Quick build log/pic dump for my Iron Duke class battleship, HMS Emperor of India. As my previous builds show, I'm more of the French guy. This year I was supposed to be (re)building my Jean Bart into a new fiberglass hull, but I got as far as making the mold (with Steve A's help) and popping out two hulls, one of which went to @Beaver . A longtime local friend went to NATs with me and ran my HMS Invincible for the week and learned a lot about the hobby, both working to finish I-boat and battling it all week. He decided to jump in feet first and bought himself an Iron Duke hull from Battler's Connection, and when I saw the hull I decided I wanted to build one too side by side with his to help teach him and also give him the benefit of learning from my mistakes on mine. COVID hit in the middle of a contract recompete year for my team, and the government realized that they didn't really need to pay for offices for IT contractors who don't work "on site" anyway. So now I'm full time work from home for the next 5~ years at least, so I find myself with an excess of boat time. Because of that, there will be big gaps in progress shown with pictures as I go out to the shop at 8am with a cup of coffee and work til 3-4pm and regularly forget to take pics until I'm coming in for the day. All week. Most of the progress shown happened in 4 days. Gun layout is the traditional bow sidemount/haymaker/dual stern, pump is a 2400kv Tenshock brushless inrunner powered by a waterproofed hobbyking 80a ESC. Due to supply issues with the PropDrive motors I've used in the past, drive for this boat is provided by two 740kv Turnigy Aerodrive outrunners powered by Hobbywing WP10BL60 speed controls. The power gets to the pavement via a set of 3d printed/CNC aluminum gearboxes that are a joint @Beaver and myself project to replace the out of print Traxxas gearboxes. Gear ratio is 2~:1 through hardened steel 32P 5mm bore gears. Shafts are 5mm metric stainless steel, stuffing tubes are 3/8 OD .050 wall stainless tube. Props are cast bronze 35mm (1 3/8") that are press-fit to the shafts and retained with Loctite 680. Might as well be brazed on there with how much force it took to drive the props on. Seriously. Guns are foster breech, big tube main feed, small tube breech backfeed, stainless tight tolerance barrels. Running a 7oz CO2 tank and a BC lightweight regulator. Fire control is provided by @SnipeHunter firing boards switching BC solenoids. Superstructure is of my own design, 3d printed on my two Artillery X1 printers in Zyltech white bulk ABS. Using BC's foamy funnels so I could get mine done and start printing for Kevin's (my rookie, not @Kevin P. ) and Steve A's. And now for pic dump. Hopefully in some sort of logical order. Laying out internals, trying to figure out how I want things. Should be balanced pretty good around her center of bouyancy. In reality bottle ended up farther forward than this original layout. Designed this rudder servo mount/gear drive for the dual rudders. Subdeck in. Used the blue painter's tape method. 1/4" Woodcraft baltic birch plywood. Can see the matching 1/8" deck hatch in the background. Subdeck is E6000'd into the hull and then epoxied. Once the windows are cut I epoxy the bottom. Duke on the Bench, deck hatches cut out and in, deck paint drying. On the right table you can see some superstructure bits for HMS Valiant, on the shelf above you can see my USS Zrinyi and the deck/superstructure for Jean Bart. Some pics of the 3d models for the Duke superstructure. This one is the Emperor of India. This was one of the first prints. Not amazing quality. I print for battle. .32 layer height, 100mm/s. Above shot showing gun layout, stern SS. Can see the gun mounts built into the barbettes. Also a whoopsie here. Drilled the hole for the Q barbette at 27.5" instead of 29.5. Nothing that can't be fixed by offsetting the turret on the barb a bit. Barely noticeable. Close up of Valiant's gun mounts which are the same as Emperor's. More superstructure coming together... Super mostly accounted for by this point. Aft shot showing the haymaker mount setup. Also contemplating positions for the aluminum deck latches. Didn't have a lot of time left to be productive on this day, so I started painting in the lettering/portholes with an auto body touch up paint pen. Takes seconds. Got yelled at for beautifying instead of building, so here's some pics of guns mounted and solenoids and such: And I made little casemate guns so I could disappoint those yelling at me to be productive: As of right now waiting on some amazon packages to show up and then doing gas plumbing and wiring. Then cut it out, dog screen internal armor, sheet, and basically donezo.
Well, ain't that just nifty. Lookie what I was about to share with everybody else (but it's not quite done yet!)
This is the only one I have assembled out of a boat right now. This one was a prototype and has been stressed/broken in some spots to figure out the weak spots. The prototype was also 2 pieces, which was deemed unnecessary. The main gearbox body is 1 piece 3d printed ABS, basically solid no real infill spots. Motor plate is 1/8 aluminum plate, cnc machined. The threads in the ABS for the 4x 4-40 bolts that hold the motor plate on are provided by brass heat-set inserts. Motor plate is compatible with the traxxas villain gearbox which many have used in boats before they went out of print. Once I get my CNC put back together in the spring I will do a run of 29mm (big brushless, 775 brushed, etc), 25mm (550 can), and 19mm (small brushless) motor plates for those who want them for new builds or older boat refits.
You can get very good results out of even the cheapest Ender 3 printer these days. I have a tutorial posted on Fusion 360 basics to get you started modeling. From there its just expanding your modeling abilities (which is really just layering the same skills over and over creating more complex objects through repeatedly applying the same basic functions) and fine-tuning your printing ability.
Once the machine is up and running, that wouldn't be a problem. I've always offered my tools to others in the hobby. If the printers are sitting idle, and someone needs something printed, they're available. Same goes for the CNC when its not in pieces lol.
Hehe, I have another take on the gearbox concept I'd like to try out, but I haven't drawn it up yet. It's a bit further down on the priority list.
Build update. Boat's getting sheeted as I type this (waiting for contact cement to set up). Gun board wired up. For the next one I used 3 colors to differentiate between gun signal and battery +, was a silly mistake on my part for the first one. Decided to take the extra time on this build so I don't have to play: "What the hell does this servo lead do?" Tucked the RX under the deck overhang in the front. Makes for a really clean wiring setup once all the spaghetti is loomed and tucked under the deck edge. Decided to create a main umbilical that feeds the decks. Big tube gas feed + gun solenoid wiring loomed together with quick connectors at the same lengths. Long enough to be able to take the decks off and lay them on the table for pondside, easy to disconnect for more serious maintenance, and it coils up in the boat when you put the deck hatch back on. Doing the responsible thing and checking for circuit continuity and looking for any ground/V+ shorts before first power up test. First power up was a success. Just need to program ESC's. And finally where we are at with weight currently. Target is about 21-22lb. Will need a little ballast but not a ton.
I figured this build thread, being a grand total of like 3 posts, was a little anti-climatic. Instead of posting a similar 3 post thread for my next project, I'm just going to combine them here. On the workbench next is HMS Valiant. This boat lived in my garage for 5~ years, then was given back to Steve A (his son had sold it to me long ago) and he started building it but it never quite "fit him" he said. So it stayed on the shelf half built for a while. With a change of workshops and limited shelf space, I bartered the boat back into my hands and decided to finish it as a reliable backup boat/friend loaner boat. Very much like my HMS Invincible. Boat has direct drive 550 brushed motors with 1060 hobbywing ESC's, 1.5" kort props, stainless shafts. Came with 4 guns which all worked, along with their tubing, solenoids, and solenoid wiring already done. Plan for the refit: New decks. The old decks are pretty trashed. The old subdeck is pretty terrible but I am not willing to commit the energy to rip it out and make new. This means the new decks have to work on the old subdeck. There are no super great solutions here. Transfer the guns + solenoids to the new decks. New 3d printed superstructure + barbettes + turrets New 5.5" combined area rudders. Current rudders are pre 2021 rule change. New pump (didn't come with one) Gun boards (didnt come with them either) Regulator + 9oz bottle As before, here are some pics hopefully in an order that makes sense. Originally this boat had SLAs. Then 5000mah 2s lipos. Now its been retrofitted for my 8000mah 3s lipos. Also shown is my solution for securing the deck. Knurled inserts, coated in 5 minute epoxy, pressed into slightly undersized holes in the subdeck. Deck will be secured with 8-32 thumbscrews that have large plastic wing-knobs for ease of use with wet fingers. @Kevin P. style pump outlet going in. Due to the "all the way to the edge" decks this boat has, I decided to be lazy and just notch the new deck to go around the pump outlet. New decks and superstructure installed. Have more detail bits, but you get the idea. Aaaaaaaaaand guns installed. Solenoids are deck mounted. The 3 aft guns all load via the stern superstructure. I did more work, like installing a bottle mount / regulator cradle and some basic wiring. Going to use a 2600kv Surpass Hobbies inrunner on a black base BC pump for damage control. 80A hobbyking ESC. Waiting on the pumps to arrive and then you'll see pics of that whole shebang.
Another day, another update. Valiant is basically systems complete. Found a pair of vintage 2014 @SnipeHunter gun boards in a box of salvaged parts from when I first got into the hobby. These must've been in my old North Carolina. They needed a little refurbishment, servo leads had gotten chewed up by something, but after some time with the pencil soldering iron they are good to go. Just waiting on my BC order for some pump bases and Valiant will be finished. It's not a pretty boat or build by any means, but it is built and functions and will do the job. Added new rudders for the 2021 rule change and drag discs, which she was missing. Did a function check on all systems + mag dump on the guns and all are working 5/5. Wiring still needs to be cleaned up and loomed, but it's all there and the gas plumbing as well.
I will be french in spirit, flag, and dress but not in ship choice this year unfortunately. Duke is smaller than Bart enough that it won't hog all my time, as Admiral I wanted something a bit more manageable in case one of my rookies or someone on the team needs me for something.
wow dude, I really love the detail you cranked out on those Supers. Were you using Fusion 360 to draw them? I'm looking at building a Warspite at some point and was thinking about trying to crank out a 3D Superstructure. I'm not really familiar with the 3d Printing portion of the equation and was thinking about using Shapeways. Any tips on how to segment out your superstructure components to deal with a small printing area, or are those printers you have big monster setups that can just blast out huge prints?
So I can take no credit for the modeling done on Valiant. that was posted by Brian here in the forum resource area. The iron Duke superstructures were me. Yes I use fusion 360. I have a small tutorial that I recorded and put up here on the forum that teaches the basics. But all these models are, are the basics just reapplied over and over again to create more and more layers of detail. Shapeways is mega expensive, you would spend three or $400 on superstructure for one of our boats through them. you would almost be better off buying yourself a 3D printer, figuring out how to use it, and then printing it out yourself. On how to slice the models to make them easy to 3D print you just have to think like a 3d printer. Try to visualize what the 3D printer is doing. A perfect example is the main citadel tower for the iron Duke superstructure. The printer works from the bottom up if you printed that piece as all one piece when you got to the platform above where you were just working you would end up printing plastic in midair and that obviously would not work. So typically what I do is I model everything out and then I find those big overhang areas and I plane cut the pieces using the bottom of those overhangs so that way when you arrange it all on the print table in your slicer software every model has a nice flat base to sit on the printer bed. There's no crazy supports required. This is something that you figure out the more you print and design for printing. Here are some pics showing what I mean: This pic I exploded the front superstructure to show the cuts I make. Every platform that would create an overhang is where a cut is made. Duke has this navigation bridge area that sticks out off the front of the tower, I plane cut that right off the tower to create a nice flat surface to print that piece on. This is what the bow SS looks like in my 3d printer slicing software. This is how I would arrange it to then start the print. Yes my printers are relatively large (300mmx300mmx400mm tall print area) but Duke's SS would be easy even on a smaller printer. I printed my whole Jean Bart superstructure on an ancient/tiny Wanhao Duplicator. You just end up needing to chop it up into smaller bits. Here on JB's super you can see the horizontal lines that cut the pieces to make them printable. Once again, any time theres an overhang that area is cut to make it's own piece. Theres just a *whole lot* more pieces.
