Flower-Class Corvette by king derelict - FINISHED - Bensworx Virtual Kit - 1/48 - a log for the less gifted

[yvesvidal]

23 minutes ago, king derelict said:

Completing the hull prints feels like a major milestone has been achieved.

Thanks for checking in

Alan

 

Absolutely. All the other parts will be a piece of cake in comparison. I am looking forward to seeing your new hull develop....

 

Yves

[CDW]

I sure am proud to see how you hung in there and worked out the little details, Alan. It takes patience to arrive at a desired outcome and you did it! Not a simple task by any means. I still believe my next foray into 3D printing will include an upgrade with an automated leveling system.

Edited August 18, 2021 by CDW

[lmagna]

Congratulations Alan, Now you get to have the pleasure of joining up the hull sections and see what you worked so hard for. Hang onto those parts that didn't print out properly. Like Haze Gray said they can be used to practice finishing techniques and painting on. 

[Nirvana]

Alan, 

I have exactly the same machine, well still in box.

What I heard from an Ender forum it's essential to get everything "plumbed" leveled correctly.

Make sure you set the speed slightly slower than the slicer suggests, you will get a very smooth surface that way.
Here is a link with help to get smooth surface.

I bought mine directly from the manufacturers warehouse in CA.
At the same time I got an extra glass bed and the "yellow/gold" springs.

There are a silicon type of support instead of spring that many are vouching for.

Another upgrade you should consider is a "silent" motherboard for the machine this will eliminate a lot of sound from the motors. 

In the mail today I am receiving LANMU Micro SD to SD Card Extension Cable Adapter Flexible Extender Compatible with Ender 3 Pro/Ender 3/Ender 5/Monoprice Mini 3D Printer/Anet A8 3D Printer/Raspberry Pi/GPS/TV (23.6in/60cm) 

 

Looking forward to see the hull pieces coming together.
As mentioned before Haze Gray (a good friend of mine by the) printed the ship I have in my garage and he added a detail to make sure the hull pieces lined up perfectly.

Something to consider for your next ship.

See attached:

[lmagna]

Which of Haze Gray's ships were you able to get Per? I felt very privileged to get his FANTASTIC Olympia. I was going to make it static, but lately I think I have changed my mind and will go RC with it.

[gjdale]

Congratulations Alan! Very glad to see that your perseverance has paid off so well.

[king derelict]

8 hours ago, yvesvidal said:

 

Absolutely. All the other parts will be a piece of cake in comparison. I am looking forward to seeing your new hull develop....

 

Yves

Thanks Yves. I'm very grateful for your support through the trials of learning to use the Ender. 

Alan

[king derelict]

5 hours ago, CDW said:

I sure am proud to see how you hung in there and worked out the little details, Alan. It takes patience to arrive at a desired outcome and you did it! Not a simple task by any means. I still believe my next foray into 3D printing will include an upgrade with an automated leveling system.

Thanks Craig. I think I might have given up but getting support from the people on this forum helped keep my morale up and give it my best shot. I think those hull prints are a work out for the machine. This sections and close to the edges of teh bed. I'm printing a 6 x 4 lithophane box as a bit of a change of speed and it is printing nicely with no supervision. I am looking at upgrades for the Ender and was wondering about their auto leveling system, I need to read some reviews

Thanks for the help and advice

Alan

[king derelict]

2 hours ago, Nirvana said:

Alan, 

I have exactly the same machine, well still in box.

What I heard from an Ender forum it's essential to get everything "plumbed" leveled correctly.

Make sure you set the speed slightly slower than the slicer suggests, you will get a very smooth surface that way.
Here is a link with help to get smooth surface.

I bought mine directly from the manufacturers warehouse in CA.
At the same time I got an extra glass bed and the "yellow/gold" springs.

There are a silicon type of support instead of spring that many are vouching for.

Another upgrade you should consider is a "silent" motherboard for the machine this will eliminate a lot of sound from the motors. 

In the mail today I am receiving LANMU Micro SD to SD Card Extension Cable Adapter Flexible Extender Compatible with Ender 3 Pro/Ender 3/Ender 5/Monoprice Mini 3D Printer/Anet A8 3D Printer/Raspberry Pi/GPS/TV (23.6in/60cm) 

 

Looking forward to see the hull pieces coming together.
As mentioned before Haze Gray (a good friend of mine by the) printed the ship I have in my garage and he added a detail to make sure the hull pieces lined up perfectly.

Something to consider for your next ship.

See attached:

Thanks Per

I think I have been learning the hard way that the levelling is crucial, very sensitive and for me took quite a while to evolve a methodology that suited me and was repeatable.

I am looking at tinkering with the print speeds. I have been slowing down the initial layers to improve bed adhesion but I plan to look at the effect of lower speeds throughout the print on the smaller parts where experimentation isn't going to lead to huge investments in time. Thanks for the link; there are some really good tips in it.

My colleague has the bushings under the bed instead of the upgraded springs and he is happy with them. The manufacturer supplied springs are well worth replacing regardless. I think the gold springs has made the level setting much more repeatable for me.

The alignment features look like a good idea to ensure a straight hull. Those Haze Grey ships are beautiful

Alan

[king derelict]

1 hour ago, gjdale said:

Congratulations Alan! Very glad to see that your perseverance has paid off so well.

Thank you Grant

I was beginning to think I was in the wrong part of the hobby for a while.

Alan

[Haze Gray]

3 hours ago, king derelict said:

......I am looking at upgrades for the Ender and was wondering about their auto leveling system, I need to read some reviews

Thanks for the help and advice

Alan

Hi Alan, I think this would be a good thing to consider - it uses a BL Touch probe which is what I use and it is reliable.  It can be used to do two things:  a) probe the corners of the bed to help you level the build plate  b) "bed compensation" for the contours of the bed if it's not completly flat - or,  if it's not truly level it will adjust the z-axis movement up or down to keep the distance of the nozzle from the bed uniform across the print. 

Technically  'bed leveling' involves the printer making adjustments automatically based on the probe measurements but I have one printer that does bed compensation and another that does automatic bed-leveling and they both work just fine.

 

lastly, occasionally when a print of my has failed I've broken a few of the plastic probe needles but you can buy replacements for them (instead of buying a whole new probe unit) 
- I bought a total of 4 BL-touch probes before I figured that out I could just by the probe needle and replace it %$&#^&$)%*!!!!!!

Edited August 19, 2021 by Haze Gray

[king derelict]

21 hours ago, Haze Gray said:

Hi Alan, I think this would be a good thing to consider - it uses a BL Touch probe which is what I use and it is reliable.  It can be used to do two things:  a) probe the corners of the bed to help you level the build plate  b) "bed compensation" for the contours of the bed if it's not completly flat - or,  if it's not truly level it will adjust the z-axis movement up or down to keep the distance of the nozzle from the bed uniform across the print. 

Technically  'bed leveling' involves the printer making adjustments automatically based on the probe measurements but I have one printer that does bed compensation and another that does automatic bed-leveling and they both work just fine.

 

lastly, occasionally when a print of my has failed I've broken a few of the plastic probe needles but you can buy replacements for them (instead of buying a whole new probe unit) 
- I bought a total of 4 BL-touch probes before I figured that out I could just by the probe needle and replace it %$&#^&$)%*!!!!!!

Thank you for the comments about the value of an auto levelling system. I think that levelling is at the core of the problems I have (and still do at a lesser rate) experienced. The Creality auto levelling kit doesn't seem too expensive and their video makes it look easy to install so I think I will give it a try.

Thanks again for the input. This is still all a bit of a black art to me.

Alan

[Old Collingwood]

Really looking forward to your next instalments on this build Alan  -  great news with the completion of the sections.

 

OC.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Old Collingwood

[king derelict]

33 minutes ago, Old Collingwood said:

Really looking forward to your next instalments on this build Alan  -  great news with the comletion of the sections.

 

OC.

Thank you for the encouragement OC. My plan is to finish the Geisenau which is suddenly looking like the end is coming. Lots of details still but I think I may have it completed in a week or so. As a change in scale I will work on the corvette hull see how that comes together and finally make up my mind about whether to make the corvette a RC kit. Then print the next stage while returning to the world of 1/700 for a bit. Lots of fun

Alan

 

 

[king derelict]

Well. it was time to blow the dust off this build now that the Geisenau is safely in a display case.

I trimmed the brims off the hull sections and hull connectors, at this point concentrating on the inside faces of the hull and the outer surfaces of the connectors to get best fit of the hull sections. The connectors are a tight fit in the bow and stern so any imperfections need to be shaved off. This PLA plastic is evil to work with. It is very hard to sand or cut with a knife. The brims actually were easier to remove by peeling the majority off by hand and then scraping the remaining lip down and finally sanding. I only did a rough job on the exterior surfaces because I want to try to get the interface between the two sections as good as possible. 

Now that I am working on the hull sections I can see the imperfections in the printing.

The rib has printed with gaps on one section and the port hole brow is distorted in the same piece

On another section the port holes themselves are only partly printed and the weld lines are missing in places

There is generally quite a lot of plastic fluff on teh exterior surface details which I have been gentlt sanding off

The ledge that engages with the hull connectors and I assume sets the decks printed with gaps and detached from the hull on completion of the print

Looking at Yves hull, it looks a lot neater. Its interesting that the same machine using the same settings and the same filament printing the same files can produce differing results. The lack of repeatability is something I am still trying to come to terms with and improve on.

I removed the support from the rudder well by running a drill down the support and the torque was sufficient to tear the support cleanly out of the shaft. That's a tools you don't often see on the work bench in 1/700 land

I glued the connectors into the relevant hull sections after carefully dry fitting and checking that I had the hull sections all oriented correctly and the hull connectors also the right way round.

I marked them all before separating them to glue. The MEK solvent rather scared me, not helped by reading the MSDS sheet for it. My work area is not easy to ventilate as much as I think would be necessary. I decided to use 5 minute two part epoxy, mixing a fresh small batch for each connector. It seems to be holding well so far although I don't like epoxy glue too much. I find it difficult to use neatly and having been born with the messy gene i seem to transfer sticky patches everywhere, usually the unmixed resin so it doesn't even set and remains sticky forever. I swabbed the work surface off with alcohol at the end of the session.

 Most of the hull has been assembled. The sections went together well with little gap between sections and generally looking like a clean up of the interfaces and some light filling will produce a good hull. The connectors seem to have worked well it setting the sections in position to give a straight hull.

The captain is checking progress and wondering where the stern is

I was so engrossed in Geisenau that I didn't print the deck pieces so they will now be started. 

I'm still undecided about making it an RC model. 

Thanks for looking

Alan

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2021 by king derelict
Corrected photos

[Egilman]

The work you guys have been doing the last few weeks caused me to drop off the edge.... I pulled the trigger on a printer and just received the notice that it's on the way care of 
Fed Ex.....

 

I've been on the edge for several months now from pulling the trigger.... 

 

I hope I'm not racing down another rabbit hole..... {chuckle}

 

Nice work Alan, definitive proof that perseverance pays off....

[Egilman]

And just in case anyone is having doubts if 3D printing isn't the latest and greatest thing... Check this out....

 

3D printing is going life sized....

 

Coming to a neighborhood near you... (eventually)

Edited September 10, 2021 by Egilman

[CDW]

Alan

You are doing much better with your first attempts with a 3D printer than I did. Mine was truly an exercise in frustration with the first printer I bought. 

[CDW]

16 minutes ago, Egilman said:

And just in case anyone is having doubts if 3D printing isn't the latest and greatest thing... Check this out....

 

3D printing is going life sized....

 

Coming to a neighborhood near you... (eventually)

When this type of technology replaces human labor, which probably will happen if things continue on the current trajectory, can you imagine the mischief people are going to get into with so much time on their hands? My old dearly departed uncle used to always say that young men got into too much mischief because they were not working hard enough...had too much energy, too much time on their hands with nothing productive to do. Over time, I can see the wisdom in the things he used to say.

[yvesvidal]

34 minutes ago, Egilman said:

I hope I'm not racing down another rabbit hole..... {chuckle}

 

Yes, you are ....with both feet.

 

Yves

[Egilman]

Amen Craig,

 

When it gets perfected and accepted take a moment to think of how many construction workers it is going to put out of work....

 

And how does one evaluate the values of houses built this way...

 

A much more efficient and cheaper method of building residential and light commercial buildings.....

 

It's going to change the world......

[Egilman]

2 minutes ago, yvesvidal said:

 

Yes, you are ....with both feet.

 

Yves

Ohh Yves,

 

I've already have been second guessing myself..... Lord Mr. Ford, what have I done.... {chuckle}

[yvesvidal]

Alan,

 

This is superb. That hull is looking very good and you should not worry too much about the imperfections. Mine has plenty and once it is sanded, primed and painted, it will only be a bad memory. I think your cat wants to go sailing.....but he needs the stern.

 

RCing that model will add another level of complexity but the kit is truly designed for that purpose. I have a little pond near by, but it is full of frogs, turtles and a blue heron. I do not think I am welcome there and thus my model will be static.

 

To give you an idea, I spent a lot of time sanding that hull. Yes, seam lines are missing but who cares....? I also sprayed two cans of primer on the hull itself, before getting to a decent results. That plastic as you mentioned is really unpleasant to work with and I suppose the goal of this PLA material is to produce finished products. It is not styrene or polystyrene.

 

Yves

[Old Collingwood]

"Beer   -  we could make 3D Beer"

 

Great work mate.

 

OC.

[king derelict]

15 hours ago, Egilman said:

The work you guys have been doing the last few weeks caused me to drop off the edge.... I pulled the trigger on a printer and just received the notice that it's on the way care of 
Fed Ex.....

 

I've been on the edge for several months now from pulling the trigger.... 

 

I hope I'm not racing down another rabbit hole..... {chuckle}

 

Nice work Alan, definitive proof that perseverance pays off....

Thanks Egilman; seeing the hull come together has justified the aggravation of getting the initial prints to work. Good Luck with the new printer. Its a whole new world - or an enormous rabbit hole.

Alan

[king derelict]

15 hours ago, CDW said:

Alan

You are doing much better with your first attempts with a 3D printer than I did. Mine was truly an exercise in frustration with the first printer I bought. 

Thanks Craig

Its still a huge learning experience and the printer continues to throw up surprises. At least the levelling seems to be working out now that I have a routine and upgraded the bed springs.

Alan

[king derelict]

15 hours ago, yvesvidal said:

Alan,

 

This is superb. That hull is looking very good and you should not worry too much about the imperfections. Mine has plenty and once it is sanded, primed and painted, it will only be a bad memory. I think your cat wants to go sailing.....but he needs the stern.

 

RCing that model will add another level of complexity but the kit is truly designed for that purpose. I have a little pond near by, but it is full of frogs, turtles and a blue heron. I do not think I am welcome there and thus my model will be static.

 

To give you an idea, I spent a lot of time sanding that hull. Yes, seam lines are missing but who cares....? I also sprayed two cans of primer on the hull itself, before getting to a decent results. That plastic as you mentioned is really unpleasant to work with and I suppose the goal of this PLA material is to produce finished products. It is not styrene or polystyrene.

 

Yves

Thank you Yves. You have been a huge help getting me to where I am now. I have a small lake behind my house which also has frogs, turtles and also an occasional visiting alligator. So I'm still undecided. I need to price out the RC equipment and see if that influences a decision.

 

I foresee several days of sanding and fairing of the hull to get it tidy. I'm reluctant to use any form of rotary tool sander because of the low melting point of the plastic.

I am going to need some putty for some of the less than perfect joins. I only have the Vallejo plastic putty which my work but I would be grateful if anyone has any better suggestions for filling the thin gaps between a few of the hull sections and a few print gaps.

Thanks

Alan

[king derelict]

14 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

"Beer   -  we could make 3D Beer"

 

Great work mate.

 

OC.

Thanks OC. Putting the hull sections together was an exciting moment.

I do make 3D beer, but so far without squirting it out of the printer. The latest batch of ginger beer has just been bottled.

Alan

[lmagna]

I have not done it myself yet on the 3D USS Olympia I received from Haze Gray, but he has told me that after some sanding with an orbital sander, he likes to apply a thin coat of Gesso, as a filler rather than relying on sanding alone.

https://www.amazon.com/Liquitex-BASICS-Gesso-Surface-Medium/dp/B000KNDMLG/ref=asc_df_B000KNDMLG/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167148482147&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=3973154835594336567&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9060507&hvtargid=pla-162268632052&psc=1

 

I have seen some of his other completed hulls and if a couple of them are any indication it appears to do the job.

 

Nice to see you making some relatively painless progress at last.

 

[yvesvidal]

2 hours ago, king derelict said:

I am going to need some putty for some of the less than perfect joins. I only have the Vallejo plastic putty which my work but I would be grateful if anyone has any better suggestions for filling the thin gaps between a few of the hull sections and a few print gaps.

Thanks

Alan

 

I have used the same Vallejo Acrylic putty with success on my Corvette. Just make sure it dries completely before doing anything to it.

 

Yves