USS New Jersey Engine Room #3 Model for Permanent Display Onboard Ship

[mmarcovitch]

After my Cat Scan, I actually got some shop work accomplished. I first intalled one of the perfectly formed entry hatches into a 0.020" piece of styrene that would serve as the entry hall floor, to figure out how to successfully cut the curves. I also needed to figure out just how it was going to install. I also cut away a chunk of I-beam to clear the counterbalance spring. It worked out well, so I traced the piece onto a heavier piece of 0.030". After drilling out the round corners with a drill sharpened with a plastic cutting angle, and getting the hatch to fit nicely, I glued the plastic flooring onto the frame and held it down with some heavy angle blocks till it cured. I then glued in the hatch with the same reinforced medium viscosity CA. The frame will be painted white and the flooring linoleum brown.

There are couple of spots around the perimeter that could use some minor filler.

In this image I’m holding it up where is attaches to the rear bulkhead. The left outer corner is resting on the cross-braces of the large center support column. With all the added stiffness, the flooring will work just fine.

The remaining steam pipes also printed perfectly. One was a replacement for a previous failure, the other was forgotten.

[mmarcovitch]

For my US Based readers, Happy Memorial Day.

On this day, I am declaring the drawing phase of the project complete. I added the lube oil settling tank and the bilge receivers at the hold floor’s corners. All that’s left is painting everyting and building the model. Now the fun really begins.

I had an idea that using some of SketchUp’s features to make an animated walk through of the entire entire room. It would take quite a while to produce, but might be worth it for folks who can’t ever visit it in the flesh.

Work on this project got underway in August 2024 and there’s still many months to go until it gets delivered.

Before looking at the overall images, here’s a view of the telephone booth. It’s a semi-soundabsorbing space that permits communication by phone is what-must-be a horrendously noisey environment. This was drawn with the last images Ryan sent to me on Thursday.

I also added the Lube Oil Settling Tank. It doesn’t block views and I adapted a mounting so it will “hang” on the subframe.

The first five images are overall views:

This view shows the port-side wall. It’s the only wall where there’s not much going on and could be backed up to a wall without blocking viewers from seeing the model. The lowest level under the lower mezzanine deck is basically bare in the #3 engine room. This is not the case in rooms #2 & #4. Those rooms contain the degausing magnet generators so other apparatus is in that space. More reason why that wall is okay to butt up against a wall.

This next group are more closeups of areas of interest:

Lastly, here’s a few you see when you’re descending the entry ladder.

Now onto Phase 2… Painting.

[TDahl]

So many wonderful bits and pieces!

[mmarcovitch]

Oh yes!

I really wish I had a majorly powerful graphics workstation! The model is getting so big that many of the normal ops take a long time to perform (if it doesn’t crash in the process). And to make matters worse, I’m thinking about making an animated walk through, but it’s so clunky that it may be impossible to do it. I reviewed some videos on making walk throughs and think I can pull it off, but my equipment may not.

I had to do just a couple more punchlist items to complete the printing requirement. I’ve decided to sit the entire model on simulated concrete blocks a la the ship as it appeared in dry dock. To that end, Ryan sent me the actual dry docking plan showing the placement of all 292 blocks. The blocks are basically cubes 4 feet on a side and place on 8 foot centers longitudinally and five rows athwartship.

In the 1:1 ship, the blocks are kind of rough with varying thickness of shim materials on top to addjust for minor variations.

In my 1:48 world, the blocks are going to be all the same. They are NOT the focal point and shouldn’t attract too much attention. I noticed that I put too many lifting holes in my blocks. I haven’t printed them yet and can fix them before do.

The re-designed central column is much more rigid and will serve as a better mounting point for the entry hall floor assembly. I ribbed the lower and upper angle plates and that did the trick. I also tapered the bottom fins that run athwartship so they nestle down onto the floor angle peak.

I added lighting under this piece since the catwalk below will be in some shadow. Because the underframe is bare metal, I could not apply the copper foil directly or it would be an immediate short circuit. Instead, I attached some thin ply to the metal using 3M permanent Transfer Tape and then did the circuit work on that. I provided access to the hollow central column to bring those wires down more elegantly.

I also prepared and started applying the 4mm brass tubes that will substitute for the solid resin ones. This serves two purposes; they are dead straight and not warped like some of the resin columns, and one of them serves as the wiring conduit. The lead wires are captivated by my “Bondic Liquid Cable Clamp” method. For small gauge wirng it works great.

The twin mezzanine decks are a bit more complicated since in addition to getting the overall length correct, I have to determine the inter-deck spacing. I’m holding the tubes in place with reinforced CA. I used my plan to determine the overall length.

But the inter-deck spacing will be set with the electrical cabinets height. The deck height is about a half foot or so above the cabinet height. I will shim the cabinets and use them as the spacer.

Both mezzanine decks are floored with linoleum and in the model with 0.020" sheet styrene held with CA. I glued the columns into the upper mezzanine, but I will wait to do the full assembly until later. The brass columns lack the little angle details I included on the resin prints. If I was more insane than I am, I could have cut some brass pieces and soldered them in place, BUT… they’re underneath and only kids will see them in normal viewing. I have nothing against kids, but it would be a lot of work for very little return.

Lastly, I got good prints of the last parts including the escape trunk, telephone booth and lube oil settling tank. And yes… there is a complete ladder inside the trunk. The printer printed it perfectly with only a few easily removed supports. The trunk DOES make that hitch, but I’m not sure why, but it was clearly noted on the plans. I have to cut out part of the mezzanine decks to accommadate the trunk. It still impresses me that I can draw and print parts with open doors will all the hinge and latch details.

What’s left to print? The keel blocks. On the printer and draining are some last minute additions including bilge receivers, and the support frame for the main air ejector which I forgot to print with the main part.

[mmarcovitch]

Here’s the tele booth print. One of the cables broke on the back wall. Fix it? I think not.

And here’s a view of the cleaned up escape trunk. You can see the ladder inside… barely.

And I decided that folks needed to get a better view of the 13 foot bull gear in the main reduction gear, so I marked out and did some surgery. I first hacked into it with a 1/16" carbide routing bit followed up with a small Dremel sanding drum. The end result is what I was looking for and it’s going to be very visible looking from the aft end.

The first batch of hull blocks are done and hanging on the printer in the draining position. When I first drew them on the master drawing, I had them at 8 foot centers in both the X and Y directions. After I checked Ryan’s drawing I realized that only the fore and aft spacing is at that distance. Athrwartships is almost three times as wide. So instead of needing 40 of them, I only need 25. I’m printing them 13 up on the platen so two runs will do the job. You set up a single part on the slicer and then using the COPY function in ChiTuBox

I did an inventory of all the completed parts and found some piping that still needs printing. I’m going to set them so by early next week, no more parts will need to be printed.

[mmarcovitch]

I was working on refining the dimensions of the base and acrylic covers today so my shop time was short. I did accomplish some stuff. First of all, all the printing is done. That said, I may have to print parts that break or more flooring panels. But planned work is finished. In total I consumed about 8kg of resin to print the parts. That’s about $200 worth of just resin. I’m waiting for some more warm days with low wind to do solvent painting outdoors. All of the paint primer is solvent. The color coats are mostly acrylics which I can do in the house.

I decided to print and add the bilge catch basins. There are four of them at the outer corners of the hold floor. When I first cut the floor and glued two of them in with CA, while they were flush with the deck’s edge, they protruded out further down due to the angle of the engine room’s sides. I removed them, cut the slots deeper and re-glued. It works better for me. If I really wanted to do it correctly, I’d redraw the parts with the taper installaed and reprint. It’s not important enough of the detail to do that. Also, there are bilge pumps and piping associated with these, but I have no data on that feature so I’m not inlcuding it.

This was the first attempt:

The new position:

​How they look installed.

I printed 25 hull blocks. Shown here is part of the first tranche. I was able to print 13 at a time. The remainder are draining on the printer.

And the model positioned on them for a test fit. Should work as planned.

I gave my friend Bryant Mitchell, the final measurements for the base. He’s gluing it up this weekend. I may mount the model on the base sooner rather than later to give a nice stable building surface.

I also spent time, but didn’t finish, adding the newly printed piping on the auxiliary air ejectors. It’s a very small pipe system that attaches to BOTH units. This complicates gluing them to the bulkhead to ensure that the piping is nice and straight and isn’t putting stress on the piping. Pictures will come on Monday.

i finalized the graphic for the number key. I’m printing two of them on white glossy photo paper. I’m going to glue them together back-to-back so they can be correctly read from both sides of the model.

See y’all on Monday.

[mmarcovitch]

The weather was perfec today. 80ºF and no wind. I took my compressor outside with the airbrushes and painted the ALLClad Gloss Black Base Coat before painting the bronze metallic top coat on all the seawater handling apparatus. Tomorrow I do the same thing and airbrush the top coat. ALLClad is a hot lacquer paint and I don’t paint that indoors. I’d love to have a spray booth so I don’t have to wait for ideal weather to use solvent-based paints in the shop. I’m finishing up all the things that I can do before painting really gets underway. I have several more metal frame supports to cut and attach before I can paint.

I spent a lot of time hooking up the very tiny piping on the auxiliary air ejectors. These are now finished and ready for paint. Actually, their drums are also bronze colored, but I’ll just spray them without doing the black.

With all the 3D printing done for the engine room, I decided to reprint one of my earliest models: a 1:48 ALCo 251, V16 turbocharged locomotive prime mover. These are also the same engines that are in the emergency generator rooms in the Iowas, and powers the giant crawlers that move rockets at Cape Kennedy Space Port. When I printed it on my original Elegoo Mars Classic, I had to break it into five parts and assemble it after printing. There are tiny details on the model that I drew (fuel lines) that the original prints couldn’t produce with enough integrity to sustain themselves. And the origial ChiTuBox slicer didn’t allow for supports to be connected to other parts of the model, only from the base raft, this meant that to support tiny features that didn’t have support path to the base didn’t get any supports. I could fake it by drawing supports in the design phase.

In this case I tried an experiment in addition to printing the five parts. I set it up to print the entire engine as a single part. At least in the printer the entire engine printed perfectly saving the entire assembly operation. Here’s the whole lot in the draining clamp on the printer.

Here’s a better look at the entire engine.

And if you look closer you can see those tiny fuel lines. They may still not survive the cleaning process, but I’m optimistic. There’s a lot of excess resin all over hiding a lot of the beauty that will be exposed after cleaning.

I’m thinking about opening an Etsy shop sell some of my original designed parts. If I can print the engines in one go it really saves me a lot of time.

Here are two views of the engine that I drew.

After I clean them up tomorrow I’ll share the results. I suspected that this new printing system was so much better than its predecessors that it could do some wonderful work on some of my older designs. This proves it. I have an entire machine shot of tools that I’m going to reprint when I have some spare time and see jhow much better they come out.

[mmarcovitch]

The ALCo 251 printer detail after cleaning remained amazing. I only lost one tiny fuel line after support removal.

Yesterday I painted the bronze colored parts. I took the compressor outside again and first sprayed ALCLAD Pale Burnt Metal and then overcoated that with Titanium Gold.

When I brought it inside I displayed it will all the other parts. All that’s missing on the table are the base blocks.

I then went outside again and rattle-can sprayed Rust-oleum “Camouflage Tan” which is an excellent concrete color. You’re only going to be able to see those on the perimeter, but, of course, I painted all of them.

The newly printed corrected mezzanine was now ready to be permanetly fastened to the upper mezzanine. It’s a critical joint that shouldn’t fail so I added some 1/32" pins to reinforce the joint.

With the catwalk in place, I sprayed the underside with Tamiya White Primer since it would hare to reach after the lower mezzanine was installed. I then installed the lower. I used the electrical cabinets with a piece of corrugated cardboard to space the two and then use thin CA in the joints from below to lock the columns in place.

This subassebly is ready for railings install, grating, and the equipment installation. It will be placed on the model as a complete subassebly. I’m doing an exploded drawing of the entire project to determine what can be assembled off the model and what can’t. I spent a few hours today doing final design on the remaining walkways and devising how they’re going to be supported in the model. I know that my method is not prototypical. I believe the angle iron was run more or less off-the-cuff when the ship was built. There aren’t many details about. The drawings I have show some verticals here and there, but mostly concentrate on the platform locations and heights. That sort of how I’m approaching it.

[CaseyG]

It is always such a good day when I see this thread gets an update! Your dedication to the art of SketchUp, 3D printing and scale model building is awesome. The parts you create are always so clean looking once you paint them I sometimes forget they were printed and not machined from metal. It makes me want more time in the day so I could start building models again. I miss doing that.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your progress with us. It always is a high point of my day to see it. I look forward to your next post.

[mmarcovitch]

Casey, it’s a good day for me when I get nice notes from folks like you!

I exploded the master drawing into logical sub-assemblies that I believe can be (mostly) built off the model.

Building it as sub-assemblies should streamline the assembly process a bit. Some of the walkways will have to wait until near the end for installation.

What’s on the printer now are some reprints and new support systems for walkways. One is visible wrapping around the LP turbine on the above image. I think I have all the platforms finally designed.

Have a nice weekend

[mmarcovitch]

Dear Followers, I have a non-engine room question. I’m trying to download a VRay HDRI dome light. It downloads, but I can’t find it and don’t know where it goes. When I download a VRay material it ends up in Materials List for the model, but these downloads aren’t showing up anywhere. I’ve attempted a search, but am not even sure what to call them. Any ideas? or is there another forum thread that would have the answer. I did a forum search, but the questions weren’t germane.

[mmarcovitch]

I’m reprinting some of the catwalk supports. They were wrong and too weak. Oh well.

And I attacked the electrical control panel to put in the tiny LED lights. I gave up on fishing the wires through the hole and down into the part. Instead, I just opened up the backs which made the wiring much easier. I found out that I could use a small carbide drill as a router (by accident). I didn’t know how deep the wall was and actually cut through to the other side in two places. I had the option of reprinting or repairing. I chose to repair.

I thought about reattaching the cutout pieces, but it prroved impossibe.

The wires are shown down to the bottom.

I filled the damaged areas with Bondic. Shaping it after application was tricky, but might work okay.

The wires were soldered together when cleaning, so only two leads are connected to the power them. I tested the lights.

I then paved the top and light shields with Bare Metal Gold Foil. It’s a great light block. I tested again.

To close the back holes I used 0.020" sheet styrene held with CA. I filled any seams with Tamiya Filler.

When light testing, you can see light seeping thouugh the styrene, but paint will block this bit.

The last thing I did was spray some Tamiya Dessert Sand.

After detail painting this should look pretty cool!

I also re-drew the fore catwalk frames. Besides being a bit weak, they were also wrong. They’re printing now and will be done in a couple of hours.

This afternoon I’m a guest presenter for a group of Middle and High School kids who are on the autism spectrum. Trimble Corp, the owner of SketchUp, has found that kids on the spectrum learn better visually and like SketchUp. They have a formal reachout program called Project Spectrum, and I am participating in today’s session.

[TheOnlyAaron]

Man… you are really showing me just how underused my 3D printer is!! I gott make me some finer detail models to print!!

[mmarcovitch]

There are certainly a lot of sources foe both STLs and Ready-to-Print objects. That said, the real value is to create stuff that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

Apparently, my presentation was a hit with the kids. I set up lighting to give it a more professional look and posed myself in front of the train layout. The kids appreciated that and that I spent the time to put an actual presentation together about the power of SketchUp and what’s possible… at any age. The setup worked so well I might be able to use it do a podcast or two… hmmm.

This was the test image. I have these very bright LED lights with magnetic bases that I attached to the I-beam that’s traverses the room in front of the layout. I didn’t need them at full power.

It was a nice day so I got more outdoor painting done. I rattle-can paint all the below the floor foundations Tamiya Dark Red. It’s also a great water line color for US ships. I painted this group first, and when I got back in the shop realized that I missed a few parts so I went back out and painted some more. I then took the big gray parts and spayed them with Tamiya Regular Gray Primer.

​This paint dries very quickly and I was able to place a whole bunch of stuff onto the base

The re-designed front catwalk support is much better. In addition to actually fitting correctly, I thickened all the angle “iron” shapes to they had some strength. I made an error attempting to use near-scale cross-sections. The resin is just not strong enough in small cross-sections. The part is now very stable. With see-through grating it will look fantastic. Those angle braces would not be needed in the real world since the front edge would be welded to the bulkhead. There’s only a hint of bulkhead on the model.

With the prime and foundation painting done, I can now settle down and paint the parts in the shop. My Albuqueque friend has finished gluing the base board together and doing the sanding operaton. He’ll have it done in a week or so. This project is starting to accelerate, and I’m getting excited by it.

[liamk887]

You dont do things by halves, love coming back to check on this project!

[mmarcovitch]

My wife and I have an ongoing differing opinion about just what you’re referring to. I insist I am “passionate” while she contends that I’m “obsessed”. It’s all how you look at it. If you’re going to build a model for your own shelves that’s one level of intensity. You can go all out or not, who cares… but when you’re putting something in a museum that’s going to exist long after you’re gone, that’s a whole different ball game. Not only does the model have to have a certain character, but it must be assembled so it can hold together since it may not be readily fixable. About the latter I am always concerned. I always worry about things held together with cyanoacrylate glues. They’re brittle and tend to hold to things that aren’t important and let go on things that are. It’s why the big stuff is going to be glued to the base with epoxy.

[tweenulzeven]

@mmarcovitch

I insist I am “passionate” while she contends that I’m “obsessed”.

Very recognizable for a perfectionist. Also applicable for OCD and some on the spectrum..

Keep up the good work, I love it!

[mmarcovitch]

Not OCD, but I’m clearly a bit ADHD. In fact, had people known what that was in the 1950s when I was in elementary school, my earlier life would have been a lot less stressful.

Started doing some fun painting today. I got the electric deck upper painted. I’m reprinting the lower deck’s equipment. I kept dropping the darn thing and have been breaking off all those cute little knobs. I was happy with the painting either. But the electrical console looks decent. The actual panel has black gauge faces with tiny white needles. It wouldn’t show up.

Here they are placed for the pic. They won’t be glued in place until the entire asseembly can be correctly positioned.

Painting will continue tomorrow.

[mmarcovitch]

I spent the whole session today preparing paint and masking… A couple of hours of masking. Most of the next painting will be by airbrush. I decanted the remains of the Tamiya Dark into a bottle for later use. Some of the apparatus is sitting on foundations that I sprayed with this before, but there will be a couple of pieces where that hasn’t been done and I need it for touchup work. I chose Mission Models Dark Ghost Gray as the machine color. It needs to be prepared using about 10% of their thinner and about the same amount of some binder such as floor wax with Future. Mission sells the polymer, but it’s a bit pricey. The fellows in my model club said that Future works the same even though Mission specifically says it doesn’t.

Some of the to-be-painted areas will be white, but most will be machine gray. The exception is the inner parts of the turbine housing which will be bare steel on the inside and white on the outside. Some of the elbows on the big water inlet piping is painted blue on the ship and I’m going to do that the same. The masking took so long that painting will have to take place tomorrow.

[mmarcovitch]

While masking took hours, painting took hardly any time at all. With the air brush it made quick work of laying down the dark ghost grey. It took some time to demask and then I spent time touching up areas that we a bit thin with a brush. There are a lot of parts left that need to be painted white (all the piping) and the swiss cheese bulkheads. Before I can paint, I need to add some more I-beam reinforcement to the area on the inner side of the tall bulkhead part that supporst the bulkhead end of the entry deck since that needs to be glued to nascent styrene and therefore, can’t paint it yet. I love how stuff looks when the tape is pulled off. There was a small area where the Scotch Blue Tape pulled off some of the metallic bronze. I’ll touch that up. Meanwhile, I reprinted the lower Mezz electrical cabinets. I didn’t like how the other ones looked and all those beautiful little knob details were breaking off. The new prints are, so far, parfect.

The valve assembly between the two lube pumps needs to be painted red, the valve wheels yellow, and the box behind them is red with a black and yellow striped upper surface. All of that will be done during the next sessions. All painting will be done next week. The week after we’re taking a Philly trip, but the model won’t be ready for delivery. It will be done by the end of the summer and delivery will be sometime in the Fall.

One area is still not finalized as to how I’m going to build it; the lower-level floor system that’s paved with diamond plate. I printed a bunch of angle-iron frames to support the plates, but installing them individually is a problem waiting to happen. I plan on installing things with epoxy, and epoxying dozens of these frames seems troublesome in working around al the equipment foundations. I woke this morning thinking that I could pre-glue the frames onto thin styrene sheet and get them all ship shape, and THEN install these little sub-assemblies into the ship. I would pre-measure all the styrene sheets fitting them around all the stuff. It could give me more control with these fragile parts. BTW: all of this is painted foundation red.