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

[Builder_2010]

We had friends from our old neighborhood in Philly area over for a long weekend, so I got back into the shop today. First of all, the framing and column print from last week, while successful print-wise, won’t work model-wise. The I-beam columns I drew and printed, while delicate and scale-like, was too frail to exist in the real world. I changed them to H-beams and doubled their cross-section. That print finished a short while ago and I will clean them up tomorrow. Pictures to come tomorrow.

I spent the rest of the work session cutting out the first skin (ship’s bottom) and showly gluing the lattice to it. While at it, I am also adding the 2nd skin on the outsde exposed spaces. There are slight variations in spacing so each 2nd skin piece had to hand measured, cut and fit for a nice glue joint. I’m using both Tamiya thin cement and good old Testor’s tube cement due to its gap filling abilities.

I’m employing angle blocks of various sizes to weigh down the lattice and to give a nice square corner while glung. I have to be careful to shim the outside since only part of the block is sitting on the bottom skin and it led to a tipped block. The shim kept the blocks level so the 2nd skin is also level. I haven’t glued any of the sides or central lattice yet. I wanted to get the fore and aft bulkheads well attached before gluing the center which will not be seen. I think I’ve found a spot where I could cut open the floor a bit to show the triple bottom which is so characteristic of a warship like this one.

I started the glueup with the rear bulkhead since it is only sitting on a little lip. I wanted it glued tight. I also cut a 3/8" strip to sit on top of the little lip that remains. This extra piece will give the 3D-printed external stiffening frames a bittle bottom on which to sit.

With the back bulkhead in place, I started working on the front. I’m gluing the bulkhead and the 2nd skin pieces together as I move along. I have a few pieces on the extremis left to finish this step. The upper bulkhead and framing will be white, while all the underneath skins and frames will be red-lead or something akin. The little “tables” are 3D-print fixtures to set the height and level of the 2nd skin. By doing it this way, i didn’t need to glue any corner or edge supports to hold the 2nd skins in alignment. Plastic cement does not affect UV resin. These too needed their outer legs to sit on shims to hold them level.

Only 3 more 2nd skins need to be added to the fore bulkhead. I will also add 2nd skin pieces to all the open sides and then just a few in the area that’s going to be cut away for vieweing.

[Builder_2010]

The re-designed and re-printed minor flooring frames came out well and the enlarged H-Beam columns now have the structural integrity to support the platforms as I needed. I also added sockets printed with the frames to capture the H-Beams. I made the socket openings slightly larger in all directions so the columns just drop in without forcing. I will use CA to hold them, but use epoxy to glue the columns to the floor system.

The Main Gauge Board floor system attaches to the larger and more robust frame holding up the evaporators. I made the mating beams so they could nestle into the larger frame. I was rewarded that it fit as I drew it. This frame has four columns although I probably didn’t need them since the one end is attached to the larger frame.

For the evaporator floor frame and drew some brackets to provide a stronger mount to the Turbo-gen frames and the other free end supported by two H-beam columns.

Looking underneath you can see the brackets, but they’re suffering from a depth-0f-field problem with my iPhone’s camera. I have an iPhone 12 Pro. I’m thinking about upgrading and wonder if the iPhone 16 Pro’s camera has better custom focus control. I take many closeups among the thousands of images I’ve made documenting my model building pursuits.

Meanwhile, I’m putting in more of the 2nd skin floor filler pieces. Only one more side to go. I may have to paint the insides of this before glueing down the hold floor since you can peer through all the holes and see the insides. You won’t be able to see whether there’s a 2nd skin in there, but you might be able to see all that white styrene. That said, the entire framing interior will be in the dark. So maybe, I won’t have to paint it. A couple of the fore & aft frames are sitting a little low. I will shim them before gluing on the floor panels. I want the panels and smooth as possibel since so much has to be fastened to it. Notice the hole cuts in the face of the fore bulkhead to provide passage for the condensate water ram intake. There’s a couple of other holes needed in the hold floor for more intakes and discharge ports. I’m not opening up the bottom as the model sits on it and it’s not visible.

That narrow fire room floor is necessary for two reasons: a base for the wall stiffeners that are on the boiler room side, and for passage of that ram intake. Everything at hold floor level and below is oxide red, bulheads above that are white. It’s really getting excited about thinking about starting construction. Still have two more details I need from Ryan, but I can proceed without them. They are not in the critical path… yet.

[Builder_2010]

Interesting day! I got the 2nesd skin inserts done without issue and turned my attention to the entire floor structure. I was thinking about taking it outside to apply the red primer, but I decided instead to start fitting some of the critical items to double check fits before getting ahead of my skis. Boy! Am I glad I did. The port side prop shaft, bearing mount and seals aligned perfectly with the floor (temporary piece of 0.030" stock) and the holes in the fore and aft bulkheds. I was also rewarded with the output shaft lining up perfectly when the high pressure turbine frame, on the other end, aligned. But the starboard side prop shaft didn’t align with the seal hole in the aft bulkhead. This would not do.

It required some serious surgery and some grafting. I traced the correct location on the bad part and then cut it off by scribing and snapping.

I then used it to trace a replacement. I didn’t like the lack of stiffness anyway and needed a flange to properly glue the graft in place, so I made the first piece long enough to have a lip that extended down to hold floor level. I cleaned this up and tried it out for fit. It worked well.

I then used it to trace another piece, but this was had the traced cut line from the severed part so it would closely match the glue line and mitigate excessive filling. After gluing the two together, I finished sanded them as a single laminate. I glued this in place with tube cement and clamped it until set.

Tomorrow I will finish the joint with filler as needed and make it invisible. With the double thickness, there is now some extra material behind that will have to be accounted for when fitting in the hold floors.

While doing this it became clear that ALL the stiffeners needed to be secured since there would be CA and epoxy that would make a mess of any finished paint surfaces. I started with the fore bulkhead by adding the stiffener for the HP turbine frame. I used thick CA and then added epoxy where it needed more strength on the bottom horizontal piece that simulates the fire room floors.

I also added an I-beam to stiffen the wall where the main steam line passes through the bulkhead.

Here are the two stiffeners in place.

A top view shows the 3º angle that the main propulsion system sits so it’s aligned with the #2 propeller. It’s neat to see the parts in place and how they replicate what I’ve drawn.

Boy, am I glad I put my foot on the brakes and didn’t spray any paint. I’ll added the stiffeners on the aft bulheads, and then I can spray the base red primer. I will then glue on the hold floor and paint it too. Once the base is prepared, assembly can being in earnest. The weather’s warming up so outside paint days will be more frequent.

[Builder_2010]

I spent much of my build time creating a set of numbers on stalks that are going to call out the various components folks are viewing. It will tie into the key that will be attached to the inside of the rear acrylic case. They are not large and will be unobtrusive. This little drawing job should not have taken as long as it did. SketchUp kept crashing when doing the Move/Copy function to rotate and copy each number to the other 3 faces of the cubes. It seemed to have crasked on every other cube. Some crashes were the “Beach Ball of Death”, something that happens on Apple computers when the program is hanging. Other times, SketchUp just shut down. Each time, I had to reload, catch the backupped file and get back to work. Wasted time!

I then got back downstains and worked on the other bulkhead. After epoxying the stiffeners in place and cured… hard!, I noticed a error I made. On the fore bulkhead I correctly had the stiffeners on the small chunk of the #2 fire room’s hold floor. But on the aft bulkhead, I made a mistake way back in the initial design stage of the flooring system. I incorrectly used the tabs from the cross-lap joints. These are not the floor height, but represent the 2nd skin height. I had mounted that small strip thinking that was the floor level.

If the epoxy wasn’t so darn efficient I could have removed the now-secure stiffeners and revised the flooring system, but alas, the epoxy worked way too well and cured way too quickly.

I’m going to add the hold floor strip and added verticals in preparation for this. It will be different than the other bulkhead and it will be interesting to find out how many viewers notice the diffence. It will appear that the stiffeners penetrate the hold floor to the 2nd skin. For all I know, this may be just how they’re tied into the ship’s structure. Tomorrow I will add the floor strip on top of the new parts simulating the hold floor. The clue that I made a mistake was the stiffeners not going up to the top of the bulkhead cutaway wall.

I’m also going to glue in the propeller shaft seals into the bulkheads since they’re going to need epoxy as well and it’s much better to do it before painting. Other stuff also connects to these walls, but I’m not ready to add them. These parts include all three of the air ejectors and the high pressure turbine’s mounting bracket. If I have to, I’ll remove paint in these areas or mask them for better epoxy adhesion.

For some reason, I was considering the aft bulkhead as something different than the forward one, whereas they should have been treated alike. They both should have had full height extensions to support the little bit of fire room hold floors that would have supported the stiffeners. By just having the cross-lap extensions on the aft, threw me a curve that didn’t cross the plate until too late.

[Builder_2010]

Friday’s work consisted of finding that the prop shaft coming from the main reduction gear was also misaligned with the hole in the rear bulkhead and required the same surgical procedure that I used for the through prop shaft #1. Again, I doubled its thickness to provide a gluing lip for strength. Even though the cut was a bit irregular, I traced it on the new piecce so there’s not too much filling to be done.

After clamping and gluing, I smeared some Tamiya Fine Filler on and will sand this joint and the other one tomorrow.

I printed the callout numbers 1,5X larger than my first attempt and these should do nicely. I’ve kept the smaller ones as they may prove handy for smaller equipement or hard to reach places. I’ve identified 26 pieces of interest in the model.

I finished designing the lube oil purifier. It’s a centrifuge that spins out any particulates that are entrained in the oil. I only had one, not-so-hot photo on which to base the model. On the main drawings I was able to pick out the overall footprint and height so I know it’s not grotesquely out of proportion. It sits under the evaporators and will be hard to pick out therefore, I will be counting on the lighting installed to give it some life. I have absolutely no idea where those pipes actually go.

​The last thing I did today was add some leveling shims on the lattice frame and then measure, cut and fit the 0.030" syrene sheet flooring. There are two halves since they both slope towards the outside from the ship’s center line so wall will run off to the bilge scuppers at the extreme corners. This isn’t glued it and won’t be until the painting of the of the lattice is completed.

Weather might be okay a couple of days this week to do this painting outdoors. Two more parts to finalize and draw and we’re onto paint and assembly. I’m at the stage where the assembly order becomes critical. I already saw how difficult it can be when attempting to get the main gear box and its prop shaft through the bearing. I may have to glue the bearing in AFTER the gear box is installed. Lots of work still to do. I’m now a the point where I will actually be building a model.

[Builder_2010]

Got two things accomplished today: painted the red primer on the underfloor and printed the Lube Oil Purifier.

I masked the parts that were to remain white. I didn’t want to have to paint white over red primer. I then took it outside, donned my vapor mask and safety googles and started spraying from the can, Rust-oleum red primer and got half way through. The nozzle clogged up. Can was half full. I called the ACE hardware nearby and asked if they sold Rust-oluem spray and they did. I drove over there in rush hour traffic and they didn’t have the color. But the salesperson asked if I had any other cans of paint and if so, use a nozzle from one of those. I got home, got another nozzle, and it worked fine. I finished the job.

It’s amazing how much sloppy workmanship that paint covers…

I also glued the support legs into the two deck frames with thick CA and then had to level the Main Air Ejector’s frame with the TGs frame to which it’s attached. I glued the shims on with CA. There may need to be more shims to make those upper surfaces level while sitting on the sloping hold deck halves.

Lastly, here’s one of the two Lube Purifiers that I printed (always print more) and this one was perfect. The other had a small pipe that failed to print well.

Till tomorrow…

[Builder_2010]

Ryan sent me a load of pictures yesterday including the main gauge board. He also sent images of the ambiguous electrical cabinet that I needed to finalize the upper mezzanine and images of cabinets on the lower mezzanine. The latter are very hard for me to interpret since it doesn’t show the entire array or how the images realted to one another. Lastly, he sent pics of the lube oil storage tank and the strainer that sits below it. Again, the strainer pipiing is covered with insulation and is difficult to understand. He missed the lube oil settling tank of which he wasn’t too familiar. It’s on the same level as the main gauge board and sits against the side wall. I’m not sure about including either tank. The storage tank can be supported by the aft bulkhead, but may block views. Since I’m not including any side walls, the settling tank will have nothing to support it. It would also block the view of the gauge board which is much more important.

The three pics of the gauge board were shot standing facing the middle and then simply turning to face right and left for the other views. This created a very distorted series that needed to be edited before I could use it as a drawing guide. I downloaded the three images into Corel PhotoPaint and redid the perspective on all of them so they could be merged into a single, reasonably-sized image. Then I was able to draw the panel.

The raw images:

My edited composite:

A rendering of the final drawing:

And the panel set up on the slicer for printing. It’s being printed as I write this. The main gauge board has the RPM prop shaft counters for the other three engine rooms so the chief engineer can keep an eye on them. There are also other gauges and controls that are not present on the other three panels.

I would love to have decals for the gauge faces, but can produce them in my shop. Inkjet decals, when they are very small, tend to have the ink run even when they are properly overcoated with sealent. Inkjet ink is water soluble. Professional decals are either silk screened or printed on other machines that can print white. I’m sure it I wanted to pay for them, I could get them custom made, but this model gets donated and I manage my costs closely.

I still have to finalize the Lube Oil Tank situation, the electrical cabinetry, and the piping configuration to the large lube oil cooler. The cooler resides on the hold floor below the line of the lower diamond plate personnel flooring, so it’s piping is mostly concealed. It needs coolant inlet and outlet, and lube inlet and outlet, but there’s two more outlets unaccounted for. It may be that each pump has piping to the cooler, but I don’t know. I haven’t found any information about this. Lastly, I have to created the telephone booth that sits beside the main board. With that done, all printing will be finished.

I fitted the floors and then applied the equipment again to test fits. First the lattice painted. Stil have to mask it and paint the white styrene gloss white.

Becasue you can look through all the holes is why I had to paint the whole deal.

The floor fitting.

Notice those angles of all the drive lines. The props are not square to the ship’s centerline. Probably helps pushing the ship in a straight line like alignment settings on a car’s front end do.

[Builder_2010]

The main gauge board printed… sort of. I had made the classic Drawing for 3D Printing error. I had parts that weren’t actually contacting the surface on which they should have been. I wrote about this error in my book “21st Century Modeling…” so I should have known better. All the other details printed perfectly, but the part is scrap. I corrected the drawing and will reprint on Monday.

Notice that all the small gauges are either missing or deformed.

The reason: Almost all the small gauges were sitting proud of the surface by a very small amount only seen when you orbit and look directly at it from the side and zoom in.

It didn’t take long to correct the drawing and re-slice it. When designing for printing (like anything else) the details will kill you. It’s very hard sometimes to see if surfaces are truly in contact. That said, the details that did print are impressive.

[Demolition]

Its so amazing that you have the ability to create and the detail is outstanding.

[Builder_2010]

Thanks! Frankly, it amazes me too. I didn’t expect to be doing this at this time of my life.

Before printing the new gauge board I had to empty all the resin and remove the little gauge circles that were not attached to the panel. When the printer attempts to print an unsupported aspect, it will start to form on the teflon vat bottom film and then at the next cycle, when the machine attempts to separate the forming part from the film, it leaves the unsupported blob on the film. It will continue to acrete more resin since the LCD is still exposing that spot. This will continue until the blob is thick enough block the UV light and it just sits there. If it gets very high, it can apply significant pressure on the LCD screne when the lead screw is bringing the build plate down to print position, and possibly crack the screen. Never, ever start a new print after a failure without first emptying the vat, inspecting for anythign stuck to the film and removing it.

When I re-ran the corrected-drawing version of the main gauge panel, I was greeted with a perfectly beautifully printed object. The little bumps you see on some of the gauge edges are very tiny supports that the slicer automatically placed there to catch a face that would start printing before the panel behind it. If unsupported, there would be risk that the gauge face would not form properly.

While this print was running I started working more intensely on fitting the big equipement. The weather wasn’t conducive to painting the floor panels, and I’m glad I didn’t since I had to cut the opening for the main condensers big piping. The was a classic trial and error afair and took most of the afternoon. It was made more difficult because the parts were not fastened together and it resembled herding cats. I finally resorted to taping it together. Because the intake and discharge coolant pipes exit on opposing angles. I had to keep enlarging and changing the opennings’ size and contours to get it to work.

In addition to the holes in the floors I also had to open up the lattice below to accept the piping. After chopping and hacking as shown in the picture, I ended up cutting out that wall entirely. i did the same thing to accept the intake for the steam condensate pump.

In my drawing I noticed that the condenser was sitting about 1/8" too low causing the low pressure turbine’s output shaft to misalign with the main reduction gear LP input shaft. I knew I had to shim it up and did that today so the piping would be sitting at the correct height. I also am thinking about tapering the ship to level the LP mount to account for the deck slope angle.

The extra large holes are just aching to have a trim plate to close them off. In the 1:1 ship there is an elaborate series of plates and seals that surround the condensate piping as it passes through the triple bottom. Afteral it has to be watertight. On the model you wouldn’t see it, plus building it would be darn near impossible. I also started preparing the main reduction gear housing. There was an unseemly gap on the port starboard joint edge caused by a stuborn warp. In preparation I used some J-B Weld epoxy putting, put some Pess-n-Seal on the flat side and put the putting in a string on the film. I clamped the upper, warped half in place in a wood workers vice and squeezed out the excess until it was fully sealed. I’ll finish sand it tomorrow and drill the holes for the small screws that I’m using to hold it together. I don’t want to glue the beast since I want to be able to assemble it on the model and screws are the correct choice.

[Cbowling]

Hey, I think I know you! Your initials are MM.

[Builder_2010]

Ya think??? Could be… how many other Iowa Class Engine Rooms are being modeled in the world today?

[Cbowling]

Absolutely zero. You’ve gotta be a little bit on the crazy side to tackle a project like that, especially after I’ve seen some of these in person. I’ll tell you this, you’re in a class all by yourself, my friend… congratulations

[Builder_2010]

Thanks CBowling! Now that you’re following here I don’t have to send you pictures to keep you up to date. I do this stuff every night on four forums, each with a different audience and interest focus.

When I said that the panel came out well, I was not kidding. Both copies are as good as I can expect. The printer still amazes me as to what it resolves and how stable those micro-details hold up. I hope my painting skills are up to the task.

I finally got around to doing my lighting test. I want to apply the copper foil for the surface mount LEDs directly on the UV resin with the assumption that since it does not melt—like sytrene does—so I should be able to solder directly on it. I wasn’t going to try this on a good part. I tried it on a scrap main steam pipe. Here’s the foil well adhered to the cured resin.

And then with an LED soldered to it. These LEDs are cool white which should replicate florescent lighting pretty well. Not only was the resin unaffected by the solder operation, the tape was actually stuck tighter after solding.

These LEDs were 200 for a little over $6.00 USD. That’s about 3 cents/LED… almost free!

I also wanted to light the electrical panel just for fun. I made wire access available in the design. I thought I had tiny clear LEDs that were pre-wired, but could only find the colored ones, so I tried it with an incandescent grain-of-rice bulb… strictly old school. Took a bit of work to get the wiring fished to the bottom, but the experiment worked. The copper foil is serving as a light block since the resin is a bit translucent. I may use the foil block even on the real one before painting just to ensure that the light only goes where I want it to go. This is a junk part.

With the experimental success I got to work doing the actual lighting on the undersides of various frames that will have equipment lying below that I want seen. The first is the underside of the upper mezzanine to light the lower level electrical cabinets. These tiny LEDs have a polarity marking on their underside and a tiny green mark denoting the positive pole on the top. I mistook this mark as the negative pole at one point and kept fussing until I finally figured it out.

The first image is the circuit trail showing the 1mm gaps where the LEDs will go. I tin the gaps and the ends where the power leads will go.

I trimmed the foil so it just covers the beam, although this frame gets a solid “Linoleum” decking so seeing the underside will not be easily seen.

After putting the LEDs on I tested it. My 12 VDC source can only drive 3 LEDs in series. I could run many more in parallel, but the CL2N3 LED driver chips don’t like parallel circuits. If I need more LEDs I wold have to run another series string driver by another CL2N3.

After the test, I put a tiny piece of Tamiya masking tape on each LED so I can paint the frame. When painted, the lighting circuit will be almost invisible.

Next up was the turbogenerators frame. This required only two lights to illuminate the underside. It was more difficult to run the foil and I broke off one of the support poles. No problem, it will be pinned and reglued tomorrow. Normally, when I make corners with the foll I do it like I learned to do it when putting foil on windows when i installed burglar alarms in the 1970s (moonlight job). But when I can’t fold the foil and do the corner bend, you just lay the new foil over the old and apply some sollder just to make sure that there’s a good circuit.

While this work was going on the printer was creating another masterpiece: the upper mezzanine electrical cabinetry. Armed with Ryan’s latest images I was able to finish up the design. The printer reprocded every hand grab and toggle. It’s draining on the machine and will be cleaned up and post-cured tomorrow.

The last thing on today’s report was finalizing the screw system on the Main Reduction Gear housing. I am not gluing this assembly. The screws extend down below the lip. I will trim them off after final assembly—if I can do it without wrecking anything. I will try it first on the scrap housing.

I was hoping to paint the hold floor panels today, but the weather got bit wild with lightening at the time I wanted to do it. It was a busy and successful.

[Cbowling]

3D printing looks like some kind of voodoo magic.

[gomeral]

Still looking good, M. Those panels came out amazing! I have to say, my first thought when you shared the ‘gap issue’ was “aw, man, I used to do that all the time when I was learning Sketchup”.

[Builder_2010]

Voodoo? It most certainly is!

3D printing is unforgiving over errors that doing SU for illustrations don’t even know about. Surfacces without thickness don’t work. Reversed, non-normal surfaces don’t work. Parts with too fine of a cross-section don’t work, although the Saturn 4 ultra produces much finer parts than previous models. And parts not actually in contact don’t work either.

Added lighting to the last support platform; the evaporator frame. I woke up thinking about how to neatly hide some of the wiring and came up with a scheme to use hollow columns with access ports for the wiring. This will at least hide the wires as they’re running down to the deck below. I still have lighting to install on the big steam pipes to illuminate the two cutaway propulsion turbines. Getting wiries down from them won’t be as easy, although I may run the circuit with the foil directly.

There is a side benefit in hollowing them out; they won’t be as prone to warp. I have some warpage problems with the solid-printed columns. Tubes are always stiffer than solid rod. I may change out some of the others an replace with hollow ones.

I did a light test with the room lights on and the lighting works as designed in illuminating the equipement below. In this case, the lube purifier.

The upper electrical switchgear cleaned up nicely, but I lost one of the very find pull bars. I hope folks don’t notice this… Ryan likes how they look. There will be a faux linoleum floor under this equipment. I honestly didn’t expect all the details to reproduce as they did.

The weather was lovely today and I did get the hold floors painted. Not glued in place yet, but they will be shortly.

I placed the condenser on the floor just to see how it looked. Looks good… eh? To get this beast installed, I’m thinking that I’m going to have to assemble at least part of this structure in situ because I can’t seem to get the two pipes into the flooring due to their opposing angularity.

I’m reaching the point quickly where I have to actually figure out how this 3D puzzle is not only going together, but in such a way as to stay together. I knew when I drew some of the more frail sub-frames. One in particular was the frame that holds the main gauge board. I had removed the inner two H-beam columns which were not clearing the #1 prop shaft. I had to devise a way to support this. The massive HP frame is sitting right there so all I had to do was devise a way to do it. A styrene plate will do the trick. In the 1:1 engine room this platform didn’t have any columns so removing two of them wasn’t to far fetched. In the 1:1, much of the outer load was supported by the side bulkheads which I’m not modeling. I checked level and it came out really close.

I then glued the light weight frame into the girder on the evapoator frame. I needed to do some minor trimming to give clearance for the H-beam mounting. I also had to set it back a bit so the columns on both platforms aligned and not extending past the model’s edge. I added a cross bar between the H-beam columns. They were way too wiggly and weren’t holding plumb. This is a result of the very scale-sized I-beams making up the structure.

Just for fun I sat the main gauge board in the approximate location. There will be floor grating coverings all of this area and beyond.

Finally, the next print completed on the Machine are the lower mezzanine elecrical cabinets. These are simpler than the ones above, but they came out as the photos showed. This is getting way too easy. The uncured resin on the surface hides a lot of the detailed beauty, especially that knob on a bracket that sticks out from each cabinet.

​Right now I’m designing the escape trunk. There appears to be just one in this engine room. Strangely, the plans show it making a slight dogleg towards the ship’s centerline. The bend occurs at the 2nd platform level in the engine room. The entry hatch is at the first platform level right off the lower mezzanine electrical deck. I have to start painting stuff really soon, which I’m looking forward to. The model really doesn’t look ‘real’ until the paint goes on. I have to decide on what to do about the lube oil reservoirs. And I need to reprint the lube oil cooler with some piping going somewhere. And that’s it for part creation. That said, I haven’t actually counted the number of diamond plate and grating floor panels I will need. I produced some, but will simply create more as I need them. Ah… the benefits of creating your own, on-demand, parts.

[Builder_2010]

The lower Mezzanine Electrical Cabinets came out well and are ready for paint. That handwheel at the bottom is delicate. I printed three units (need two), but broke one of those details in clean up. I have two good ones left and need to be careful with them.

While I was very anxious to get the floors glued down, I realized there’s one other detail that’s quite obvious when visiting the real space; the two duck unders that permit crew passage athwartship under the two spinning propeller shafts. In addition to the step down into the hull, there are two three-step ladders on each side and a railing system that protects the space. The railing will be the last things I add to the floor.

The starboard side duck under isn’t straight. it bends 90º that complicated the build a bit. Using the floor plan I located each prop shaft and note its location on the floor, then I used a square to layout the cuts. While the shafts are traversing the space on an angle, the duck unders are square to the ships bulkheads. There was no floor under them on my model. In the real ship, the 2nd skin buried in the triple bottom probably suffices as the floor. I had to build (old school) styrene assemblies to add floor and, eventually, walls on all sides. I first tried to just wall in the parts that didn’t have lattice framing surrounding the opening, but found it wanting. This image shows that problem clearly.

The initial box was only partial.

​

I went back and retrofitted sides—all reinforced with 0.188" Evergreen Styrene Angle—to fully enclose the space. Lots of precision cuts, but fun.

This view before full enclosure shows how the two steps align.

After enclosure, the space is now shipshape.

The second, Port-side, space was simpler, being straight and only four-sided. Took half the time to build it out.

And from above;

It was warm, not windy so I was able to get the paint back one without delay.

Meanwhile, underneath I was doing some surgery. At first I tried to be cute and just nip away at parts of the lattice that interfered with the duck under boxes,

But after fussing with the fits, I just removed those lattice pieces completely. It was more trouble that it was worth to try and trim it close and it was all invisible. I sprayed the underside of the floor box areas to keep white styrene from showing when folks peered down the holes in the lattice.

Finally, I laid down the copper foil circuit tracks for the main steam pipe LEDs. The current load of these LEDs so minuscule that i have no doubt that cutiing the foil width in half shouldn’t affect performance and it enabled me to run the entire curcuit on the bottom of the pipe out of view. I using three LEDs placed in strategic locations over the turbines. With all this light, I better do a good paint job.

[Builder_2010]

Quick update: The tubular, resin-printed columns printed perfectly, but they won’t work. There’s just not enough structural stability in a 4mm resin tube. Good idea, but the wrong material. I just ordered 4mm thin wall brass tubing from Amazon that will work just fine. I’m going to eliminate those cute little gussets at the top. Folks won’t notice them gone. If I wanted to be anal about it, I could solder brass gussets on them, but I’m not. I do have a soldering system that could do the job… I have more important things to do.

Also, a couple of weeks ago I had an “event” in my right eye. It’s called an Amaurosis Fugax. It’s a transient stroke of the optic nerve that can cause partial blindness lasting a short time. In my case it appears as a small, black Roshach Inkblot Test. It was unnerving and lasted about 5 minutes. A week later I told my son, the ophthalmologist, about it and he named it for me and told me to get it checked immediately. He said it usually occurrs when there is plaque that breaks off from somewhere else and ends up in one of the retinal arteries. It often disappates shortly as mine did, but it portends bad things. It can be a harbinger of a bigger stroke waiting around the corner.

To that end, today I had an echo cardiogram and bi-lateral carotid ultrasound. The result was good for the heart, but my right carotid does have plague, but it is less than 50% occuluded. They don’t attempt surgery unless it’s above 50%. I will discuss the results with my internist to see what the next steps are. He did double my lipid meds and put me on an 81mg aspirin. I’m already on a blood thinner for AFib. The AFib has nothing to do with this situation. It was good to find the source. Once you know where it is you can do something about it. My son had much more urgency than the ophthalmologist that I saw last week. My internist, on the other hand, was as concerned as my son and was glad I had already seen my cardiologist. Needless to say, it could have been a lot worse.

Have a good weekend. We’re expecting a serious line of thunderstorms within the next couple of hours with large hail and tornadoes possible. Wish us luck.

[Cbowling]

Take care of your health my friend. Your attention to detail is off the charts. I’ll try and come over next week to see your progress in person