This is a post to document the build of my 3rd Jean Bart. I now have the trifecta. I've built a wooden one, a fiberglass one, and am now building a plastic one. Render of the model Only missing 1 piece of the hull, have started assembling: Bottles fit into their homes almost as if designed to: I want to add that this hull has been printed on my #2 printer, which just now has gotten upgraded to meet the #1 printer's specifications. So this has been kind of a "Certification" project for the printer, in addition to me wanting this hull. So some parts may look a little rougher than my normal quality level, as I tune this printer to get it ready for full SJS production. Man, with both printers going, I can consume a lot of filament.
Man, I thought for sure you used 2.85mm filament. Anybody need some? I have some I accidentally acquired a while back... By the way, Bart III is looking *fabulous*!
We need an award for the trifecta. I think a a neapolitan ice cream sandwich would suffice. I might earn mine with a Cleveland...
This boat is testing out @Kotori87 's cartridge cannons. Most of the mainstream IRCWCC guys do not believe 3d printed cannons can work reliably, this guy included. So I threw down the glove and asked Kotori to produce for me 5 of his guns, QC them, testing them with multiple mags of ammo, and only once satisfied...send them over. If they actually work, they'll get to stay in this boat. This is a pic of the guns in the B turret mount, also showing off the gun tweaking switches. Simple SPST rocker switches, not really weatherproof at all, will pack with dielectric grease. Can turn the solenoids on/off independently to tweak the guns or isolate a failed gun to not waste gas/etc.
So, some may say I'm a little crazy. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. I'm not sure. The original grey hull shown above got damaged, so I threw it out and printed another one with some small upgrades to increase hull strength. Basically, I added bolt-together areas at the front and rear of the stepped up center deck area. The center two bilge keels are now structural parts of the boat, bolted to heat set inserts laid along the bottom. Otherwise, mostly the same as the grey hull above. Also funny bonus picture of this current hull with my original plastic bart prototype hull I started building and then abandoned to design this one. That one may or may not be used for a 2024 build for someone else.
oooooo those switches are smart. I was planning on doing something similar with the twin side mounts on the Bismarck this winter. What kind of switches are they?
Structural bilge keel: And guns mounted: Hopefully these printed cannons work. They DRASTICALLY simplify everything. @tgalx3 the switches are a super simple single pole single throw rocker switch off of Amazon. I drill holes in the bottom and then shoot some dielectric grease up in them. It's a super simple exposed physical contact kinda setup...not much to fail. Turn a solenoid off to tweak independently or to isolate a malfunctioning gun so you don't waste gas.
I have had Kotori's guns in my Lutzow for 1.5 years now and have not had a problem yet that couldn't be fixed quickly at the pond.
You have the bonus of having the hands themselves nearby if you need them I have found in my attempts to print my own Kotori cannons, they'd work "well enough" but would periodically jam. Either that, or it would take 6 prints to get 1 cannon that "might" function. By commissioning these 5 from @Kotori87 himself, I have eliminated the potential human error because he knows how he wants them built and to what tolerance he finds acceptable. If they prove reliable in service, they'll be in my flagship boat and the hard to please IRCWCC guys will take notice. They'll be forced to.
More work on Bart 3. Superstructure is slowly getting printed between other prototype items and ordered prints. As an experiment, I am trying these magnetic connectors embedded in the subdeck edge to trigger the solenoids which are mounted to the deck. If they work, the only thing connected to the deck from the hull will be a gas line.
Got most of the superstructure printing done. The different colored secondaries and such are all different resins, they're all far too heavy to use in service but they will be destructively tested to provide feedback. The primary purpose of the resin prints was to be able to provide @bkoehler some high quality plugs to make Grey Wolf Squadron foam castings of these parts to lessen topweight.
Another update video. If every test of every component went perfectly each time, I'd say you aren't looking for potential problems closely enough. The deck fitment will be shimmed and such until the magnetic connector works 100% each and every time. Then and only then will everything be locked down permanently.
Shafts, props, rudder, motors all in and mounted. Pics showing off shaft + rudder alignment. Pic showing off under the gun deck: Decks have been glassed + epoxied and are drying. Another pic showing off the redesigned superstructure. I wasn't happy with OG Bart's secondary turret float. It worked...but I wasn't a fan of the big passthrough into the boat to allow it's function. Based off of @Kevin P. 's testing regarding sinks with secure deck sealing vs more open decks, I want to completely minimize all deck passthroughs where possible. So the superstructure has been set up as a giant float, like Rob Arenas. The whole thing comes off and is magnetted down to the center wooden deck. The super is as hollow as it can be, all the way up the forward tower and funnel structure. Forward tower shell can be seen in the pic plainly. All of the voids are filled with marine flotation foam, and a spool is attached to the underside of the superstructure to attach it (through the center deck hatch) to the bottom of the boat. I'm not sure if I'm going to design it for actual lifting-the-boat duty, or just marker duty, we'll see. I don't know if this is going to be too many magnets, I can always pop 2 out if necessary. (The RF/RR on the AA gun mounts was to identify right front, right rear, left front, left rear on a previous iteration of the superstructure...I just never went back and fixed the letters for this version lol)
You have! (I know my twin sterns have pelted you plenty - they're Katori's original full-height "Bic's" that I printed a couple years ago - been working great.. equal or better than my normal copper-tube cannons).
Don't give me credit for the original BICs, Brian - those were designed by rcengr. I printed a few of those and cut them apart in different ways to see what made them tic. Then I shaved the height down to fit them in the pre-dreads and spent 4 years and 50+ iterations making the shorter version work reliably.
I understand that some have had luck with BIC/Cartridge/Kotori cannons. Lots of people, myself included, haven't been able to replicate that success. I would say the IRCWCC as a whole is generally quite skeptical of their performance, hence this "proving" of them in a dual sidemount boat where their effectiveness (or lack) will be a serious consideration for enemy captains. For the curious, this is a read-only browser-accessible link to the project file for this boat, in case you wanted to check it out: https://a360.co/47TUh50 You can show/hide components to look at the insides, you can "explode" the whole model, etc. I mainly spent my Thanksgiving working on stuff for the store, but did get some Bart time in. I iterated on a design for the stern gun mount/cradle, in addition to a secondary turret that's designed to shield the cartridge cannon from potential BB impacts. It's not amazingly scale with the shield plates protruding from the top, but I am allowed by rule to put this cannon in the superstructure if I wanted to...so I figure at least it's in a turret and not tucked into the funnel or something. Remaining to-do list items: Reinstall solenoids and such (had to remove to epoxy decks) Internal armor Float line/spool Detail Work (Waiting on foamy parts from @bkoehler ) That's basically it. I have moved away from actually "wiring" my boats, and instead have adopted a "everything gets its own battery" type of setup. In this boat for example, we have the following components: 2x Brushless Pump ESC (highest draw) 2x Brushless Drive ESC (medium draw) 4x Solenoids on 1 gun board (low draw) 1x Solenoid on 1 gun board (very low draw) HV Servo (very low draw) So the extent of my wiring will be XT60 parallel harnesses from Amazon, connecting each pump to paired 5200mah 3s Lipo batteries. Then, another set of XT60 parallel harnesses for each drive ESC. The guns and servo will draw power from a smaller 1500mah pack. (OR, they'll share with the drives. Servo+Stern gun on one drive ESC supply, 4x solenoids on the other). And to round it all out, the receiver runs off a small 1200mah 7.4v lipo all day. This means this boat will have 8 3s 5200mah batteries and most likely 2x 1200-1500mah packs. This setup is A) easier + faster to "build" B) definitely messier in the boat C) extremely redundant. At absolute worst case, I will lose a single component in the event of a dead battery/short circuit/fire/etc. Only the receiver battery going 100% completely dead will result in the boat going out of control, because the receiver can operate all the way down to 4.8v. My servo and receiver aren't sharing bussed "6v" power, so theres no chance for a worn out servo to brown out my receiver and reset my boat. None of the BEC's on any of the ESC's are being used, so there is no chance for a BEC to get overloaded by a worn out servo and then destroy the ESC (and ALSO result in an OOC boat). Now you may say....Will...this is nuts...10 batteries in a boat? How am I supposed to afford that every sortie? That's the trick, you don't. In reality, I changed Indiana's pump batteries once per battle and left the rest of the packs in the boat the whole day. Pump is 70% of the current usage in a boat, easily. By keeping each system isolated, I can do a quick voltage check between sorties and address whatever specific battery pair is running low.
I believe that this group figures it out. I think it could be a game changer. I doubt we are far from...
