My plan of attack: - go 1:1 gears first since it’s the easiest - print new props with an aggressive pitch I have to believe the 380s are fast enough, there is something else wrong here.
Eh, I'm not so sure about that, it seemed as though there were a couple of times there where it picked up some speed. Might have been cavitating or something.
Careful what you ask for - by the way, do you have an address we can plug into the ol' phone/gps for the location? 11AM, I presume??? I'm pretty much planning on bring a bote of some sort that will hopefully move and tootle around some. Mostly just a shakedown/show off kind of thing. We'll see. (I'm going to be up late enough as it is helping someone else get their bote together, so there is that.)
Welp, had a fun afternoon with the NTXBG folks today. I might have accidentally introduced them to Seydlitz. Oops. Anyway, it was a nice day, we weren't at work, we were at the pond, playing with botes. Good times. Hopefully Justin will post some video later. I'd post a pic or two, but that probably wouldn't be polite - one of the fellows was nice and let me shoot him. Yay! (I'm afraid I, well, Seydlitz, you know.)
Deutschland had her first showing on the lake, along with her sister ship, Guilio Cesare. Sadly, as we prepared to take video of the two ships triumphantly sailing together in their first battle, one of Deutschland’s motor burned up. Fortunately, I did program a remote kill switch for either motor; so she was able to return to port under her own power. The motor was found to be defective & both ESCs are still in good working order. @Commodore traded me for some new faster motors, so I expect this will turn out to be a positive.
Bismarck v Seydlitz on one side with live guns and Richilieu v Lutzow playing some bang bang and just having fun driving around. Was a good day. Enjoyed meeting and hanging out with the NTXBG guys.
UPDATE- I spent time on the cannons over the last few weeks. Most noteworthy, I finally have an answer to reliable printing. The major issue has been the chamber bolts at the bottom of the cannon continuously printed poorly. I’ve since moved away from vertical mounted piston-action. This let me move the chamber bolt to the side of the cannon. After that @Commodore & @Huru MorDae pointed out a layer-height vs thread issue, and voila perfect threads! Everything is looking good on my bench fit; so I moved forward to acetone vapor bath (tonight). I’m looking forward to the result!
Justin, I changed my cannon treatment process a while ago. A vapor bath by itself was not always enough to seal every single layer, so nowadays I spent several minutes brushing the outside of my cannons with acetone. This seals it very well, since the brushing fills in the layers much more effectively. However, it ends up leaving streaks and dribbles which look ugly, so I stick it in my vapor bath for about 10 minutes. This clears up the streaks and dribbles nicely, so the cannon looks as nice as it works. Ultimately that means the acetone bath is purely cosmetic though, since it's the acetone brushing that does the actual sealing. Also, I have to be very careful to protect any threads from the vapor bath, otherwise they will get melted and stop working.
Thx! thx! How long did you soak in the vapor bath? I thought about the threads too…. How did you protect the threads?
I have a giant glass jar from Walmart that I lined with paper towels. The paper towels soak up some of the acetone and cause a wicking effect. This makes the vapor bath denser and taller than otherwise possible. I do not heat the vapor bath at all, as hot acetone is potentially very dangerous. Instead, it's a room-temperature vapor bath. I put cannons in for about 10 minutes each. Superstructure bits go in for longer since they don't get brushed first. I put my parts on thin brass plates, since I had them available and they don't soak up acetone or otherwise mess with the process. All of the threads on my cannons are regular machine threads like 1/4-20 and 1/8NPT so I just plug them with metal parts. Your cannons use non-standard threads so I don't know what you'd have to do. Maybe put some masking tape inside, or print some plugs in a different plastic that isn't soluble in acetone? Or maybe it doesn't need protection. Coarse threads with simple shapes may not be affected much by a short vapor bath.
