I’d like to fasten the MRG halves together with screws and not glue. I’ve kept some of the rejects and used it as a test article to see if the screws would work. They do! I also used them to hold the gun house shield onto the body in the 5" project and used a different screw to hold the same on the 16" project. It’s just so much cleaner. I just used four at the corners. More could work also. Don’t be too quick to throw away rejects. They can come in handy for a lot of reasons.
I actually assembled something. The cross-beams finished nicely and I glued together the MRG’s foundation. I made a template of the base so I could be sure that what I was gluing together was going to correctly hold the MRG. To glue the HP frame on the fore end I packed out the I-Beam shape with stock equalling 0.050" so the angle frames would have a broad gluing surface instead of just the edges of the flange. I checked and double-checked to make sure that I was gluing it in the right place.
And here it is with the MRG sitting in its place.
I also did the relief grinding in the MRG frame so the gear covers would fit flush. I have to reprint the HP rotor and print a coupld of open angle frames. There are spaces for two more of these on the fore end of the MRG foundation. With those parts, main propulsion is done for a while. As I get further down the road, I’ll need to print some more plumbing like the 600# steam lines to the astern turbine inlets and figure out what to do about all the condensate drains that seem to be all over the place. When I finish designing all the secondary equipment there will be more piping decisions to be made.