Battleship New Jersey BB62 #3 Engine Room Start-to-Finish Build

[Builder_2010]

Thanks Mustang! If you got rid of the stash you’d have room and probably some money to buy a system.

The printer continues to hum along turning out very nice parts. I test assembled the HP turbine. The rotor broke in the middle. I temporarily glued it back together, but am reprinting another. It appeared to be a structural flaw, and after reviewing the drawing, there were some discontinuities in the central core. I made some mods and in the slicer it appears to be nicely solid all the way through. It’s set up to print with the main steam pipe. The rest of the turbine came out great with no changes necessary. My removal of the supports left all the throttles in good shape. Just finished on the machine is the entire HP foundation frame printed as a single part and it’s appears to be perfect. I also printed the “steel” stiffener that resides on the fire room side of that bulkhead that provides the necessary to support the ledge on which 1/2 of the turbine rests. I have that part to display tomorrow.

The massive lower half of the main reduction gear box is done. As the rest of this work, this one was very nice also.

This part consumed a lot of resin! It supports the output shaft from the bull gear.

Looking at it from the bottom shows the lower half of the output seal and bearing.

This picture is a bill silly since there’s no shaft supporting the big gear, but this shows where it resides and why the gear case is do darn big.

Creating a model of this complexity and novelty is like the aphoism about how to eat an elephant; “One bite a time.” With each successful drawing and subsequent print, I am more sure that the project will meet my goals. And I’ve said this before. When doing a completely custom build, you’re thinking on a few levels at the same time. It’s very easy to get the forrest and the tree, or roots, moss, fungus…etc. It’s so easy to get down to very tiny details before you have control of the overall design and how it will work together. I can just imagine putting a show together like Game of Thrones (GOT). My wife finally agreed to watch it. I saw it when it first ran years ago. When you look at the scope of the script, the locations it was shot at, the costuming, sets, and then the cinematography, you wonder how they do it at all. Each episode was like a 1st run movie. My project IS NOT that.

My daughter’s, brother in law’s brother is one of the two fellows who created GoT, D.B. Weiss. We had the pleasure of visiting D.B.'s family home in a Chicago suburb. We talked at length about the creation of the show. It turns out that a pilot was created, but it was terrible and HBO didn’t want anything to do with it. Dan and David told Netflix that wanted to rewrite and produce the pilot. No one bit, but the president decided to give it a shot. The rest is history. Netflix made billions on that show over its 8-year run and the two fellows didn’t do so bad either. It just shows that sometimes even folks that are supposed to know, do know nothing. His mom presented us the full 8 year set on Blue Ray DVDs. We fianlly are watching it.

[Builder_2010]

Moving along…The HP Foundation/frame printed exceedingly well. No layer marks, perfect holes and no warp. It’s all cleaned, but not post-cured. The upper beam ends in that bracketed shelf. The other part is the stiffening structure on the other side of the bulkhead that strengthens the whole deal. It’s also part of the boiler support system.

My spouse has a strictly enforced rule… “No shop work after 5pm and no shop work on the weekends”. Considering how much treasure and time my “shop work” consumes, I abide by these rules without exception.

The printer has another feature. It expects that the PAF Teflon seal film on the vat bottom to last 60,000 layers. When it hits 60,000, the printer stops and issues a warning on the touch screen which you can override. I overrode it for one print yesterday afternoon and noticed some delamination of the base raft, but it did not affect the print. Turns out that print was unnecessary as it was an out-of-date version of a part which I had already printed the day before. So the delamination didn’t matter. Last night’s part did. It was the top half of the gear box and the corrected diameter of the output shaft. It was a failure. The film is shot and needs to be replaced. From now on, I will heed the machines warning. It knows better than me. Just for the record. I printed those 60,000 layers with no failures until this one.

This part is NOT salvagable. However, on the other end of the print (not shown) is a correct diameter output shaft and it is usable as are the torque tube shields for the LP and HP output shafts. So it’s not a total loss. On Monday, my first assignment will be to replace the PAF. I bought extra film when I bought the printer. In the past, you just tracked how many failures and when they seemed chronic, you changed the film.

I finalized the condensate pump system and exported its STL file. I sliced it and WiFied it to printer. All of the parts of the primary propulsion system are either printed or in the printer’s local memory and will be printed this coming week. I’m printing it with the piping. The printer’s precise enough to pull that off, especially since i did it with my older printer on the ammo hoists on the 5" project and they came out okay. The dark openning in the top is the steam inlet. There’s another around the side for exhaust. These will be piped.

[Builder_2010]

Changing the film on my printer was not an option. It was esssential. When I pulled the vat off the machine, resin was deposited on the LCD cover glass meaning the film has a pinhole in it. If that has continued it could have damaged the LCD. I will be paying close attention to the 60,000 layer alarm. With the new film in place, I’m re-running the top of the Main Gear Reduction housing. I cleaned up the other prints that were produced before the failure: the HP Foundation Frame and a couple of small parts; the torque tubes that shield the output shafts from the turbines.

Here’s the foundation. I had to relieve some unseen parts of the turbine support frame to clean those condensate drain pipes on the bottom. I also had to open the plate to let the turbine nestle in a bit closer.

Another view of the structural steel stiffener that will lie on the other side of the styrene bulkhead. It’s what makes having the turbine rest on a shelf welded to that bulkhead possible.

Here’s that torque tube just sitting there. All that dust on the parts will be removed when I give them a quick Ultrasonic cleaning before assembly and painting.

I fit all of the main propulsion together to get an idea about fits. For some reason, I needed about a 1/4" shim to bring the LP’s output shaft level with the HP’s. Part of the problem is the slope of the hold’s decking. It slopes towards the P & S edges to drain water to the bilge drains at the corners. This could account for why there is the height difference, but probably not all.

​

Looks nice and complicated… just the way I like it.

xp

I described the following problem in my last build. CorelDraw won’t print out with my latest upgrade of my MAC operating system. You’re being asked to buy a newer version of CorelDraw, and that’s a pain in the butt since there’s nothing else wrong with my version AND the new bells and whistles on the upgrade offer no benefit to me. So I tried exporting the drawings (which all are bigger than a single sheet of 8.5" X 11" American standard printer paper. Normally, CorelDraw lets you print over multiple sheets (called tiling). I was told that Adobe Acrobat Reader could print a PDF out over multiple sheets (Called Postering). Ahhh… but there’s a rub. You have to buy the Pro version of Reader to get this feature. Now I only have to print big plans a couple of times a year. Neither of these paid solutions worked for me. So I did some research and found a free APP called PosteRazor. You upload a .JPG, or .PNG, tell it how you want the pages formatted and Vola. It outputs a PDF tiled over multiple pages. I open these in Reader and print them out as a multi-page document. Problem solved. Cost $0.00.

I scaled the main layout drawings in CorelDraw and went through this routine and got a nice set of scaled drawing upon which I will be laying out the placement on the model. It also shows the exact size the model will be when finished. Big… but not too big.

These drawings are critical in locating objects like the passage of the other prop shafts since they come through at angles. What you’re seeing is the lower level floor plan. I’ve also got one for the upper level. There’s a grating that goes between the LP and HP turbines so operators can walk between them. I’m going to include that grating since it hides nothing of importance below it. There’s also a “bridge” that goes over the torque tubes in the space between the turbines and MRG. I may leave that off since I want folks to see those tubes.

The v-blocks are there since there’s no bulkhead onto which the bracket is attached. Notice the slight angle to that bracket. The turbines are not parallel to the centerline. They are angled 3º with the prop shafts. I will be building that into the model.

[Builder_2010]

Took a couple of shots with a ruler to send to my old friend, Bryant, who builds my wood bases. I wanted to give him a head’s up about sizing. It’s not the final value, but it’s close.

It’s going to be about 1 foot deep.

And about 21"wide (by about 1 foot high). The prop shafts and the bulkhead stiffener in the fire room made the width extend past the drawing’s edges.

Today was one of the first where progress was in retrograde. I had a printing anomaly of the MRG… there was a significant growth of resin on one interior wall. I didn’t discard this, but went back and reset it in the slicer with more supports in that area and printed it again. While it was printing I took the Dremel Flexi-shaft and a carbide router and sugically removed all of it. You can’t see this when the gears are installed, but the lump would impact their installation.

Here’s the malformation from two directions. I had already started attacking it in the damage when I took the image.

After cleaning it all out with the router, then sanding drum and finally a diamond coated burr, it’s functional… Functional, not pretty.

Much to my dismay, the reprinted part actually came out worse. With the delamination I suspected there might be some resin on the vat film. I emptied the vat, made a mess when my silicone funnel with its filter tipped off the resin bottle and made a royal mess. There was no resin stuck to the film. I refilled the vat and started printing again. The growth looks exactly the same as the previous one and my corrections did nothing. I have no idea what about the design is causing the excess resin. But this one also has delamination on top and that would be visible, rendering this print scrap.

Ths delamination…

​I tried the gear sets in the repaired part and they fit without interference, so the correction worked.

I correct output shaft just came off the printer with the second upper frame print and is in the post-cure chamber, explaining the water pipe used to support the bull gear.

Lastly, I had another shock. I made beautiful prints of the two cutaway gear box covers. I mean they were perfect! Except they weren’t. For some reason, the designer had the reduction gear bores way undersized. I don’t know what he was thinking, and I’ll have to have words with him.

I left the shop and went back to SketchUp to fix this. It took hours! I’ve said this many, many times. It’s often more difficult to repair an SU drawing than to do it in the first place. The fixed covers are now in the printer. I’ve officially named it THE MACHINE!.

I also noticed that my innerds desgn of the gear case doesn’t have an inboard bearing cap for the bull gear shaft. There’s a bearing on the lower half, but nothing on the upper. I drew up a bearing cap and will print it separately. Clearly I missed something when looking at the framing diagrams.

I also found out why the LP/Condenser height was off by 3/16". Look at this image of the equipment below the drawing sheet.

It will be easier to shim up the condenser foundation than to trim the HP foundation. The printer doesn’t lie. If I drew it wrong, it will print wrong. Hopefully, tomorrow will be in a more positive directly.

[Builder_2010]

Yes… I’m going to be 80 in July and weird growths are definitely the rule of the day. Your skin has lost its collegan, but doesn’t seem to have trouble growing all sorts of new stuff all over the place. It’s all G_d’s weird sense of humor.

I had forgotten to design and print the turning gear that resides on the the gear box cover’s starboard aft corner. Large rotating equipment needs to be turned to keep from warpng of the main shafts due to their weight and to bring things around into view for inspection purposes. I came up with a not-so-smart idea to design the machinery on the cutaway piece. The cutaway piece would be exactly the same shape as the opening. Problem is that o.d.s are printed slightly oversize, and i.d.s slightly undersized so the resulting parts don’t fit together as seen here.

I attempted to decrease the outisde profile of the insert, but it was getting weird and not going as I would have liked. The solution was to redraw the gear cover with the turning gear on top and eliminate the cutaway for that quadrant. Here’s the part on the slicer as it will print. Printing will take place on Monday.

It’s often better to redsign it correctly than to keep messing with it.

The fully-detailed condensate pump is done. I printed it with a 1/8" hole in the conical joint to the outlet pipe. The print was a beauty!

Even without glue, the pin holds them together nicely and I took these two images looking from both ways. Pardon the pixelation. I enlarged these a bit too much.

I have the Main Reduction Gear foundation parts to print and all the main propulsion equipment is done. I now will start designing a pile of auxiliaries. The weather may permit me to do some primer painting of the completed work. I can’t spray solvent-based paints indoors.

[Demolition]

The amount of time, dedication and attention to detail is astonishing to say the least.

[jeaton01]

And when you are done you can push the button and do ten more. Very interesting!

[Builder_2010]

Thanks! Theoretically, I should be able to replicate all of these custom models. Unfortunately, there’s an awful lot of tweaking that I need to do it make it all work. I suppose that I could keep refining the design to eliminate all of that fiddling.

First off, I finally replaced my chair… It was my dad’s desk chairand was at least 60 years old, possibly older. I bought a very inexpensive chair from Amazon that cost less that $90USD an no shipping (Prime members). My son had admonished me to get a new chair. I sent him a picture and asked if it would make my modeling better. He responded, “How can you do better than perfect?” He’s a nice boy (well actually he just turned 50 and is a terrific eye surgeon). Whether or not it improves my modeling, it’s certainly more comfortable…

My reprints of the gear sets came out beautifully, but there was still a fit problem. I made them as separate gears and when attempting to assemble… couldn’t. My spacing was not equal. Didn’t matter when they were attached to each other, but separate they wouldn’t fit. To get them to fit I removed stock in the journals to position the port side gear further outboard and the pinion more to the center.

Fit was not okay and good enough to assemble the gear covers to the main body.

The print for the other cover with the intergral turning gear failed. I reinforced the supports and will print again. Right now I’m printing some of the MRG’s foundation parts. That comprises four separate print activities.

Along with the gear cover I printed the rear bull gear bearing cap and they were successful. took a little sanding and shimming to get it to fit right. The reason for the fitting was the misalignment of the main bearing bracket. I didn’t realize that the drawing had moved when I chose to print it integral with the housing. All will be unseen in the finished model.

So here’s what’s been printed so far. The pile grows bigger.

I’m drawing the complex turbogenerators now. Luckily I have lots of pictures and foundation drawings that will help.

[Builder_2010]

Forgot to display the image with the bearing cap, so here it is….

I hadn’t reprinted the gear cover yet and decided to give it a try to fit the separate turning gear into the opening. With a bit of sanding with a Dremel drum sander, I removed stock from the plug, used thin CA to hold it in place and then copius amounts of Bondic UV cure substance. I sanded the joint and am reasonably happy with the results. There’s a slight ridge and I will do some more sanding to even remove that.

I got the aft MRG frame printed and it came out well. The MRG sitting on a block of wood is a tad high. The frame sits directly under the flange. There are three more printings that will make up the entire MRG Foundation.

I also printed the prop shaft junction pieces and the bulkhead Watertight seals that go on the prop shafts as they pass through from one compartment to another.

With the success of the turning gear fix, I don’t have to waste time and resin to make another one. Notice that gap when the gear case covers are in place. That’s due to not changing the geometry of the MRG base journals to make the mods made on the gear case. I will corect that going forward.

I love this hobby/avocation. Every day in the shop produces something that never existed before. It’s why, for me, in retirement, creating and building is so much more satisfying than playing cards or games on my iPhone.

The main steam pipe is on the printer right now. In not too long a time, all of the main propulsion system will be created. I have to decide to build the base framing and start mounting some stuff or doing all the 3D and then start assembly. Depends on my interest level. Some of the smaller things take as much time or longer to design and the big stuff.

[jeaton01]

Just letting you know that I continue to read your posts with interest. Fun to see the images with the scale figure.

[Builder_2010]

The scale figure really shows what’s going on. Wait till you see him standing next to the entire MRG sitting on its foundation.

​The last bits of the main reduction gear foundation is draining in the printer now. All the rest is done, cleaned and trimmed. I got the MRG to sit still on top for this image. Not the scale guy. This piece of equipment is massive. It’s the size of a small house. You’re looking at the output side which is smack dab against ER 3’s aft bulkhead. You can see much peering into that space.

This image illustrates my point. Most visitors will never see this space. Notice the thickness of those braces.

I was pleased to see that the HP turbine’s output shaft while sitting on its foundation aligns perfectly with the input pinion shaft in the MRG. That doesn’t happen often with me.

Work continues on designing the complicated by small turbogenerator set. The nice thing is when I design one, I get two of them since they’re identical. The hard part is understanding what’s under all that heavy insulation. I’m building the model sans insulation so folks can actually see what’s inside. I didn’t realize that the donut-shaped part at the outboard end is the exhaust steam collector. It took two tries to get Curviloft to get a close approximation. It’s still not perfect, but it’s going to be very small and it will be effective. The large pipe dropping down is the waste steam line going directly into the TG condenser that lies directly below on the lower level.

To illustrate this challenge, here’s the side view of the actual turbine. The isulation and piping completely hides the turbines actual geometry.

[Builder_2010]

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.

[68GT]

We were on the New Jersey a while back when my son was in the Cub Scouts (he’s 21 now). We slept on ship in the bunks and had a tour of the ship, but there were many areas we weren’t permitted. The engine room was one of them.

Keep up the great work, it’s very enlightening!

[Builder_2010]

I’m glad you had a good experience on the ship. I’ve now been on the boat I think 8 times, and I’m sure I’ll be on some more. I don’t know if I can complete this project without another visit. We’ll see.

Today I finalized the upper part of the steam Turbo-generators (TG). There are two of these identical 1,2050 KVA units in each engine room. The battleship is an energy hog with every system being electrical or electro-hydraulic in nature. They both sit on their own cylindrical condensers that tap their cooling water from the main condensate system for main propulsion.

I’m happy with the results, but it was touch and go for a bit. After I finished it up I plopped it over the master drawing and WHOOPS! It was much smaller than it should be. It wasn’t just a scaling-up problem. I had to rebuild it. I’ve said it before, "Fixing an SU object is often harder than redrawing from scratch. Case in point… I started trying to reshape the frame. I ended up erasing the whole thing and building it new with the right proportions. I had to do this a couple more times.

I’ve tested the object in the slicer and it will print as a single part. With the new slicer it automatically puts supports in hidden areas that greatly increases success when printing complex objects like this one.

Next up is the large sub-frame that supports both systems. This frame straddles each condenser and then runs down to the hold deck. The frames sit on tubular legs. This part should be easier to draw than the TG… famous last words.

[Builder_2010]

I think I’ve finalized the design on the turbogenerators (TGs) and their support systems. It was “fun” figuring out how to run the main piping below the froundation without goig through other pieces of equipment. I swear that a lot of these runs were done on site with the equipement in place. They didn’t have 3D CAD programs in 1939 to model it before cutting pipe. I am not including ALL piping, but am putting in enough to tell the story and add interest.

The TGs themselves are on the printer now and will be done later tonight. They’re intricate and delicate and I’ll be pleased if they come out okay. I will print the support system and the condensers next. Documentation on the condenser foundations are very sketchy (no pun intended), so I basically faked it from the little information I could glean from the photos. Ryan said he couldn’t criticize what I drew since he can’t tell what’s going on there either.

The auxiliary condensers are also an alloy resistent to salt water. They have their own pumps driven electrically and have their own sea chest openings through the ship’s bottom. The working floor level is obove the steel foundation supporting the pumps. The guy is actually standing on the hold floor (the 3rd skin of the triple bottom). This image was BEFORE I finalized how the condensers would be fastened to the framing.

You can see more of the piping in these overall views. The room is filling up!

Looking forward: These images show the finalized condenser suspension scheme. Still not sure if it’s correct, but until I get better info, it’s going to have to do the job.

Looking aft:

[Toimi_Tom]

Once again, I’m not really sure what to say.

Other than: I like this and am following along closely. Please keep posting!

[Builder_2010]

Keep following…

The turbogenerator prints are excellent. I had a minor glitch in the throttle valve and gauge panel not being physically attached to the rest of the model. I glued on one gauge panel and lost the other. I will reprint. Otherwise, I’m very comfortable with this print. Even the control wheel and relief valves rendered well.

[Schmidty13]

I’m only maybe a third of the way through this thread and am absolutely fascinated. CAD/3D printing/scale model building…it’s the perfect storm of my interests. Thank you so much for such an informative build thread!

You’ve also convinced me my next printer should be resin and not FDM.

[Builder_2010]

I’m working on final edits of a book on 3D CAD, 3D Printing and Traditional Skills to create scale models. If you’re interested let me know by private message. Resin printing is simple…. erhhh… that is… simply complex. The book really helps get you started.

After the pretty decent prints of the turbogenerators, I printed the much larger sub-frame and the support frames for the condensers. I printed the condenser with its support piping, but that was a failure. The drawing was sub-par and the supports weren’t strong enough to support the forming part. It created a crevasse that was inoperable. I bit the bullet and completely redrew the shell making sure it was fully hollow with perfecly formed walls in and out. It will be printed tomorrow.

I decided to print the new condenser barrels separately from its attached pumps and piping to simplify positioning on the printer and insure sucess.

The sub-frame needed some clean up and minor Bondic work on one corner. It also had a complete, non-complicated fracture in one of the side beams. When resin changes state from liquid to solid it creates internal stresses. Sometimes it leads to warping—although in this printer warpage has not been a problem—and, as in this case, breakage. I used Bondic to repair it, and after some mild sanding, the break is invisible. It would be invisible anyway since it will be very difficult to view.

I made the mounting holes for the legs as part of the drawing. There were some weird situations, which occurs in SketchUp, where when you intersect faces from one object to another, the lines don’t create a new surface that can be extruded by failing to create an actual surface. For these instances I drilled a small hole to guide a drill in a post-op.

Here is the repaired corner.

The top view of the sub-frame after cleaning.

And the bottom.

I positioned the TGs on the frame for this image.

Today, the leg and condenser mounting system was printed successfully. As will all printed objects, if you want a shaft and hole to fit be prepared to enlarge the hole or reduce the o.d. of the shaft. This is because the two diameters made from the same drawing would be a press, zero-clearance fit. And, due to the nature of resin printing, the shafts are a couple of thousandths (15 microns) larger and the holes are correspondingly smaller. I took one of the legs that was to fit in the holes and measured it with a drill gauge. A nice clearance was a #18 drill. I opened all the holes to this diamter.

Here’s the sub-frame on the legs. One of the legs wasn’t in full contact with the cross-beam on the drawing and printed as a separate part. i put it on after fitting the pieces into the sub-frame to insure that its alignment was correct. I fastened it with Bondic AND CA. You will notice that the arm on the relief valve is missing on the TG in the foreground. It wasn’t the only thing wrong with these prints. The steam throttle body wasn’t attached to anything being held just by the two pipes, and the gauge panel suffered from the same malady due to forgetting to draw the attachment. I printed a spacer set for the throttles and new gauge panels. I attempted to glue all this together with CA. It didn’t look very good. Then I broke off that little arm. I really liked that detail since it printed so beautifully. The result: I reprinted both of them. Once I know something this important isn’t right and I have the time and resin to do it over, I will do it over. Visitors to the ship have no idea that these machines are suspended on legs so far above the hold. Seeing this model, they will understand it.

Looking up into the supports you see the nice perforated cross-piece. This stuff was almost impossible to photograph in the 1:1 ship, that no one, and I mean no one will be able to discerne that this is either realistic or not. Modeler’s license.

I’m working on the evaporators. These are only located in ER #3. There are three heat vessels. The left end takes in seawater, boils it. It’s steam goes to the middle where is condensed with some condensate being removed and the remainder reboiled again with its steam going to the last vessel and it happens again. The output of the middle vessel produces potible water for crew, the 3rd produces feedwater for the boilers. In other words, the boilers get better water than the crew. I don’t have detailed drawings of these, and my photos only show the front faces, I don’t know where the piping goes when leaving the evaporators. I do know that the feedwater is stored in tankage in the walls of the ship immediately behind these units. Remmber, there are 20 feet of voids, tanks and armor between the engine room’s walls and the ship’s exterior.

Lastly, I’ve redrawn the growing overall project image with the new acrylic bulkheads. This is a better solution that the cutaway slivers that I was originally thinking about.

I’ve completed the print files for the floor grating. I still don’t know how many gratings I will install. They form all the working decks that separate the levels within the engine rooms. Install too many and views will be blocked, but none will give the illusion that people work on montrous machines that tower over their heads. They are supported by angle-iron frames that are very frail in 1:48 scale. I suppose I could print the grating with its supporting angle iron framing. I will see if I can old-school cobble the frames out of styrene shapes. If it’s too ridiculous I will use the printer.

I looking at that picture, I’m thinking the bulkheads could actually form the display case… Hmmm. The shafts would protrude, but that may add interest. Otherwise, you’ll have acrylic walls surrounded by more acrylic. We’lll see. Posting helps me think…

[Schmidty13]

The build is looking great!

I sent you a pm about your book.