(IRCWCC) SMS Baden

Almost fully moved into the new house, so I will be able to start working on my boats. To start, I will be fitting out my SMS Baden.

She currently sits on her own shelf! out in the garage!

First step though is to put together my workbench. Harbor Freight 60" wood. Probably not the best thing, but at least it's something to work on, was on sale and had a 20% off super coupon. I'll need to get a legit tool box, but for now, i can start working.

The plan for the ship is to start out with the typical 4.5 guns and a full pump. Dual sterns, 75 round haymaker, and a 50 round bow.

The plan for now is to run a geared 550 brushed motor, with a Titan 12t for the pump (if a Holmes Hobbies from my crawler days doesn't work out in the pump) Running on 3s Lipos.

I do plan to go brushless for pump and drive eventually. I have a Mamba Max Pro SCT esc I can strip out of an RC Truck, with a 3500Kv or a 2400KV motor. I could use that right away for the drive, and figure out a pump motor/esc combo later. I think I would probably go with the 2400kv motor and step up to 4s lipo voltages though. we'll see.

The rudders right now are hooked up with linkages, not gears. That's something that eventually once the boat is on the water, will get changed out. Gears seem to be the way to go. I'll probably do the 3 gears with the linkage to a servo horn, instead of the gear on the servo. I'll stick that off to the side, and on the other side have the solenoids for the rear guns mounted in one of the 3d printed mounts in the resources.

 

A 3500kv or even 2400kv brushless on a 4s battery would be way too fast for a drive motor. For reference, my Courbet has the throttle endpoint set at 9% to make speed at 28 second with a 1000kv motor, 1.5:1 gearbox, 11.1v.

Brushless pumps @thegeek is the guy to talk to. I have had good results with 2200kv 28-36 Propdrive motors for standard BC pumps at 11.1v. At 4s, you'd probably be a bit fast for a standard BC pump base.

Lots of battlers, myself included, have switched to Servocity plastic .250 pitch sprocket+chain. I'll never go back. It works, it's easy, it's durable. From cruisers up to my big Jean Bart.

For workbenches, nothing beats a 2x4 workbench if built correctly. Tons of plans online for you to build one, provided you've got a table saw or circular saw (or dont mind paying Home Depot to cut it for you). Can have a real nice bench for $100.

 

Sounds like I should stay 3s then. I am planning to gear it to like a 3:1, or at the least whatever the ratio comes out to be running a 12t pinion with the BC single motor gearbox.

As for the rest, I'll get it on the water before modifications. I suppose any kind of smaller gear on the rudders and larger gear driving them (or sprocket/pulley, whatnot) would accomplish the same task of making the rudders turn a decent amount to a shorter servo movement

The workbench I bought was like $120 after taxes and stuff. It's just a little short for my liking, but it comes with 4 drawers and a wood vice on the one side. I have to assemble it still. But once I get that, I really got to get my tool and parts organized and in something, instead of boxes and having to dig through them.

 

So one thing I am going to do, since I can do it right away, is make up a "wire harness" for running parallel batteries. I've thought about it and was wondering what everyone else does for them, how they are wired up. I also did some googling and found a few things, so I came up with some ideas.

One thing I do want on the positive side going to the MultiBoard is a removable "plug". just something I can pull out when hooking up the batteries. That's all personal preference on that there.

otherwise, I came up with a few different ideas. pretty much where to wire in the "extra" battery, while including that plug. pretty much to figure out how many connectors I'd need, and to keep it to as few as possible of course for less voltage drops.

I am planning XT connectors, probably just do all 90s on the power side, aside from XT60s on the batteries, since that is what the board has. I'll make up some small adapters for other plugs to the XT60s.

 

For parallel connections of larger gauge wire into XT90's, you won't have the physical space in the terminals on the XT90 to join them there. I like to Y off the straightest run. Use your wire strippers on the wire where you want to tap in, then go like half an inch away from the stripping you just made and do again. Then xacto from one strip to the other and voila, peel that insulation off and you've got your spot to tap in.

On the extra connector thing, really just making it over complicated. It's no easier or safer than just unplugging from the BC board. If the BC board is hard to get to, I suppose it would make more sense, but that raises the question of why not just put the BC board where it's accessible?

EDIT: I am describing making a Y connector to go between the batteries and BC board. NOT cutting/soldering the battery leads.

 

Please. I'm sure you are probably aware but just in case you aren't. Make DAMN SURE you DO NOT short the wires. Even for a millisecond. I'm not kidding. A friend of a friend did this with a 12 cell and nearly lost his hand as well as his sight. Literally happened in a flash. Called flash burn and it required two skin grafts. I generally try NOT to mess with battery wires except to change the pluds and I only strip back and work with one lead at a time. Best option is to build a y harness separate from the batteries.
All of us should know this but a good reminder now and again never hurts.

 

The Anderson distribution block worked wonders for me when I ran 4 of the life zippy packs in parallel. Just add Anderson’s to each pack the. Make and Anderson to xt90 extension to the multi-board.
No shorted wires, no wire harness to make or wire improperly. You can do it in less than 30 min.

https://powerwerx.com/8-position-powerpole-distribution-block

 

Here is the block installed. The purple and yellow wires are pumps, which would connect to the multi board in your case.

 

I've had an overcharged 2 cell lipo explode about a foot away from my face. I was working on my race truck and one of the guys I shared a pit room with, his kid accidentally charged the lipo in NiMH mode. Thing blew up in a ball of fire. It was so sudden and unexpected I didn't really even realize what had happened until others had it put out.

 

And that was just a 2 cell. Imagine a 12 cell. It was pretty gruesome.

 

Connection made in the wires then, not at the plug, if I'm understanding correctly? I have some a weird 12ga 10ga thing before where I soldered a 10ga lead off of the middle of a 12ga wire. So the 12ga was like a U, and never was split. Not sure how well it worked, never had problems with it, but I traded the truck not long after for a newer version with a longer wheelbase, and with a dedicated ESC that had parallel battery connections already wired in (BEC ran off of 1 battery so they didnt have to do any voltage changing to bring it down to standard BEC voltage)

The extra power plug is just because my BC board is quite tight with the plugs. I've tried the ones that came with it, as well as others I have bought. All of them really took a bit to plug on or pull out. Not that it's a problem, I just dont want to have to worry about messing up the board some how.

I suppose if I had a single lead before the split, I wouldnt need that. So have the parallel adapter adapt into one plug, and habe a smaller section off the board that meets there. Would also let me change my parallel adapter later if I wanted to wire in another (to parallel a parallel, for 4 parallel batteries.)

That short section too would be useful if I decided to go with this style parallel adapters that come premade, that are bar soldered together, to save space. They also have XT60s to XT90s. (Note on the link, I'm not sure if that's the correct male/female combination, just was the first one I got a link for as an example)

 

I've opened up those premade parallel adapters. They are not good quality pieces and I would absolutely not recommend using them. There's no "bar", they are basically just globs of solder poorly bridging two XT90's.

 

well that sucks. I would imagine though doing it properly wouldn't take too much extra work.


while I'm waiting for my heater to surface, and for me to get off my lazy butt and put my bench together, what kind of amp hours/watt hours should I be aiming for for the boat. single drive single pump, i'd imagine the same as what i had in the Australia would be fine. it'll literally be one extra 75 round gun. I was using 3s 5200mah lipos in parallel

 

You should be fine with that. I am running 3s 8ah packs, there are two in my Courbet but 1 gets me through a whole battle. Dual shafts, brushless drive, brushless pump, 4 solenoids. I think I put 3800mah back into a pack after a full battle pumping constantly because I kept trying to sink myself in reverse.

Chances are your Baden will end up pumping a lot more than your Australia, at 28 sec you can't avoid a fight with anyone who wants to play. Run both batteries, voltage check after each sortie. If they get low, swap to be safe.

 

I should figure out how to install (and find where I put it) the voltage telemetry module I have for my radio. Have it checking the voltage as I'm on the water.

I'm thinking I'll wire up a 3 battery parallel adapter. Should easily fit and give almost the same as your 2 batteries, 15.6 vs 16. I have 6 batteries now, I'll look at getting 6 more. And if I get a quad charger, with my dual, I'll be able to charge half at a time.

Found my electric radiator, turns out the wife gave it to the live-in to use. Didnt ask me first though. But now I got it back, and will be able to work in the garage tomorrow, so be.ch should be going up. Still got to get over to my parents and grab the propane heater, and go buy myself a propane tank. Use that heat the place up, and the electric radiator to keep it warm.

 

So triple 5200mah

I could forgo one of the XT90s that's in there, probably the one in line in the positive wire.

 

This seems overly complicated. Why the jumper in the positive wire? Also, two of those batteries *should* last you a battle. At least in my experience. So you might be able to eliminate some wire there. Remember, KISS (keep it stupid simple).

 

I'd get rid of that, or the XT90 that all the parallel lines come to.

And they probably would, and I should be fine, but I'm also thinking about future changes to the ship. If I can fit the 3, I could look at other gun/pump options. And I'd have been using the triple 3s's at that point

 

Yeah, I'd eliminate everything except the connectors on the ends. Less connections = less stuff to make sure is plugged in before battle. More connections means more failure points.