Mike, Rob, Carl, Richard, Hope all of you found your way here to continue this conversation. First off Mike - holy crap! $50 cannon!!! And I'm looking at Rob's post of that 3D Nassau. You guys are so far ahead with this! I haven't searched this forum to see how advanced 3D printed has impacted the hobby and what has been shared. Will do later today. Revive Big Guns? Being a realist - right now this COVID thing will trash everything. I live in free Florida where we don't buy into it. But too many people do. So revive? I would think more along the lines of how to plan to grow the hobby after COVID. So what has been published on this rcwarshipcombat site about these printed cannon and ships? Driving cost and modeling skills down is the biggest way to kick this great hobby back into gear. $1500 for a battleship is simply too much for most. I fly a used high tech DJI Mavic Pro drone with VR goggles for half that. So important to get that cost in the $500 area. Share, share, share about 3D printing, files, models, whatever. I see $245 for a 8.7 x 8.7 x 9.8" printer on Amazon. Is that a big enough printer for a battleship? What materials, etc? TimMc On Dec 5, 2020, at 8:50 AM, Mike <mike@mtduffy.net> wrote: Tim We have had quite a revolution in guns. Some new members have developed ways to make an Indiana without a lathe. With the help of longtime members adding to it with 3d printing we have a great magazine and bearing system with no wabble and a half inch lower. A 5" magazine complete Indiana can be made for less than $50. We have other guns developed too. 2 inch x 3 inch canister guns for Texas and Agincourt fully armed. How do we start a revival of the hobby? Where can we have a community forum to share ideas, help newbies and have non active veterans share stories, history and wisdom? Mike On Dec 5, 2020, at 10:03 AM, Rob Wood rwood@hypergold.com <BigGunsModelWarship-noreply@yahoogroups.com> wrote: Greetings from WWCC! WWCC is alive and well - it's just the webmaster who should be slapped awake. We were still discussing the 2020 calendar when the pandemic hit. Update: We stayed alive for years, even without a pond, by building our own portable pond and hauling it around to Maker Faire events. When the flagship Maker Faire organization went under, we moved our operations to an RV resort near Sacramento, CA (Lake Minden). Meanwhile, we continued looking for a pond of our own, closer to the San Francisco Bay Area. We finally found one: A piece of land with a year-round pond just outside the city limits of Watsonville, CA. One of our members (Joe Moore) decided to buy it, so the club now has a home of our own. Lots of developments over the years. Probably the biggest has been the advent of 3D printing. One of our members has gone pretty far with the technology, and is able to print entire ships, guns and all. The latest is an entry-level fixed-gun Nassau, which means 7/32" caliber guns. The magazines hold 100 rounds or so. It will fire 3 turrets or 6 barrels in a salvo. Have to try to fire to port and starboard somewhat evenly to avoid listing, but this is an entry level, simple to maintain and battle warship with dual rudders, turns on a dime, allowed 2 pumps, only has one servo (rudders), and all-electronic firing. Jeff has also 3D printed an Alabama, superstructure and all, although that one has to be assembled in chunks. Fast forward to December, 2020: With the pandemic ranging, death toll rising, etc., we still can't create a calendar for 2021, but hopefully the vaccines coming online will get us back on track.
Replying to my post. Rob, On the Nassau. I see cannon in torp gray with rubber bands. On the far side is a white one, not wrapped. Explain all please. Are the barrels straight and flared? Explain the barrel please, especially that curved printed segment. Next, I see the window cut outs, but no barrier. Will this plastic not take a hit? We used flexible rubber wall molding as a barrier. Why not just print a barrier? There is a molded box, port side, astern of the 2nd top. What is this? Front cannon and stern are direct color, dark gray vs white. Old Indy cannon? I see no elevation servos - fixed? Upper deck trim is darker gray plastic vs white - why? I see a printer rudder. Are the props printed? Over all - just totally impressed with this modeling. Oh - clean your workspace. --TimMc Darn-it. P.S. added. USS Alabama as in BB-60? One of my favorite for Big Guns. I built a SoDak. My son kicked ass with it. I love the hulls lines that make this sucker turn on a dime. If I build again it will be something I haven't built before - like a carrier, or Yamoto. I still have plans for ten future builds. I fell in love with sail combat. 3D printing? Could be viable.
Hi Sunk I'm building the Nassau that you see in the picture. The attached picture describes the guns a bit more. There's a magazine like all other rotating cannons in the top pic. The middle pic shows what I'm calling the Breech and Riser. It's a lamination of 3D printed parts that form the ammo ramp, breech, and firing path from vertical around a bend and includes a transition to a metal barrel. These parts are printed out of polyurethane (think soft skateboard wheels). The barrels are notched with a file and held in place with two cross pins top and bottom. To keep the whole thing together, I use 80 lb. dacron fishing line wrapped tightly as you see in Rob's pic. The one cannon that isn't wrapped is just an omission. The colors (grey vs. white) don't matter and are due to what I had on the printer. The Nassau is intended to be built for reliability and so there is only a single servo in the whole boat (rudder), and so the gun elevation is fixed. The Breech and Riser, however can be printed so that it bends easily and can therefore do elevation control. On the hull, it's printed in 8 chunks and then epoxied together. I use 3 dowel pins on each joint to ensure everything aligns. To keep everything together, I include 3 threaded rods in printed channels that go stem to stern, one in each of the gunwales and one in the keel and fill with epoxy. Makes for a pretty strong construction. The hull is printed in a plastic called PETG (think soda bottles), and the areas that are going to get shot up (like casemates) are printed in that same polyurethane as the Breech and Riser. The Alabama was made a couple of years back using the same technique on the hull. 3-D printed and epoxied together. Sheeted in Balsa like normal. The hull is in great condition after a season of battling (aside from some Balsa rapair), but the superstructure needs to be re-printed out of the polyurethane material.
That Nassau looks absolutely wicked! I'm loving that big gun let's one arm all the cannon. Are there pics of the fully armed HMS Agincourt?
Jeff, Thanks for responding. Hopefully the others from Yahoo will come online shortly. Couple more questions please. 1- Interesting on the fishing line. Did you have an issue or is that just for "in case." 2- So no elevation - how about rotation? If rotate without a servo what are you using? 3- What is the max size of your printer? Again, impressively modeling Jeff. TimMc Old MBG critter
The fishing line keeps the laminations together when the gun fires Both elevation and rotation are possible. I would use pretty standard servos. I like the cheap hobbyking waterproof version I use a Prusa I3Mk3, which is 250 x 210 x 200mm
After a long hiatus from "the game" I'm back, and back in SoCal. I would love to know what happened to my HMS Repulse from back in the early 90's when I joined SCBG and bought the empty incomplete hull from J.C. White. It was just an empty skinned hull, no deck, no superstructure, no guts. I left a lot of my ship building bits and bobs with Dean McWilliams when the navy moved me here, there and everywhere. I really love the improvements in technology that I've been reading here on this website and I'm VERY much interested in getting into 3D printing and laser cutting to be able to really explore all the possibilities available in ship building today. Totally wickedly cool. I really would love to see South Coast Battle Group back up and running once again....hopefully. Fingers Crossed, and of course to see Big Gun once again active in the Southland.
In addition to the really cool big gun style guns , check out some of the fast gun styles as well in the resources section. between the couple of different approaches for each style, there are a lot of fun options now for 3dprinting
I would love if big gun got bigger and really came back. That is what got me interested in this whole thing to begin with.
I hope to see more big gun ships. I have a turpitz in works now. Working on cannon situation now. I much prefer big gun rules over fast guns
