Missed yesterday’s post so today will be a twofer.
First up… thought it would interesting to see the vast number of parts already created for this project. We’re at the 95% level. I finished printing the smaller flooring frames and they’re waiting for trimming and sanding. I’ve also uploaded the file to print the remaining large floor frames. I’ve almsot finished drawing the various electrical cabinets, and Ryan has promised that he’ll take pictures of the main gauge board, which is the last piece to be finished. In those plastic boxes are all the floor gratings ladders and diamond plate pieces. All of this and no instructions! I’ve received all the electrical materials and am going to do some experimentation of soldering on copper foil attached to resin. Resin doesn’t melt per ce, but it can burn. If I can it would simplify attaching the surface mount LEDs. The large curvy pipe at the top is the new main steam pipe that has clearance built in to clear that large central pole (resembles a rocket in the foreground).
I printed the tiny hand wheels for the auxiliary air ejectors. I chose to mount them with 0.015" phos-bronze wire. I had to drill the parts with a 0.016" carbide bit. I got through almost all of them before breaking one. I attmpted to attach the even tinier smaller valve wheel using wire, but it proved ridiculous. I ended up putting them on with CA.
First image shows the valve hand wheel attached to the wire. Note the fine-tipped tweezers for scale.
And the finished parts: Pins are also installed in the pipe ends to faciliate gettimg them attached to the ma
I took some time off to rebuild additional lighting on my workbench. I had two of these puck lights left over from an under-cabinet project and used them for a couple of years. The voltage adjuster died rendering them dead. Another under-cabinet job gave me two more surplus LEDs pucks that I added to the one remaining. They’re 12vdc units and require no current management circuits. They just need a 12vdc power sorce. I needed another LED power supply for the engine room project so I bought two. I wired them up in parallel and added a toggle switch to activate them. Lots of needed light.
The circuitry isn’t pretty, but it’s solid and safe. That circuit strip needs some craft work to parallel the contacts, but jumpering them. The strips came from when I built my first railroad at our house in Düsseldorf, which explains why their “Euro-style”. I used them all over my model railroad and I’m finally running out them. When I decided to build my railroad in our German house, the head of the technical training department at Henkel provided me with an enormous amount of electrical hardware to make it all happen. It was when I learned about crimped ferrules on the ends of wires that are used along with these knds of terminals.
I printed the electrical control panel in the same run with the miscellaneous floor frames. The frames came out perfectly, but the panel was a failure.
The failure was not the printer’s fault. It was the draftsman… me. The drawing was flawed. There was a layer underneath the slant panels. The printer/slicer was confused by this inner layer and tried printing both. You can see this inner panel in the centeral area where another slant panel was supposed to go. I went back and fixed all the drawing errors. I printed it again solo, and the results are perfect. It’s draining on the printer and I’ll finish it up tomorrow. While it’s hard to see with all that excess resin covering it, the control knobs and switches did resolve.
Back to the main floor framing. Oh boy! I wish I could have had it all laser cut. It’s been well over a week and I’m still cutting away. I keep refining the process, but it’s a lot of heavy duty hand work.
After scribing and snapping all the long cuts, I used the Northwest Short Line Duplicutter 2 to gang scribe the cross-cut length.
To make the stack of the fore and aft beams, I used Scotch Double-sided “permanent” tape. It held the stack well enought and came off with no residue or sanding. Using plastic cement was more trouble than it worked.
I used a prick punch to locate all the holes and then pilot drilled the with 1/16". it was a bit too small for the big holes, but was perfect for the tops of the cross-lap cuts.
The big drill was okay… just okay. It wandered on a couple of holes meaning the some of the slots are not parallel to the part edges. Annoying? Yes! Show stopper? No! It’s all at the very bottom of the model and recessed from view. Won’t be seen much except by me. These holes drilled much better than the ones I did on the abaft ship frames. Part of that was due to holding the stack more firmly with a drill press clamp in additionl to my fingers.
I started cutting the scrap between the holes with the #11. I didn’t like how it performed. I switched to a single-edged razor to start the cuts. Worked better, but still not so hot. Finally I used my 90º corner chisel. This worked well. I don’t have any straight wood chisels. A 1/4" inch chisel would have been perfect.
I started doing trial fits with satisfactory results. There is another, 2nd skin mid-point in the framing. I’m going to add this only in the outer spaces since the inner ones would be invisible. The triple bottom was only used under the hull areas included in the armored citidel.
You are now all up to date.
