Iowa Class Engine Room #3 Model for BB62 Permanent Display

[Builder2010]

The weather was perfec today. 80ºF and no wind. I took my compressor outside with the airbrushes and painted the ALLClad Gloss Black Base Coat before painting the bronze metallic top coat on all the seawater handling apparatus. Tomorrow I do the same thing and airbrush the top coat. ALLClad is a hot lacquer paint and I don’t paint that indoors. I’d love to have a spray booth so I don’t have to wait for ideal weather to use solvent-based paints in the shop. I’m finishing up all the things that I can do before painting really gets underway. I have several more metal frame supports to cut and attach before I can paint.

I spent a lot of time hooking up the very tiny piping on the auxiliary air ejectors. These are now finished and ready for paint. Actually, their drums are also bronze colored, but I’ll just spray them without doing the black.

With all the 3D printing done for the engine room, I decided to reprint one of my earliest models: a 1:48 ALCo 251, V16 turbocharged locomotive prime mover. These are also the same engines that are in the emergency generator rooms in the Iowas, and powers the giant crawlers that move rockets at Cape Kennedy Space Port. When I printed it on my original Elegoo Mars Classic, I had to break it into five parts and assemble it after printing. There are tiny details on the model that I drew (fuel lines) that the original prints couldn’t produce with enough integrity to sustain themselves. And the origial ChiTuBox slicer didn’t allow for supports to be connected to other parts of the model, only from the base raft, this meant that to support tiny features that didn’t have support path to the base didn’t get any supports. I could fake it by drawing supports in the design phase.

In this case I tried an experiment in addition to printing the five parts. I set it up to print the entire engine as a single part. At least in the printer the entire engine printed perfectly saving the entire assembly operation. Here’s the whole lot in the draining clamp on the printer.

Here’s a better look at the entire engine.

And if you look closer you can see those tiny fuel lines. They may still not survive the cleaning process, but I’m optimistic. There’s a lot of excess resin all over hiding a lot of the beauty that will be exposed after cleaning.

I’m thinking about opening an Etsy shop sell some of my original designed parts. If I can print the engines in one go it really saves me a lot of time.

Here are two views of the engine that I drew.

After I clean them up tomorrow I’ll share the results. I suspected that this new printing system was so much better than its predecessors that it could do some wonderful work on some of my older designs. This proves it. I have an entire machine shot of tools that I’m going to reprint when I have some spare time and see jhow much better they come out.

[Builder2010]

The ALCo 251 prime mover detail after cleaning was amazing. I only lost one of those tiny fuel lines during support removal.

Yesterday I painted the bronze colored parts. I took the compressor outside again and first sprayed ALCLAD Pale Burnt Metal and then overcoated that with Titanium Gold.

When I brought it inside I displayed it will all the other parts. All that’s missing on the table are the base blocks.

I then went outside again and rattle-can sprayed Rust-oleum “Camouflage Tan” which is an excellent concrete color. You’re only going to be able to see those on the perimeter, but, of course, I painted all of them.

The newly printed corrected mezzanine was now ready to be permanetly fastened to the upper mezzanine. It’s a critical joint that shouldn’t fail so I added some 1/32" pins to reinforce the joint.

With the catwalk in place, I sprayed the underside with Tamiya White Primer since it would hare to reach after the lower mezzanine was installed. I then installed the lower. I used the electrical cabinets with a piece of corrugated cardboard to space the two and then use thin CA in the joints from below to lock the columns in place.

This subassebly is ready for railings install, grating, and the equipment installation. It will be placed on the model as a complete subassebly. I’m doing an exploded drawing of the entire project to determine what can be assembled off the model and what can’t. I spent a few hours today doing final design on the remaining walkways and devising how they’re going to be supported in the model. I know that my method is not prototypical. I believe the angle iron was run more or less off-the-cuff when the ship was built. There aren’t many details about. The drawings I have show some verticals here and there, but mostly concentrate on the platform locations and heights. That sort of how I’m approaching it.

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I exploded the master drawing into logical sub-assemblies that I believe can be (mostly) built off the model.

Building it as sub-assemblies should streamline the assembly process a bit. Some of the walkways will have to wait until near the end for installation.

What’s on the printer now are some reprints and new support systems for walkways. One is visible wrapping around the LP turbine on the above image. I think I have all the platforms finally designed.

Have a nice weekend

[Builder2010]

I’m reprinting some of the catwalk supports. They were wrong and too weak. Oh well.

And I attacked the electrical control panel to put in the tiny LED lights. I gave up on fishing the wires through the hole and down into the part. Instead, I just opened up the backs which made the wiring much easier. I found out that I could use a small carbide drill as a router (by accident). I didn’t know how deep the wall was and actually cut through to the other side in two places. I had the option of reprinting or repairing. I chose to repair.

I thought about reattaching the cutout pieces, but it prroved impossibe.

The wires are shown down to the bottom.

I filled the damaged areas with Bondic. Shaping it after application was tricky, but might work okay.

The wires were soldered together when cleaning, so only two leads are connected to the power them. I tested the lights.

I then paved the top and light shields with Bare Metal Gold Foil. It’s a great light block. I tested again.

To close the back holes I used 0.020" sheet styrene held with CA. I filled any seams with Tamiya Filler.

When light testing, you can see light seeping thouugh the styrene, but paint will block this bit.

The last thing I did was spray some Tamiya Dessert Sand.

After detail painting this should look pretty cool!

I also re-drew the fore catwalk frames. Besides being a bit weak, they were also wrong. They’re printing now and will be done in a couple of hours.

This afternoon I’m a guest presenter for a group of Middle and High School kids who are on the autism spectrum. Trimble Corp, the owner of SketchUp, has found that kids on the spectrum learn better visually and like SketchUp. They have a formal reachout program called Project Spectrum, and I am participating in today’s session.

[Builder2010]

Apparently, my presentation was a hit with the kids. I set up lighting to give it a more professional look and posed myself in front of the train layout. The kids appreciated that and that I spent the time to put an actual presentation together about the power of SketchUp and what’s possible… at any age. The setup worked so well I might be able to use it do a podcast or two… hmmm.

This was the test image. I have these very bright LED lights with magnetic bases that I attached to the I-beam that’s traverses the room in front of the layout. I didn’t need them at full power.

It was a nice day so I got more outdoor painting done. I rattle-can paint all the below the floor foundations Tamiya Dark Red. It’s also a great water line color for US ships. I painted this group first, and when I got back in the shop realized that I missed a few parts so I went back out and painted some more. I then took the big gray parts and spayed them with Tamiya Regular Gray Primer.

​This paint dries very quickly and I was able to place a whole bunch of stuff onto the base

The re-designed front catwalk support is much better. In addition to actually fitting correctly, I thickened all the angle “iron” shapes to they had some strength. I made an error attempting to use near-scale cross-sections. The resin is just not strong enough in small cross-sections. The part is now very stable. With see-through grating it will look fantastic. Those angle braces would not be needed in the real world since the front edge would be welded to the bulkhead. There’s only a hint of bulkhead on the model.

With the prime and foundation painting done, I can now settle down and paint the parts in the shop. My Albuqueque friend has finished gluing the base board together and doing the sanding operaton. He’ll have it done in a week or so. This project is starting to accelerate, and I’m getting excited by it.

[Builder2010]

Started doing some fun painting today. I got the electric deck upper painted. I’m reprinting the lower deck’s equipment. I kept dropping the darn thing and have been breaking off all those cute little knobs. I was happy with the painting either. But the electrical console looks decent. The actual panel has black gauge faces with tiny white needles. It wouldn’t show up.

Here they are placed for the pic. They won’t be glued in place until the entire asseembly can be correctly positioned.

Painting will continue tomorrow.

[loncray]

It’s projects like this that make me happy to be in this hobby even at a far lower level. Seriously, the research and skills here are gob smacking.

[Builder2010]

It’s stuff like this that, hopefully, will drive you to go to higher levels. I was inspired by wonderful modelers throughout my life starting as far back as when I was 13 and visited a neighbor who buildt spectacular RC ships in a day when RC probably used vacuum tubes.

I spent the whole session today preparing paint and masking… A couple of hours of masking. Most of the next painting will be by airbrush. I decanted the remains of the Tamiya Dark into a bottle for later use. Some of the apparatus is sitting on foundations that I sprayed with this before, but there will be a couple of pieces where that hasn’t been done and I need it for touchup work. I chose Mission Models Dark Ghost Gray as the machine color. It needs to be prepared using about 10% of their thinner and about the same amount of some binder such as floor wax with Future. Mission sells the polymer, but it’s a bit pricey. The fellows in my model club said that Future works the same even though Mission specifically says it doesn’t.

Some of the to-be-painted areas will be white, but most will be machine gray. The exception is the inner parts of the turbine housing which will be bare steel on the inside and white on the outside. Some of the elbows on the big water inlet piping is painted blue on the ship and I’m going to do that the same. The masking took so long that painting will have to take place tomorrow.

[Builder2010]

While masking took hours, painting took hardly any time at all. With the air brush it made quick work of laying down the dark ghost grey. It took some time to demask and then I spent time touching up areas that we a bit thin with a brush. There are a lot of parts left that need to be painted white (all the piping) and the swiss cheese bulkheads. Before I can paint, I need to add some more I-beam reinforcement to the area on the inner side of the tall bulkhead part that supporst the bulkhead end of the entry deck since that needs to be glued to nascent styrene and therefore, can’t paint it yet. I love how stuff looks when the tape is pulled off. There was a small area where the Scotch Blue Tape pulled off some of the metallic bronze. I’ll touch that up. Meanwhile, I reprinted the lower Mezz electrical cabinets. I didn’t like how the other ones looked and all those beautiful little knob details were breaking off. The new prints are, so far, parfect.

The valve assembly between the two lube pumps needs to be painted red, the valve wheels yellow, and the box behind them is red with a black and yellow striped upper surface. All of that will be done during the next sessions. All painting will be done next week. The week after we’re taking a Philly trip, but the model won’t be ready for delivery. It will be done by the end of the summer and delivery will be sometime in the Fall.

One area is still not finalized as to how I’m going to build it; the lower-level floor system that’s paved with diamond plate. I printed a bunch of angle-iron frames to support the plates, but installing them individually is a problem waiting to happen. I plan on installing things with epoxy, and epoxying dozens of these frames seems troublesome in working around al the equipment foundations. I woke this morning thinking that I could pre-glue the frames onto thin styrene sheet and get them all ship shape, and THEN install these little sub-assemblies into the ship. I would pre-measure all the styrene sheets fitting them around all the stuff. It could give me more control with these fragile parts. BTW: all of this is painted foundation red.

[Builder2010]

I sincerely hope that the fog of Tamiya Gloss White airbrush overspray is not toxic, because the basement was full of that stuff this afternoon. And I’m also glad that a) I wear “shop clothes”, b) I wear “shop shoes” and c) that it has a bare concrete floor with years of paint, etc. splatters all over it. I say this because, I was about to stir in some thinner in the last bit of gloss white paint I had, lost grip on the glass paint spray bottle and it hit the floor, broke and spilled that precious white paint all over the place. Anywhere and wearing anything else, that would have been a catastrophe. In this case it was just a pain the in the butt and a bit of a mess to clean up.

I finish painted all the bronze main condenser parts. I happy with the results. Part of the assembly can be glued together now, but one end needs to go on when I’m installing it on the base floor so the pipe can position properly.

I finished the central column with a coat of gloss white on the upper parts. The paint ran out (read “spilled”) half way through painting the main steam header. I will be buying more paint tomorrow, and may get some time to use it. The entry hatch floor will be expoxied to the cross-supports on the top of this column. I limited the amount of paint on the gluing surfaces.

I got the red base painted on the main gauge panel. The next steps are picking out all the details. Not all of the gauges have the same colored bezels, so I will be using the pictures of the real on to do it as it appears in life.

I am in the process of redesigning the entire 1st level floor system, making all the sub-frames as a single printed part. My original idea of having little 2’ X 4’ self-supporting frames was untenable and would be an installation nightmare. I drew a flat piece on top of the existing frames and intersected the faces to identify where all the apparatus penetrats the floor. I then took that pattern and rebuilt the floor system underneath it. All the myriad of legs are now cross-braced so they’ll be very stable.

Here’s a sample of what I’ve done.

I have three of these systems; two are finished and printed and the 3rd is almost done drawings. The port side frames are split done the middle to facilitate installation. The starboard frames are a single and I will install the evaporator deck through this floor. Here are the first two out of the printer and cleaned, but not removed from the forrest of supports nor post-cured. I made sure that all the joints were in full contact with each other so there shouldn’t be any printer glitches.

I love the the new printer can print objects this large as single printed object. Both of these were printed in one load.

I’ll have some work time tomorrow, but be gone for a little over a week for a trip back East. I probably won’t get to the battelship this trip. I don’t really have anything I need for this project any longer. Of course, I could always visit the ship… it truly enjoy it.

[Builder2010]

I didn’t have much time today after going to the hobby shop to replace the lost white paint, but that didn’t stop me from getting something done. I finished painting the white paint work including the escape trunk, piping around the air ejectors (small and large), and miscellaneous other stuff. Notice that I white painted the numbered studs that are going to go in each identified piece of apparatus in the final display. There are still many loose pipes that need white paint. I will get them later.

I detail painted the lube oil purifier.

The escape trunk and large air ejector white piping.

Notice painting the underside of the entry deck. The lighting circuits are now fully camoflaged. The upper surface will be linoleum brown. There’s gray detail painting on the evaporators needs to be done. I like detail painting. The small air ejectors are sitting there also.

The electrical tape on the main steam pipe that’s wrapped around the middle is almost invisible now that it’s well-coated with Tamiya gloss white (As planned).

Then I did the first coat on the red valve bodies on the lube oil pump manifolds. After finish painting the red, I will paint the top of the box-shaped thing insignia yellow with black warning stripes and the valve handles yellow.

​I painted the new electrical cabinets sky gray. I will pick out details later, hopefully without breaking any of those cute little hand knobs on the bottom.

Before I went upstairs I sprayed the insides of both the low and high pressure turbines Tamiya spray Silver Leaf.

We leave tomorrow for Philly. I won’t be going to the ship this trip. Nothing to learn. But I will be going back in the Fall to deliver the new model.