Iowa Class Engine Room #3 Model for BB62 Permanent Display

[Builder2010]

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.

[Builder2010]

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.

[Dioramartin]

Indeed. I have to ask (given debate on another thread about scratch-building), do you think you would have attempted this, say, 10 years ago? Meaning pre-3D printers?

I think it’s a pertinent question – without pre-empting your answer it seems to me 3D printers have given old-school scratch-building an enormous boost. While some may lament the likely decline of hand-crafting components, I think it’s a fair trade-off if the consequence is that more model-makers will build to their own designs rather than slavishly making spoon-fed kits. (Ouch I know “slavish” is an incendiary adjective – for the record I like being slavish sometimes (!), I don’t mean it’s a bad thing)