Haze Gray

A couple more photos that I was able to take this a.m. keep in in mind that while the prints you see on the photos are good, they are not super great or anything... iPhone camera is designed to make anything look good! theres a few sections in the hull that have different settings, I find pretty much that increasing layer height means taking a hit in print quality but I haven’t quantified exactly why that is. I think it has something to do with thermal expansion of the material at higher flows.

Okay had a bit less time than I was anticipating this weekend, bunch of kids sleep over for a birthday - but did manage to get a few more sections attached. Also test fitted turrets but no photo of that yet. ts but no picture yet

I’ve not heard or tried onshape, but I looked into it this a.m. seems there’s a lot of similarity with fusion 360 in terms of how one operates the program. Watched a few videos comparing fusion and onshape- seems the recommendation for one or the other hinges on how invested you are in a platform. I plan plan to tinker with both onshape and deftship this weekend to see if they are easier to use and yield better results for hulls.

Ha! I think it's more like my Fusion luck! I've done 3 hulls after the Martel and they are not anywhere as good and here I thought I was improving. Lofting in Fusion 360 is like some kind of mystical art - I've noticed that sometimes the success of lofting depends on the angle you're viewing the model from (crazy!). I'm starting to take a look at the Deftship software and if I can import a model from Deftship into Fusion I might actually try that route. Also, I went with my standard 5mm hull wall thickness on the Martel - and wish I had gone with 7mm as the hull is a really big shell with a much smaller deck that is far from the keel - I should be able to go back and adjust the offset of the frames but that's not really possible - maybe the way I'm doing it is wrong but when I do a hull when I get done I've forced more than a few errors and while the loft result is good - the "mold" that created the hull is more or less destroyed in the process.

Thought I would provide an update - it's been about 3 weeks since I posted and mostly I've been working on three other ships since I needed to take a brake from the Charles Martel - so tonight I spent about 3 wonderful hours on the boat this evening and I can tell you this is one fun boat to build (and challenging too). About 1.5 hours was spent on just examine photographs and double and triple checking the shape of the two main turrets. Pretty much all the photos of models I have seen have all the turrets round - which is incorrect, main and the large secondary are oblong to accommodate the long breach of the french barrels - I was even able to track down some engineering drawings to confirm. so, all the turrets are in, now according to my own notes I am supposed to work on the propulsion and the pulleys for the tramming of the turrets. not as sexy as working on the superstructure - but once I get the internals done it will be a relief to have that behind me and I can attack the desk and the superstructure with complete abandon. I've even been considering putting in the spiral staircases in the fighting masts and that has me thinking about what it would take to fork off what I have thus far and make a version that's visual model with one side of the hull open and the various internal decks with details of boilers and the steam engines... I built over plastic 100 models when I was a kid and kind of still have that itch about internal details being an important and pleasing commodity. Anyways, enjoy the pics.

Hi Roger, Pretty sure - I've attached some pictures of the launching of the Charles Martel + a hull slice from the aft section of the boat from the French Marine Society. The actual ship may not have been that stable in real life!

Hi Tabycz, there’s a lot of good material options out there, I’m using PLA right now for the development prints as I have the settings dialed in for it. ABS , ASA, PETG could easily be used. I will say there’s an at vantage with ABS to join with a slurry of acetone

All that's really needed is to paint over the PLA with something opaque enough to block UV, so automotive primer + a top coat will do nicely. I have both an unpainted part and a painted part sitting outside and will check the results at the end of summer to see how they fair in the sun. PLA sensitivity might vary between manufactures depnding on the color/pigment or other material properties.

I actually have the Olympia and Oregon on my list - and have the design plates for them - I will say the Olympia has the best ornamentation I've seen on a US steel ship. speaking of Bow crests - I've got these photos of the bow crest on the Maine that eventually I'll work into the model and try printing, will probably need a .3mm or .2mm nozzel

Hi Yves, that's an interesting question - If I were to do a kit I'd like to make it as low a cost as possible, I believe there's about $150-$220 worth of material & electricity that goes into 1/72 scale version of the USS Maine - all the Hull sections together take about 18 days to print in total so possibly 30 days of straight printing for the whole boat. At 1/96 scale the material costs and time is reduced by about 40%. I've been printing parts and adjusting dimensions for tolerances for the 1/72 scale and and there would be a fair amount of changes and lots of test printing to dial in the 1/96 version so I'm reluctant to do that. It would be fun to do a run of kits in 1/72 if I had a bunch of printers - and if I could get the cost per kit really low - so if there's interest I'm happy to sharpen my pencil and get it as low as possible. Over the next week or two I'll have some pics that are going to be really fun to post - Turrets mounted in the hull look really great!

As I have been modeling/researching the USS Maine I've come across quite a lot around the sinking of the Maine, controversy as to the cause, and reports and investigative materiel. There's alot of photos of the wreck after the cofferdam was constructed around the Maine for investigation but there's not enough there to really get a picture or understanding to the degree I could model it - suffice to say the pictures basically show the bow section separated from the rest of the vessel - and the section forward of the center structure essentially a conflagration of metal and essentially obliterated - there's no 'hole' as that part of the ship was simply opened up in all directions. As far as the cause, there's no evidence that would rule out either explanation (external or internal origination of the explosion). Both are a possibility and at least one report I read stated that the damage was also consistent with an internal explosion detonating a mine underneath causing a secondary detonation. CDW is correct, the model that I am designing is intended to float! speaking of which I haven't provided an update lately - so here's a short one: After printing 4 sections of the Hull I realized I needed to reduce the length of the sections (basically shorter ones) and add tabs for nut+bolt joining to ease alignment and assembly of the hull. I've printed out the first 3 sections and the 4th is getting printed as I write this. The tabs work well but do require supports while printing depending on their orientation - I may not go back and re design them but for future hulls in work I plan to design tabs that help capture the nut and don't require supports while printing. Here's a few pictures, as is I am pleased with the results and will continue to improve the approach.

Glass works, it's super flat (if you get the right kind) but I'd recommend you hold off on switching to glass and figure out if you need to switch to it - unlikely there's more than a few thousands of waviness on the bed you have, and that gets sorted out within the first 1/2 milimeter.... but if you are thinking of picking up glass for extra beds that's an excuse as good as any in the 3D printing world!

Prusa i3 is a great printer from all accounts I have read and seen (and watched) - I think you'll be up and running in short order. Probably the hardest thing you'll have to tackle is filament settings...

Hi CDW what kind of printer did you get? I had to learn the hard way that if you want to remove a stubborn part *heat up the bed* to 60+ celcius, also don't hammer away at it with a removal tool from the side - (if you have a bed plate that you can remove that's great too and I hear putting it in the feezer works) but forcing the part off while the plate is in the printer absolutely will wear out/deform the synthetic bushings almost immediately. physically treat the printer like a precision instrument as much as possible. Heating the bed a bit helps if you can't remove it I finally figured out how to remove boat hulls properly - you simply squeeze the sides of the hull inwards and with *zero stress* to the printer, the part pops right off! (note this method won't work with submarine hulls as they hull all the way round in 360°) And......if you Are interested in printing a boat well..... I've got one that's pretty close to being done, has under 20 parts which is waaaaaay fewer parts than the battleships! ((compared to 200+ for the USS Maine)....... It is my pleasure and honor to present to you.... Turbinia !!(the world's first steam turbine driven boat! And, it was un-catchable when it debuted (well, actually, crashed the party) at the Queens Naval review in 1884. <Wikipedia Article>

More work done last night - lots of tweaking required (and probably a little more to do) but thanks two key photos I was able to get some satisfactory work done on the mid-beam heavy gun turrets. I'm struggling to find a photo good enough to properly guide the porthole placement but that will be coming after I get the last 4 turrets in. Part of me is toying with the idea of motorizing (is that a word?) of the portholes to open and close - could be done but would need to likely use a flexible carbon fiber rod that could follow the contours of the hull - haven't quite worked it out but I have an idea of how it could be done, just not refined enough. Anyways - included a picture of the "business end" of the Charles Martel along with a shot of the interior components - very motivating! By the way, the small notches near the waterline under the most forward turrets on either side are ports for the torpedoes!

Thanks QWERTY, Im looking into that aerostruder- I’m also going to do some much needed maintenance and inspection on the taz6 this weekend.

Started working on the guns - going well considering I only have photos to work from - still need to work in details on the back of the turrents (hatches) and other stuff, but not alot of great photos out there, some are good but....but I'll take what I can get - it's amazing that there are as many photos as there are considering it was about 120 years ago! Oh by the way, some learning from time spent working on the USS Maine: Hull first, place all the guns and pivot points and gears, put in the motors, mounts, and shafts, servo pockets and battery compartments, and then work out where you can put servo and linkages for the turret tramming! (at least that's my current theory on the sequence)

Well, the Taz I have should be doing better in my opinion - I'm already planning on building a core x/y for the next printer. All in all, considering the boat anchor of a head on the Taz6, it does okay.

Hello All - another photo showing 4 of 9 sections completed. I'm going to switch to a .5mm nozzle and see how that affects the print time and quality. As I've been printing I've noticed issues that I'm going to correct for when I re-slice the hull. When I originally sliced the hull I was somewhat purposefully kind of randomly slicing (so I didn't avoid slicing through portholes for example). Here's some lessons learned thus far: a) I went with an atypical thinner hull wall thickness (5mm) so on really tall hull sections (over 175mm tall) there's some noticeable shrinkage so the hull sections are pulled in towards the center about 1-2mm. It's not bad but I'm probably going to re-slice for sections in the 125mm to 150mm range to minimize this. b). I'm going to put in either 3 or 4 tabs to join sections using thin nut and bolts - this will help accurate with alignment c) I'm going to slice to reduce the need for infill support - basically because some of the surfaces that need to be mated to parts (like the cut-out for the turrents) have edges that need to be properly printed to keep the post labor count low (e.g. as little sanding as possible). d) The piping around the portholes look great, but if the layering on the hull can't be smoothed out with primer and paint and sanding is needed the port holes will get in the way of that - I might have to remove them. I'll know more this weekend when I try painting one of the hull sections. e) PETG might also be a good material to try, I never tried it for something this big but it's a much more stable material and I think it flows just as well if not better than some PLA's so will give that a go at some point and see if I should look harder for a material that gives superior results when it comes to hulls. What I use now works well, but I think there may be something better out there. that's all for now!

I should have an update with another section of the hull tonight. I’ve already come up with some ideas how to make things work better for printing large hulls and look forward to sharing.

Interesting thing with shapeways, I uploaded a section of the hull from the USS Maine, one from the middle - lowest cost to print was over $1000, I guess size does matter above a certain threshold. The Charles Martel hull is 20% wider than the Maine and the USS Brooklyn is even longer than the Martel.

To Joe and CDW, I think what got me interested 3D printing boats was that I didn’t have a lot of time, tools, or experience building boats. So learning the software seemed like the best path forward and I could also afford to make mistakes because I could correct them in the software, or I could identify them more easily at least. The other thing is that designing the the boats in software would allow me to do is release the designs into the public domain when I no longer have use for them, which in the end kinda good for everyone who wants to print a boat like the ones I work on.

Hi CDW - it's free also for hobby enthusiasts too - "For startups generating <$100k/year in total revenue or wholly non-commercial users:" here's the link: how to activate startup or educational licensing And if you have a EAA membership you can get solidworks 2006 I think. I have solidworks through that program also but really haven't delved into it yet. Fusion 360 has alot of info online and via youtube but basically no books - Solidworks is the other way around - it has lots and lots of books on how to you. I got enough use out of fusion 360 that I'm paying the $40 a month which gets me a reliable uptime for the server.

Sharing some more on the Charles Martel Build - I worked a little on the forward outward turrets and their mounting/rotation axels - I haven't quite got it right as I have yet to find a clear photo that is 90° to the side. I decided to take a break and sketch up a cradle from the boat that I can lay it in while i work on it as it's no fun working on a hull on the ground - tends to not stay still.

Short update - just some pictures of 3 of the 9 hull sections laid on top of each other (with a mug of coffee for perspective).