Thanks Guys! Yes! SketchUp is a difficult program to work with mechanical things especially if you don’t have dimensioned drawing from which to draw.
Drawing continues feverishly. I finished detailing the major components of the gun loading system in the gun house itself. This includes the rammer machinery which exists in the officers’ compartment at the rear and the cradle and spaning tray. The latter captures the 16" projectile coming up from the projectile hoist, rotates it to the loading angle of 5°, and with the cradle and spanning tray provides a smooth surface to slide the projectile and the 6 powder bags that follow into the gun’s receiver.
Drawing the cradle involved all of my SU skills and a new extension, “Truebend”. TrueBend enabled me to wrap the rib pattern around the barrels of the cradle and spanning tray. There were a lot of mechanical relationships that had to be figured so the cradle would fold in the proper way. At 1/72, I’ll be lucky if it prints at all let alone actually articulate, but I wanted it to be mechanically accurate.
This is the loading position. Remember: there will be bulkheads on all sides of the guns separating them from each other and the officers’ space. The rammer machinery is outside of the gun chamber with the rammer chain going through the wall.
Here’s the firing position.
The singluarly most difficult part of this whole part of the project was figuring out just what was happening with the spanning tray control link and how it attaches to the tray. I had one picture on which to rely and it was ambiguous. My first attempt was completely wrong. The arm had to be far enough away from the unit to clear the main pivot bearing, but I couldn’t quite understand just what was happening. This link bends the spanning tray to horizontal when the cradle is lowered and bends it to lock position when the cradle is raised.
The part in question is the light color shape next to the gun captain’s elbow. It looks like it’s sticking straight out from the tray, but its actually first dropping down and then projecting outward. Because the tray is angled in the process of flattening out, you’re looking as much at its end as it’s top. The big hinge is at the bottom of the spanning tray. Because of all this angularity and perspective I wasn’t able to trace the shape as I do with other objects.
Here’s a view of what I drew. It’s still not perfect, but I’m not sure how to make it better with just his one image.
The real question I have is just what will print successfully at 1/72nd? A lot of the details I’ve drawn may not reproduce such as the hex-headed bolts.