Jump to content
MSW Spring Donation Drive

Kevin-the-lubber

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,070

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Kevin-the-lubber

  1. Kevin-the-lubber
    The main thing I’ve been printing in FDM is a four section 500mm long deck with staggered, interlocking joints using the plank lines to disguise that there’s a joint. As there’s only 0.2mm clearance the elephants foot effect meant I couldn’t do this successfully in resin on the plate. But I have to admit it didn’t occur to me to reduce the cure time for the initial layers so I might try that next time round. I also had another problem that I simply couldn’t figure out; when printing large rectangular sections on supports and tilted, the straight leading edge was not coming out straight, it always had a slight curve to it, regardless how hefty the supports. It’s as though the resin shrinks slightly during the print and gradually pulls the outer edges towards the centre.
  2. Kevin-the-lubber
    I did these a week or so back, just to see if it would go, which it obviously does. The wire is 0.5mm dia, the stems a very generous 1mm or thereabouts. The wire holes closed up during printing but there was enough of an indent to make drilling out easy. I wouldn't want to have to do 500 though! I think I only broke one stanchion head along the way. As you can see I've gone back to FDM for some parts. I'm finding that it is better than resin for larger flat surface parts and comes up well with a little light sanding.
  3. Kevin-the-lubber
    What resins are you using for parts that will be machined, Pat? I guess if the wall thickness is substantial enough you don't run into problems with brittleness. Unfortunately I don't have a hobby lathe/milling machine and although it would certainly solve many problems, I'll leave that until / if I reach a point where it would be more worthwhile. I looked at having the main body of the stern I made for the Victory professionally printed as I was having endless difficulty at this end, but it was too expensive. Eventually I found a way, as you do. Likewise I looked at making the vic stern available via shapeways but I wouldn't have been willing to pay the net price so wouldn't expect anyone else to either. When I go back and finish it off I'll look at another, more affordable way. Phil, one thing I learned on the Vic stern was that resin either shrinks or loses accuracy in the printing. I was losing about 0.5% with elegoo ABS-like. I haven't measured the loss with syratech but think it may be more as I've had a couple of parts that wouldn't fit as intended, but I think Pat's approach - treat as needing machining - is the best solution. I chased my tail a lot on the Vic trying to compensate through scaling but, in the end, adapted the design to work around the issue and am doing the same with the Cutty Sark. I think once you're printing walls/objects down at 0.3mm or so, they'll be fragile whatever resin you use. However if anyone is going to find the work around it'll likely be you, with this methodical approach.
  4. Kevin-the-lubber
    Pat, how expensive have you found MJF? I think you've had hulls made haven't you, if so what would be a ballpark figure for a 1 metre long hull? And getting back to the issue, how smooth and accurate are the contact surfaces in reality?
  5. Kevin-the-lubber
    Phil, I'd recommend both elegoo abs-like and sirayatech fast, each for different purposes. Take a look at my victory log, just skip to page 4 and you'll see the results I've been getting with the abs-like. There are some very thin sections, I think 0.2mm (0.008") is the smallest and I needed a bit of elasticity for which the elegoo is great. I've been using the sirayatech on the cutty sark but haven't posted any detail pictures yet, but I like it because it holds it's shape post-curing much better and is still a bit more elastic than standard resin. I've printed some very thin walled objects, about 0.2 or 0.3mm which are fine so long as I'm ultra careful when detaching supports. The technique I've developed for very delicate pieces is to make the supports longer than normal,10mm minimum, sometimes much more, and snip them off at the base first, as they then tend to come away from the object quite easily. Breakages have tended to occur when there isn't enough length for the support to bend when being cut, thus pushing upwards onto the delicate object. Re' curing, I was doing much the same as you when I was using a nail polish dryer but since buying the big anycubic wash'n'cure I do everything at 2 minutes regardless of size, which seems fine. Occasionally I'll turn the object and do another 2 minutes. I think 10 minutes might be overcooking it. Using medium supports but reducing the tip size is a good idea, I'll remember that. I was test printing railing at 10 thou or thereabouts last week but couldn't get it off the supports without breaking so will use 0.5mm wire instead.
  6. Kevin-the-lubber
    Quick question for you very experienced hands; I’m looking at using double-sided tape to glue the printed deck sections to a backing sheet of styrene. Are there any major pitfalls? Test piece suggests it’ll be just fine and is a better method than CA. I’ll explain the downsides of the CA method later.
  7. Kevin-the-lubber
    It was worth seeing the detail up close and to also get a feel for it’s size. The muntz metal plating on the bottom is beautiful, it accentuates the curves of the hull. All the nicer that you’re sat immediately underneath as that’s the cafe area! The overlaps are very over-stated on the kit, if you were ultra detailing you’d have to draw or lightly etch these, and I’d be slightly tempted to sand back a bit except I’d lose the rivet heads. Even these were interesting; I’ve done more than my share of riveting, having worked on the airbus fuselages, and the style on the Cutty is very similar, flat head and only slightly proud. There are also a few things on the deck that make more sense now. All in all it’s a good ship to visit.
  8. Kevin-the-lubber
    Good R&D Phil, this will be useful to many of us as we progress our own printing journeys. The chain is especially useful for me as I've tried the same previously with the same result as your first attempt, so now know what to try next time. By and large I use factory settings. A while back I tried playing with exposure times, longer and shorter, but didn't achieve much other than getting through several FEP's in short order. But looking at your outcomes I should do some more testing of shorter times as you're getting better results than me wrt holes closing up. I hardly ever use auto-support, in part because anything we're making (us modellers) is almost always quite fine and the placement of supports matters to the finish as well as print success. These days I try to put a few heavy supports on everything, to make sure the object doesn't get pulled off the supports, then pepper the remainder with medium and, if it's a delicate area that doesn't need much support, I'll use light one's. I've been experimenting a little with resins lately. All I've ever used for the last year is Elegoo ABS-like, which gives a great finish and has a fair bit of flex. The downside is that parts can curl over a few days post-curing. So I've tried SirayaTech Fast, and Anycubic standard. I really didn't like the latter, the finish was nowhere near as good as Elegoo, but as I still have almost a litre left I'll give it another go like for like. On the other hand I love the SirayaTech. Excellent finish, a little bit of flex and very little curling. There are lots of others I'd like to try e.g. SirayaTech Blue, but they do start to become expensive when you're looking at pro-grade resins, so I'll save that experimentation for when I rarely need to print an object more than once.
  9. Kevin-the-lubber
    Bill, I’ve only been dipping in myself for the last week or so, I’ve been using up some annual leave allowance to work on the garden, my other hobby. I took a day out to visit the Cutty Sark itself on Wednesday. I need to figure out how to upload photos onto the web for all to find as I mostly took detail shots. Boy but there’s some rigging on that ship, I guess (hope) that the revell guide is a simplified version. Still, that’s a ways down the line yet. Re’ the painting, I just did the same as you, used the Vallejo kit but got a strange result and not at all what I wanted! Nice as it is, I’m going to do it again and hopefully get something a bit less garish.
  10. Kevin-the-lubber
    The stuff I buy is 99.9% pure, or so it says. The inks themselves are suspended in shellac, hence the glossy finish. Googling tells me it’ll dilute fine using IPA, but the water content in rubbing alcohol will cause it to go white. On my test piece the paint was probably still moist when I inked on top, and I guess that’s why (the water content) I got a degree of uniformity and didn’t have that shellac shine I got on the deck itself. So, serendipity and one I’m sure I’d struggle to reliably replicate. But I do now at least know that ink is the perfect medium for the glossy cabins, if I can control the clumping, though I imagine I could get the same effect with paint + ink + lacquer. I’ll be starting another deck today but will exercise more patience this time.
  11. Kevin-the-lubber
    You’re getting some nice results there in freecad. I tinkered with it about 18 months ago for maybe 30 minutes when looking to graduate from Tinkercad but settled on fusion360 as this was also free but looked better. However it has one or two major bugs and I’m wondering how freecad fares in relation; the worst bug is that f360 can hang and fall over when computing complex designs. For instance, if I was to model that schooner all in one file I know for sure I would spend many wasted hours waiting for f360 to resolve the designs. There are ways to mitigate this through using a good design methodology, but I wondered how freecad fares in this respect? I’d more or less shelved FDM for resin until a month ago, where I resurrected it to make the decks for my Cutty Sark. I simply couldn’t get reliable joints in resin, take a look at my build log for more details. I plan to make a hull in the foreseeable future and would certainly look to FDM for this as the parts are much stronger. It’s worth mentioning some upgrades I undertook on my ender 3 pro as they made a huge difference. I mostly gave up on FDM because the rate of print failure was so high. So, I recently bought a sunlu filament dryer and use this from the moment I load a reel of PETG filament. It has made a world of difference, I simply don’t get failures now. I also upgraded to a silent motherboard and silent power supply fan. I now have the machine on my office desk and can have that running even when I’m in meetings and you can barely hear it. I also installed auto bed levelling, not sure what if any difference that makes though.
  12. Kevin-the-lubber
    Thanks, he’s answered my basic question which is that it’s seriously expensive!
  13. Kevin-the-lubber
    I’ll give spraying a go, I have plenty of isopropyl as I use it for cleaning resin prints. I think I’ll use a narrower range of shades/colours on the next go, drop the creams and burned umber, just vary the lighter browns.
  14. Kevin-the-lubber
    Hi Rob. I'm just brushing the on ink liberally, which may not be the best way of doing things. On the test piece I know I inked on top of the basecoat, washed it into the plank lines with a wetted brush, then painted the plank lines, then lightly inked and washed again, then matt varnish. I must have had a large dose of beginners luck because I couldn't have wished for a better end result. I didn't do the washes yesterday, which was definitely a mistake. I expected the ink to blend the paints so didn't worry about being too precise, but as it didn't, it looks pretty poor up close. Having slept on it, while I'm sure I'll use yesterdays method elsewhere (the sides of the cabins, for the varnished hardwood effect), it won't do for the deck and cabin tops, it would be too overwhelming. So I'm re-printing the parts even as we speak. That's the benefit of 3D, all the hard work goes into the design stage and re-printing just takes a bit of time. A question - what makes the ink capilate into the cracks? Is spraying a more reliable method? I'm familiar with capillary action as I use this entirely for growing on seedlings but I can't think why the ink particles would get drawn into the cracks. Side note - I must spend some more time on your Glory log, find the hull plans.
  15. Kevin-the-lubber
    I must make a note of that, shouldn’t be hard to find.
  16. Kevin-the-lubber
    Indeed, that should knock it back a little. The good thing about acrylics, and inks for that matter, is that they’re easy to take off if the result is unpalatable.
  17. Kevin-the-lubber
    That's very tidy Bill, what did you use for the netting?
  18. Kevin-the-lubber
    Well, painting the deck and tops didn't go at all as planned. I'm not really sure what I did differently, suspect when I did the test piece none of the colours had time to dry, it being relatively small, so when I added the ink it kind of softened and blended everything a bit. However, one sure thing is that it doesn't look in the least bit like plastic and I kind of like it. I've experimented a bit with different ink colours today. This has a top coat of windsor and newton sunshine yellow. I also tried brick red, which didn't go well at all.
  19. Kevin-the-lubber
    You're really going for broke on the rigging Bill, this is going to be a fabulous spectacle when it's finished.
  20. Kevin-the-lubber
    Reminds me of a pearl of wisdom shared by one of my senior co-workers years ago, when I worked in precision sheetmetal. I remarked that he always got things right first time, never seemed to have to remake anything. He smiled and said 'the only difference between you and me is I hide my mistakes better'.
  21. Kevin-the-lubber
    Me too. I'm fascinated to see where 3D takes modelling. I kind of wish I was about 30 or 40 years younger, young enough to seek my fortune in this field, because there will be young guns who can do in a day what I can only do in a month. Go on Yves, give us a clue 😁
  22. Kevin-the-lubber
    I really don’t mind being confused with Marc either, I’ll happily take all the credit for his painting, but the mistakes (are there any?) are all his 😀. For what its’ worth, switching to the Cutty is the best thing I’ve done recently. I’m enjoying it a lot, largely I think because it’s a good balance between designing (all 3D for me of course), making and painting, so although all the bits are still in the factory, so to speak, I’m seeing it steadily grow without it ever feeling like doing the same thing day after day. I think if I’d slogged on with the Victory stern for much longer, the frustrations might have seen me call it a day. I’ll go back to it eventually, but just a bit at a time. I suspect I might find the same is true when I reach the rigging stage for the Cutty. I have no experience of this at all, half-dread it, but if so I’ll just start something new and rig bit by bit, as and when. I guess most of us are seeing dementia at close quarters now. My hope is that it’s not a torment for those afflicted, that somehow there is still pleasure in life.
  23. Kevin-the-lubber
    Thanks Rob, it looks like right here is the knowledge base and the build logs are invaluable as well as inspirational. And although I’m sure this was understood anyway, I meant no criticism of Michaels drawings, not least because I haven’t even seen them yet (but have now sourced the book). 3D is a funny old fish. It’s quite enjoyable to see something come to life on the screen but most of the challenge is in finding ways to make that printable and at the quality / detail you want. Which like everything in life becomes a little easier with practice and experience. Anyway, I have some reading to do, and a ship or two to progress before I get carried away on this.
  24. Kevin-the-lubber
    Thanks both. I’ve read about half of this log so far, so have picked up on the interesting discussion about the true profiles. If I was to attempt this as a largely 3D project it would be both long and a labour of love so it would be as well to try to make it as true to the real thing as possible. Is Michael Mjelde‘s drawing a ‘good enough’ representation of the basic hull or a bit of a blind alley? Noting the discussion earlier that the entrance was much more angled? Are there better plans out there? I suppose not, otherwise half this log wouldn’t exist. I doubt I’d start this any time soon by the way.
  25. Kevin-the-lubber
    A use for those 0.5mm wires that come with the Victory. I sense that getting this 'just so' will be fun.

About us

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

SSL Secured

Your security is important for us so this Website is SSL-Secured

NRG Mailing Address

Nautical Research Guild
237 South Lincoln Street
Westmont IL, 60559-1917

Model Ship World ® and the MSW logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,929,264 & No. 6,929,274, registered Dec. 20, 2022)

Helpful Links

About the NRG

If you enjoy building ship models that are historically accurate as well as beautiful, then The Nautical Research Guild (NRG) is just right for you.

The Guild is a non-profit educational organization whose mission is to “Advance Ship Modeling Through Research”. We provide support to our members in their efforts to raise the quality of their model ships.

The Nautical Research Guild has published our world-renowned quarterly magazine, The Nautical Research Journal, since 1955. The pages of the Journal are full of articles by accomplished ship modelers who show you how they create those exquisite details on their models, and by maritime historians who show you the correct details to build. The Journal is available in both print and digital editions. Go to the NRG web site (www.thenrg.org) to download a complimentary digital copy of the Journal. The NRG also publishes plan sets, books and compilations of back issues of the Journal and the former Ships in Scale and Model Ship Builder magazines.

Our Emblem ®

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

Nautical Research Guild ® and the NRG logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,999,236 & No. 6,999,237, registered March 14, 2023)

×
×
  • Create New...