assembled one gun today. still running into rule one. need more clamps and long boat is long. hull weighs in at 480 grams of 23814 minimum. the 3.5 oz co2 bottle is the same weight as the entire hull and props. still need to build the outside set however
This 3d print tech is fascinating. I love the idea that (after 10,000 man-hours of fiddling) you can get the design nailed down, then email it to anyone and they can print out their own. Or, you could "mass produce" a design for sale. And for smaller, weight restricted ships like DD's and CL's, it seems like the route to go to finally make them viable to build (oh! Type XI U-boat!! Or even Type VII!!). Ish, you're doing a great job of documenting both the benefits and the pitfalls of the tech. Keep it up!
At this point i'm finding that the best use of 3d printing would be to make all the ribs and have them printed out to save a few hours of cutting wood. and to reduce the amount of wood in the structure as a whole as ribs printed vertically are as strong against bb's as plywood in the same dimensions. printing complicated areas like the rudder and stuffing tubes also works well as long as you leave tie in points for the standard balsa hull that should be used for the rest of the ship (on anything other than a DD or CL). even a DD or CL could really use cavities in the hull where you can run some sort of rod such as aluminum or carbon fiber (i prefer aluminum for price and elasticity but the keel stringer could benefit from a carbon fiber rod for that rigidity. SS is a great use of a 3d printer as complicated non structural parts are easily reproduced that way and the design and planning doesn't take that much longer than conventional methods. on mass production the printing of this boat hull took around 45 hours without anything breaking and around 60 after reprinting. making a negative mold from the completed print and making a framework from aluminum or cf rod and casting it would be the only way to use 3d directly to mass produce a boat. it would produce a very durable and rapidly produced boat this way however but would require about 400 hours of printing to make all the production aids required as well as a vac chamber and some lightweight casting resin. tldr printing a whole boat is niche and needs refinement still.
weee. i had to go with the version of the nagara that has the darned high AA antenta........ i will regret this later.
SS is about 40% complete and weighs in at 85g sofar. green is pla as i ran out of abs again and that part takes about 2 hours to print with no infil and no ceiling/floor as the overdeck shape is just to complicated to get autocad to model correctly and styrene sheet cuts fast. (saturday i should have all my parts to get yamato firing her guns and moving her props.)
and a standard strike gun just barely fits..... needs lots of hose management to keep out of the drive gears but should be manageable. current plan has that lower green deck getting sealed watertight and a not so watertight top deck getting put ontop. i know this will cause issues when it gets run over but will deal with them later. and i just printed all my decks cause why not.
That's cool. I have a 2/3 finished Nagara in my garage right now. I had a lot of trouble with the damned thing listing because of the hull shape.
adding 3/4 depth and placing lead weights directly in the keel has helped significantly. also lets me fit a full size gun and 3.5 oz bottle just have to strap things down very well. 5.7 pounds of weight to work with isn't that hard if you can keep the hull weight down and put it where you need it.
