Thank you for the kind thoughts!
The wall print was very good. I broke some of the door dog levers, but that’s expected. They’re very delicate and I will replace with wire. The walls fit together as designed.
I put together a punch list for the upper works and it has 19 items on it. So there’s still a lot of work to be done here before turning my attention to the lower decks and main magazine. I almost have all the reference photos I need to finish this. I have just a couple more requrests for Ryan concerning the communications gear on the gun house rear wall, and the geometry of the cartridge chutes.
The sight setter’s seat came out better than expected. The support post is delicate, but the new 3.1 second printer settings are producing small details that have some strength. I post-cured these last two batches BEFORE cutting off the supports to impart more strength to withstand the support removal. It worked well.
This little bit of floor has to key into the flanking gun mounts. I needed to find out if I could install it after the sighting system part was installed. Luckily, it could be.
This was the test.
I now had another decision facing me. Do I paint the sight system before installation or after. I put it together now. It required a lot of pushing and shoving to get it all aligned during the tests, and I even broke one of the cross-rods. This led me to believe that I would really mess up the paint job in the process. I bit the bullet and permanently glued it in now and will wrestle with the painting going forward. What I can’t reach with paint won’t be visible anyway—or so I’m assuming.
For some reason—probably some warpage—the trainer’s regulator console didn’t sit down on the frame. Rather than continue to force it, I made a shim. Again, no one will notice this when painted and enclosed in the gun shield.
Right now I’m about designing the cartridge chutes. I have good orthographic line drawings, but they don’t show the contours. I don’t believe these sheet metal contrivances are rectangular in cross-section. I’ll do the best I can, and then, after New Years ask Ryan for some pictures of its true shape.
This is that punch list to which I referred:
Everyone have a safe and happy New Year and I’ll see all y’all in 2024!