I created a construction plane and marked the ship's waterline. This was necessary to figure out where the ship's impenetrable bottom area would begin. From there I created a sketch along the ship's long axis and marked out the impenetrable areas fore and aft, and the spacing + thickness of the ribs. The IRCWCC rib calculator is broken, so out came the old abacus and I math'd and came out to 10.5 1/4" ribs, or 10 1/4" ribs and 1 1/8. That's what you see there. After a bunch of extruding and cutting and editing faces and stitching faces together, you'll end up with something a little bit like this: To help define the impenetrable area in the stern, I created a right triangle sketch and then used it as a plane to loft along the ribs in the stern. By the time I was done with this project, the Surface workspace had become a well known friend of mine. To help create a nice flow through the hull for water channeling and to make sure the bottom of the hull was thick enough in sections for actual printing, I lofted and extruded to give the bottom more thickness where the keel meets the curve of the hull. You can see that, especially in the stern. Once I had a finished hull, I knew I wanted to incorporate actual construction into it. Why drill holes when you could just not print that hole out? So I modeled the ship's 1" props, 1/8" shafts, and 5/16" stuffing tubes into the hull and made cuts through the bottom for them. On the inside of the hull I wanted to incorporate as many mounts as possible, so I modeled out motor mounts, servo mount, and an additional brace for the stuffing tubes as they pass through the hull. Also visible is the 9/32 tube for the 1/8" rudder shaft. The motors modeled are Mabuchi 380 brushed motors, the Servo is a Savox waterproof micro servo. As we look forward, a dummy for the small pump is also located using a Mabuchi 380 motor. The dummy pump is modeled off of @Beaver 's small pump from the 3d resources section. Basically just a small cylinder of slightly oversize external dimensions with a motor mounted to the top to check deck clearance. From there, a 1/8" plywood deck rim that is 3/16 wide is modeled onto the hull, with a 1/8" plywood deck hatch. And of course, the most important part of any combat model: The superstructure! I even roughed out the bow mounted spurt cannon. I am making two potential loadouts: 15* bow cannon for convoy hunting, and a standard 1 unit stern gun. Only the bow gun is currently modeled. And here are some shots of the hull as it sits now, printed and tacked together with some CA. The whole exterior surface is going to get a coating of west systems and glass mat to help give it some strength and a firm "backing", to hopefully hold it together even if the plastic decides to chunktify. Only time and future battling will tell if this was a fun project or a waste of time and plastic. Well, considering the plastic was free, just a waste of time I guess.
Small update. With the help of Theraflu I was back in the garage today. Did some work to Erin, Courbet, and Moggy. Finished printing the SS, weighed it in at 4.7g for the whole upper works. Not bad, I don't know if even foam would be much lighter. Surprisingly sturdy too. Happened to have some salvaged shafts and props from an old decommissioned VU laying around and they were basically the perfect size. Got to work on the 1/8" deck and deck rim. In retrospect, wasn't sure why I didn't just model the deck rim into the hull. Will update the design to incorporate that. Made the stern deck but haven't cut the hatch out yet. Here is a sneak peak of the SS sitting on the deck. I'm really enjoying how easily this is going together. So far everything has gone together exactly as planned with some very minor drill touch up work on the rudder post hole. Prop stuffing tubes went in no issue. It's almost like someone designed this to go together this way. Waiting on my 380 motors, hobbywing 1060, and Savox waterproof micro servo to show up. More updates as I make progress.
Awesome work, really taking things the to next level. Could you post the overall weight of the ship as it comes together? It will be interesting to compare to other construction methods. Are you worried at all about water being retained in the plastic after a few sinks?
Most of the hull is 100% infill due to small size and wall thickness settings. Sure water retention could be a problem with battle damage, especially if the bow impenetrable holed and took on water. Going to try and avoid that though by giving the plastic a light fiberglass skin. Other than water coming in through BB holes, it should be fine, but I have no real material science type knowledge for how some of these 3d print plastics hold up in water. Weight wise the whole hull came in at 1lb 2oz, SS was 4.7oz, using my tiny food scale in the house. Using the larger postal scale in the garage that I use for like Bart, I piled every component I could onto it with the hull and hit right about 3.9lb. I will say that this hull is most likely heavier than a fiberglass hull, lighter than a wooden hull, and physically stronger than the glass while being maybe a bit weaker than a wood hull if only because of layer lines and the fact that it's printed in sections instead of the subdeck being 1 solid piece. When I say stronger than a glass hull, I mean in overall rigidity. This hull is rock solid. A fiberglass destroyer hull after the windows are cut is a bit of a noodle. I know I wont have the weight to spare to arm both the bow and stern cannons and only hook up the 1 I want to use, so I'm going to make mounts for both and only install one at a time. Thinking of a BC cruiser board for pump+fire control, spartan solenoid for gun pneumatics.
Thank you, your SoDak was an awesome inspiration. The first time I ever in my life opened a CAD program was last september (2018) to design Jean Bart, and it was a learning process. After Bart, I didn't touch it until probably 6 weeks ago when I decided to really start learning how to use Fusion360.
So there have been some updates, Mogador is on hold for a re-print with some changes I've learned from completely modeling and printing the FN Suffren. This build may be quiet for a while as that redesign happens.
Looks like your new printer is working really good - are you using an enclosure, or is ABS shrinking not an issue for you?
That whole ship was actually printed on my 4~ year old Wanhao I3 plus. PETG, shrinkage not a big worry. The new printer is an Artillery X1, 300x300x400 build volume. Lets me slice the ship into 4 large pieces vs 11 small ones. Now shrinkage has become an issue, with such a tall print the temperature gradient is causing cracking/warping. Right now printing a tall test print using a contractor trash bag as an enclosure to see if it helps.
I know you are testing with a bag, if it works a suggestion would be a printer box. Seems others are having success with it and able to keep electronics inside as it is slightly porous. Different sizes, here is an example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/31x31-inch...526989?hash=item5d9ba95f4d:g:z1AAAOSwjzleJRST
I have plans to build a permanent insulated enclosure if this ends up being the solution, which it seems to be. My main reason for not just using ABS was the VOC's and the need for an enclosure, if I need an enclosure anyway I have a supplier for very competitively priced bulk (5-10kg) rolls of ABS which will quickly offset the enclosure cost.
Dang dude that's bad to the bone. And Mogador is one of my favorite ships. Had a 1/96th scale one for a while.
I'm sure one could. The trick would be getting manufacturing tolerances good enough and repeatable enough for FILE-PRINT levels of production. My cannons still require some post-processing to get them working nice, but I'm working to improve that. I just got some more ideas from Will at the battle this weekend.
I don't mind a little post processing. Just want small,lite,and powerful. Well reliable would also be nice.......
I print strictly in ABS 245 nozzle 90 bed I bought a night stand at wally world for 10 bucks added adams foam board on sides and rear clear shower curtain with magnets on the front. I have an Anet a10 with elmers stick glue on regular 8 inch square glass from lowes. I have printed more complete superstructures than i can count with no curling.
I have another post in the 3D printer section of the form where I detailed building my enclosure. I needed something for a relatively large printer none of the enclosures for smaller i3 size machines would work. And I also wanted to make sure I could put at least two printers in it. So I built an insulated enclosure and then also added a heating system to keep the ambient temperature in the cabinet during printing at 100 f. Since all of that was done I've had beautiful ABS prints with no issue. Since my 3D printer lives in the garage I needed to go this route. The garage is unheated so Ambient air temp could be 30 f outside of the enclosure.