I can only hope the third times the charm...... the worst part is I'm not confident that once (or if) I get it to work, it may not make it into the boat anyway due to weight and space constraints
Yep, props are covered, thanks for the consideration though! Took me a week to find some, I think I ordered them from the UK.
A thought... would it be possible to build the gyro assembly smaller and lighter? A ship this small can't need much righting moment when ballasted well. Maybe a small gyro would do you.
That's a good thought. I have an aluminum rotor which seemed to balance the ship okay on my very last experiment. Size is a big issue also, and the motor dictates the size for the most part. If I can get it to work to my satisfaction, its possible I can redesign to make it a touch smaller, but I cut a lot of things to the bare minimum on the initial build. Any idea of a maximum weight on this little boat to get it to float at scale waterline?
Here is a screen shot of the next generation gyro, which I expect to work after some fine tuning. Some linkage to connect the two pivot points is yet to be designed, but most of the other components are already built.
The last part I need to test the torpedo is a couple of breeches. I have tried a couple different approaches, but still dont have one that will work. Here is one of the neater looking failures, machined from brass billet: The idea was to make it in two halves, silver solder them together, and use them for testing. If that worked I was going to machine them from stainless for a more permenant solution. Problem was it was a bit too thin to solder without distorting too much for the balls to roll through when it was done.
I've been too busy and physically exhausted to work on much boat stuff lately, but thought I would post a couple pics of the latest progress. The latest gyro, still not up to snuff. I need to fit the brass rotor to try to get more gyroscopic effect, but haven't had time to modify one yet:
One of the test breeches I built to test the torpedo, I still need to build 1 more to test. If that works, I will figure out how to make one to fit in the boat.
The pump mount. I mounted 2 ring magnets to the bottom, and will epoxy 2 more in the bottom of the hull. Ease of assembly and disassembly is paramount since many components will need to be removed routinely for common tasks such as replacing the Co2 cartridge.
Nice looking pump. Assuming that the motor is a 12mm, it must be spinning pretty fast. Do you know how many amps it draws?
