NavyShooter

The performance curve on the boat is such that it is now able to practically go on plane...so I went into the settings on my controller (Radiomaster TX16S) and changed the throttle set points to +50% and -40%. This still has lots of power, but keeping her under 50% means that she's not going to look too crazy when sailing about the lake! Something that isn't clear from these pictures is how easy it is to get access to the inside of the hull - all of the cargo hatches come off, and so does the entire superstructure. I'll have to snap a photo with them open to show the access - really a great design by Mr. Buttery (the guy who uploaded the project to Thingiverse) and that put me into thinking about what else I can do with the ship.... Living on a lake, my wife has friends over during the summer, and they go 'floating' on their inflatables...this usually results in them calling ashore to me, or one of our 'minions' (kids) to get some additional 'recreational beverages' delivered to them as they float around the lake. So...I decided that there might be a practical use for this ship in the real world, and so I spent a few minutes with the 3D model software I use, and fabbed up a design for a replacement hatch cover. I printed one, and trialed it yesterday. Success! Based on the interior layout of the ship, I can transport 3 'recreational beverages' at a time safely. Two forward, and one just behind the superstructure. (There are 4 large cargo hatches, alas, the stern one is right over top of the rudder servo, and so it prevents putting the can in 'deep' so I'm only going to make 3 of these replacement hatch covers.) I'm going to save this as a surprise for my lovely wife and her friends...I'm sure there will be a giggle or two. The other husbands will enjoy this as well - we're all current of or former RCN sailors as well. Hope you've enjoyed this build thread....now it's a matter of enjoying the ship! Note - from start to finish, I began printing this boat in about February, and I consider the ship essentially complete now. The only thing remaining is to choose a name, and add some decals with waterline and balance markings. My problem is choosing a name among about 2500 Liberty Ship names....if anyone has a suggestion for one that has relevance to Canada, or the the Canadian Navy, I'd welcome your input! Thanks for reading! NavyShooter

The good news - she handled about as I was expecting - slow to turn, slow in speed, and underpowered. I'd gone with a 380 size motor with the specific aim of having the ship appear to be slow...I succeeded in that, but unfortunately, with a 4.5 foot long model that needed over 20 pounds of ballast steel to bring her down in the water, that little 380 motor was not having a good time of it. I did a little 3 minute spin about the cove and checked the hull for water, and the motor for heating...and while there was no water, there was heat. I then sent her out for the video above, and the heat...almost became flame. I ended up melting the 3d printed motor mount, and the motor bearings...and let the magic smoke out of it. Another 2-3 minutes of running and I'd have been printing new modules and taking the hull to the table-saw to cut off the aft end. So, not quite back to the drawing board, but obviously some work to be done still. I bought a 540 size motor and fabbed up a sheet metal mount for it which has been epoxied into the hull, and while I was at it, I installed the new prop I got from the Prop Shop in the UK - a more scale/period 4 blade prop instead of the 3 blade I had hanging around. You cannot tell the difference externally in a photo, but the performance difference between the 380 and the 540 motor is like night and day.

Here is a short video of her taken a few minutes after the above pictures:

In the end, the ship was ready for her sea trials. Here she is:

With the running gear in place, I shifted focus to the paint, finish, and details. In the pictures above, you can see the red hull and gray uppers with the black boot topping having been sanded away - well, it turned out that some of the gelcoat didn't harden properly, so I ended up having to sand all that back down, re-apply, re-seal, repaint because the paint was bubbling on me. Grrr. To the good, once that was done, I was able to get the superstructure assembled and painted, and add details for the guns/lockers/ladders that I added:

Once the gelcoat had been sanded, re-applied, and then painted, I moved on to the rudder system and prop shaft. Getting the running gear running so to speak. The design has a 3d printed rudder - and maybe that'd work for someone else, but when I looked at it, I said 'nope' and simply used it as a template to build a solid brass rudder. I recognized that if I'd used the 3d printed rudder, it would have had to have been glued to the rudder post, which would have limited the ability to swap out props and access to the shaft as well. So, here's the rudder design and implementation, including the brass support tubes that I installed.

With the hull structure assembled, I moved on to the outside of the hull. I know that PLA is not likely to be water proof, so I added a layer of gelcoat, and on the strut for the rudder, I added a couple of layers of cloth as well to give some reinforcement and strength.

I decided I wanted to get mine going, and so, I started assembly. The hull modules come with alignment pegs, and are supposed to be simply glued together. I decided that due to the size of mine - it's almost 4.5 feet long - I wanted to add some additional strength, so I looked at the slots in the bottom of the hull frames, cut some wood on the table saw, and inserted them into the holes, giving some additional strength along the keel of the ship. No idea if it's necessary or not, but it made me feel better to have it added.

Once I had the printing complete, I delivered the 1/88 model to my friend, and he has started (slowly) to progress it, and sent me this picture of the ship in place on his railway setup (HO scale): As you can see, it's a work in progress for my buddy!

Here are the printers working together: And here is the stern segment of one of the ships complete and on the printer. It prints the hull in about 13 sections:

Good morning all, This is my first post in here - my account has just been approved, so I'm going to try and start off with something I've just finished...and we'll see how this works. Long story long - (as this always is with me) I was asked by a friend if I could help make him a 3D printed ship to go with his railway layout. So, we bantered back and forth about that, and he settled upon wanting a Liberty Ship. There being a set of free plans for it available on thingiverse, I downloaded, scaled, and started printing. Liberty Ship (RC) - Revision 5 by JohnButtery - Thingiverse Thing is, I had just bought a second 3D printer (a Prusa) that let me scale it to 1/88 because it had a slightly larger build plate than my older printer...so I built my friend's on the prusa, and while it was spitting out parts, I set my older printer to knocking together a 1/96 scale version (that would fit on its build plate) and so, for basically about 3 weeks, my printers were running continuously popping out parts. Here's a 'partially done' picture: And here are the two hulls complete: As you can see in the lower photo, I also assembled and collected some hardware/running gear. The original 3D model was fairly basic, and was scaled to about 1/160, so some of the 'detail' bits were lacking when scaled up a bit. My buddy is a former RCN Weapons Tech (he fixed the 76mm OTO Meleras on our destroyers) so I spent some time modifying, then creating entirely new detailed guns and other bits to improve the models. I uploaded most of those extra bits to Thingiverse, and here is the list of all the models that are available associated to this in case anyone wants to print one of these 'kits' as well: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4411101 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5259865 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5259056 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5274078 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5258022 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5259571 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5274077 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5259970 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5334214