Uritski (Russian Orfey Class Destroyer)

Nice machine work. Keep it up.

 

Very nice work. While not available in 90 degree fittings, Clippard does have 1/16" nipples with a 3-56 thread.

 

Thanks guys. I'll have to check those fittings out, I'd be interested to see how big the through hole is on them.

 

The hole through the standard 10-32 fitting is 0.0465 and hole through the 3-56 fitting is 0.0430. I think they will perform pretty much the same.

 

Holy smoke those are tiny! Thanks for posting the pics. I'm actually using a little bit bigger air line (5/32 I think). My through hole on the fittings I made is 1/16. Those may work if I decide to move the side mounted airlines to the front of the boss they are currently mounted to the side of. I have been contemplating moving them to reduce to width of the unit. I would surely rather buy them than have to make them. Thanks again!

 

Woo Hoo! I think my latest project works, I just need to make some adjustments and maybe remake a few parts..... as soon as I can verify that it works well enough I will post some pics.

 

Alrighty Then..... I made a few adjustments to my lastest brainstorm, tied a a couple loose ends, and at this point I can say that it works much better than I anticipated for a first attempt. That being said I guess I can start posting pics!

I still have a bit of work to do yet, and need to mount it in the boat to see what happens, but it should be good from here out.
I decided to start in on this because I am planning on arming Uritski with twin self-reloading torpedos on each side (for a total of 4 barrels total), she is a very narrow ship (barely over 2" beam at her widest), and am honestly worried that the "recoil" from the blast will flip her over, or worse yet, allow her to rock enough before the rounds leave the barrels that they go hurling up in the air towards bystanders.
How to avoid that????....
Went through a few options in my head, but a gyroscope seemed it would probably be somewhat effective. And so the quest begins.....

 

I have been pouring all my spare time into the design and manufacture of this thing for over a month. I learned a ton. There was laughter, headaches, blood, tears, more tears, some crying, sweat, a bit of sniffling, more tears, tears from my wife, tears from the dog....... but it has now paid off.

First problem..... you can't just buy one that is small and light enough to fit in a tiny ship. I will have to make it.

Second problem, Its hard to find a motor small enough to fit, yet powerful enough to get it up to speed, from what I read, it looks like 20,000 RPM is a good compromise between speed, effectiveness, and current draw. Drat! after a week + of hunting around, 3 motor purchases, and a number of design revisions for each motor I finally came to a conclusion..... I will have to make one.

Third problem...... There isn't any one stop shopping for the information needed for any of this.... gyros are almost like a black art.... I will Have to come up with my own original design, I'll just borrow what I think I can use from what I can dig up.

 

Here is a pre assembly layout showing all the components. I will go into more description and detail later when I have time. I just wanted to post a couple pics.



Here it is fully assembled. More pics to come.

 

Wow, I am impressed. Very impressed. You must explain more about its functioning. It clearly is not just a spinning weight, since I can see how the gyro can pivot back and forth. How do you intend to orient the device? Also, why did you use aluminum for the frame?

Lastly, I am left to wonder: are you sure the recoil you're concerned about will actually be an issue? In my Z-boat (admittedly a larger, heavier destroyer), I fire three 1/4" rounds from a single barrel off each side, and the recoil effects cause barely a 1/4" spread between the first and the last round. If all else fails, I have seen people overcome stability-recoil issues by the simple expedient of firing both port and starboard torpedoes at the same time.

 

Very interesting. Are you trying to maintain the orientation of the barrels while allowing the ship to move, or are you trying to stablize the whole ship? If you are stablizing the whole ship, I wonder if it would be considered a form of list control.

 

I'm trying to stabilize the whole ship. I had thought about the list control rule (which I personally think should be abolished - the historical ships would counter flood areas to maintain an even keel on occasion, and if someone could engineer and incorporate such a unit so that it didn't break any other rules, I don't see the harm). I got interested in the science side and wanted to experiment, weather it would be allowed in combat or not. Anyhow, it isn't really "list control" as much as roll control. It really won't control the list as much as maintain more of a steady ship. I haven't thought it through completely, but supposing a ship were perfectly balanced from port to starboard, and the water channel designed so that any penetrating rounds fell to the dead center of the hull..... would that ship ever list? And if not, could that design be considered list control? I'm not arguing here, simply stating an opinion. It would be of course up to the TO, and the club members if this device would be allowed. Considering the ship is so small, I'm not sure it would be much of an advantage. Just something else to debate

@ Kotori : Sharp eye my friend! Correct, if it were simply a spinning weight, if the ship did roll, the gyroscopic effect would then attempt to hold the ship on that "rolled" position. The gyro has to be able to "precess", and has to do it in a way that it actually rights itself if it begins to tip. It is all part of the gyroscopic principal that I had to study up on to get to this point. The gyro will be oriented so the precession axis runs fore and aft. I will take a shot of it installed, and will try to get a short video posted on you tube. The gyroscopic principal behind the pivot is basically this....... if a force (or torque for lack of a better description ) is imparted to a gyroscope perpendicular to its spin axis, the gyroscope will respond by resisting rotation in the input direction, but outputting rotation 90° to the input . Therefore, by forcing precession in the opposite direction that would normally be output , we can cause the gyro to "push back when pushed on" so to speak. As far as the aluminum for the frame.... naturally it had to be light (just this gyro assembly alone is currently 20% of the boats overall weight - pushing me 1/4 lb over my target weight). I made the first rotation saddle assembly out of delrin, but after I held them in my hand I realized that stepping up to aluminum would not create much more weight, but would be far more stable, flat, and would hold screw and the ultra close tolerances much better, but would also machine easy enough to not make the machining time prohibiting. If you look at the construction (it will make more sense when I vet some more pics) you can see that the two bearing pockets are on different parts, and the pivots are on different parts, and what you can't see is that the rotor has very little clearance to neighboring parts. There is a .006" gap between the magnets and the stator, which seems like plenty until you realize there are at least 11 dimensions that directly affect that gap... tolerance build up is an issue. If you miss each target by any more than .0005", you are rubbing. There is only .0025" total clearance between the center boss of the rotor and the hole it sets in, but doesn't touch. The same 11 (maybe more) features play into that as well. The machining had to be practically dead nuts. I held all.of the critical dimensions to less than a tenth of a thousandth. One of my friends was laughing at me when he came to see what I was up to and I told him I had to make an adjustment because one area of the shaft was a half a tenth too big. Anyhow, I figured the aluminum was the best choice short of titanium, but easier to machine and far more cost effective. And to answer your last question, no, I'm actually assuming the recoil/ air blast effect wont be an issue, but has been in the back of my mind how irritated I would be if it was after I got it on the water...... and I just wanted to play with some fun science stuff

 

Here is a quick pic I snapped to show the orientation/ location in the boat. The cheese balls do not improve the effectiveness of the gyro

 

Awesome video! Of course, if he had a gyroscopic stabilizer he wouldn't be able to do that

I see the point on the list control falling into the realm of "legal cheaters" so to speak. I guess in my sheltered world it's more about fun and sportsmanship, and I tend to be naive to the facts that people would want to go through a bunch of trouble and effort to develop something to play within a loophole. It's disturbing that some have the time and energy to devote to something that it should be obvious would be voted illegal as soon as the first battle ended.... I wish I had that much energy to waste. In my mind, list control would be specific to maintaining a level ship, not unleveling one that is level to gain an unfair advantage. After some more thought I guess I see the point to the rule more..... lets face it, our ships shouldn't really list too much since they are typically somewhat balanced and shouldn't need anything to control it since it shouldn't be happening in the first place. So anyone looking for "list control" is probably looking to cheat anyway. Any device intended to keep the ship level should be allowed as stability control, and if a shipstarts to "list" and suddenly holes that were under the waterline begin to be above, or a ship starts to "list" and then shows nothing but decks to an enemy, AND it has a list control device fitted, the ship should be ruled as sunk. Just some thoughts for a way not to penalize people who are trying to improve the hobby because of those that look for loophole in the hobby.

 

I would think it violates the letter of the rules, but not the spirit. It's really a safety feature as far as I would be concerned.