1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Hi guys!

I am getting ready to continue the wood deck, moving to Part 3, but thought I would first reply to your posts Scott and Tom D.
First Scott, as to your question if I “have any idea how it will print out?” the answer is kind of, but not really. The picture below shows the first test piece I had Pavel print for me with different sizes of extrusions and indentions. On the left the arrows points to the raised extruded 0.01” and 0.02” squares. The arrow on the right points to the cut extruded 0.0075” square. Since the battens are 0.02” square and the gaps are 0.008” wide and 0.02” deep, I think it is going to look good. The jury is still out though, and I won’t know for sure until it is printed. In a way the uncertainty is one of the fun things about 3D modeling and printing for me at this stage.



And Tom D, thanks for the pix and comments. I thought that the conning tower fairwater was probably the oldstyle. As I was looking at them, I had a deja vu moment and looked back to March when I first started on the conning tower fairwater, which I originally designed from the plans and the very picture you just sent. However, thinking that it would be easier to build the model as the ship currently is because of all of the pictures I have been sent, I changed it. I’m not sure if I saved the old version or not. If I did, my idea of making at least 2 configurations would be easier. In any case, I’ve pretty much decided to go with making her as she is now, perhaps with the 5”/25 gun aft, just because it looks cool, although I haven’t decided that conclusively yet.

Thanks a lot for the pictures of the gun. If I decide to add it, they will be helpful. I have been considering, if I do add the gun, whether to buy the PE set or make it. The PE set has been sold out for ages, so I may have to make it if I want to include it. We will see.

Now, back to the model…

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Update 101

Good Morning Guys,

Last night I was going to start on the decking for Part 3, but got detoured to some issues I noticed on the Part 2 decking.

First, I forgot to ass the davit hole (?) just aft of the forward hatch on the starboard side. The image below shows the guidelines I prepared to remedy this, including two circles and a rectangle.



I extruded the rectangle…



…And subtracted it.



I next extruded the circle through the deck down into the hull (layer turned off in images).



Next I extruded the small circle down quite a ways…



…And subtracted it from the larger extruded circle.



I should perhaps say that the circles have radii of 0.015” and 0.025” so that the wall thickness is 0.005”. I think this will print, but the collar probably won’t be durable enough to survive the cleaning process. The hole should survive OK though.

The next thing I did was slice a groove perpendicular to the slats for the aft edge of the hatches.



I then added hinges using a rectangle filleted at 0.005”, extruded into the deck.



The resulting solid was copied to the other locations seen in Tom’s pic.



The 4 hinges were then joined to the deck.



I think this is better as it makes the hatches stand out a bit more from the rest of the deck.





The final thing that I changed was the top of the messenger buoy. It looked too naked to me, so I added padeyes sliced from one of the escape hatches, even if they are a bit large.



I also added the round features seen in pictures. I started to add the raised lines seen on the top, but the part is just too small to do effectively.



At this point, I saved the file, then saved it as a new file and joined the deck and tracks to the model. As one of my mentors always says, “I’m a likin’ it!”



CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Hey Guys, I have a couple of questions…

There are 2 items (of which there are many) shown on the deck plans that I don’t know what are or what they were for. Both are seen in the image below. The first item is marked SA and has what appears to be 2 circles on it. The other is labeled “Fitting 10” Stop Valve.” Does anybody know what they are (especially the ones labeled SA)? What are they for? Do you know where I can find a picture of them?

As always, I appreciate your help!

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

I think it stands for salvage air. See the image below and the web sites at maritime.org

http://www.maritime.org/fleetsub/air/chap6.htm#6A

http://www.maritime.org/pamphome.htm

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

8/26/2013
You rock Scott! Thanks!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 102

Good Morning Guys!

I had a long productive night on Batfish doing the wood deck for Part 3.

As I had already copied the tracings of significant objects to the wood deck template, the first thing I did was copy Part 3 to the file.



This was followed by slicing it to match the part…



…Then extruding the wood deck outline through it (I guess I could have done this just once for the whole template, but oh well)…



...And using the Intersect command to create the Part 3 wooden deck.



The image below shows the various items on the deck (some mislocated as it turned out, but more on that later). The salvage air (SA) plates (thanks again Scott) are magenta the toroidal hydrophone is blue, various access hatches are green and the torpedo loading skid is in red (as are the cleat base outlines.



Two of the SA’s are shown below. The bottom one is as traced, the top one was stretched to match the battens.



In the image below, I have copied the top one down, rotated it, and stretched it to match the battens (magenta). The original tracing is cyan.



In the next image (perhaps a little confusing) the cyan outline on top is the magenta outline on the bottom that has been copied and rotated. This outline will be used for all the SA’s on the ship as it will fit with the battens no matter how it is aligned. This is modeler’s license at its finest. )



Next I extruded all of the outlines through the deck…



…And subtracted them.



Next I copied the uncut Part 3 template (which I had copied to the side) over the top of the cut one…



…And subtracted the cut one from the uncut one to make the cutouts in 2 easy steps.



I then separated the items and deleted all but the hatches and torpedo loading skid (I forgot to delete the cleat base outline).



Next, I moved the cutouts back to the wood deck…



…And started detailing the skid and “Hatch No. 1”, first cutting a 0.008” slice out of the forward end of the hatch, and then preparing to add the hinge. The one on the top right was copied from the wildcat access hatch and it was too small, so I made it longer (lower left).



I extruded the long one…



…And copied it to the other side.



Next I copied a handle hole outline, again from the wildcat access hatch to the proper position on the hatch and copied it to the other side. I also cut a 0.008” slot between the skid and hatch and along the angled lines and aft end of the skid…



…Then extruded and subtracted the handle holes.



Next, I added the skid hinge by first extruding a circle…



…Then lowering the circle into the deck until it was just above the surface.



At this point I realized that I had incorrectly located a few items. They were mirror images of where they should have been. The reason for this I think was that I was looking at the drawing from the underside. I discovered this because the frigging letters were bass-ackwards. So I had to redo a lot of what I had just done. In the image below, the outlines for hatches 2 (right) and 3 (left) have been extruded.



Fortunately, I didn’t have to move the remaining hatch, instead I had to mirror it because hatches 4 and 5 are the same. The image below shows everything corrected and the cleat notches removed.



The image below shows the 0.008” wide extrusions along the forward and aft edges of the No. 2 hatch over the battery cell to better define it. Note that I also slightly changed the hinge area of the skid.



The extrusions were subtracted and handle holes were prepared…



…And subtracted from the hatch.



This process was repeated for hatches 3, 4, and 5, and hinges were added to them. On hatches 4 and 5 you can see that my seat of the pants design of the hinge closely matches the tracings from the plans (green).





With the detailing work mostly completed, I copied the whole thing to the part.



As with part 2, the deck had to be rotated for alignment due to the slope of the deck. And as before after the wood deck was aligned with the part deck, I moved it up, then lowered it in small increments into the hull subtracting it as I went. The image below shows the deck cutout without the wooden deck in place. Note that the SA’s and cleat bases are high and dry to the cuts I made in the wood deck.



The image below shows the wood deck in place.



The last image shows it joined to the part.



I should point out that although I have attached the wood deck to the part, I am saving the parts in a separate file prior to joining them. The reason I am doing this is because I am thinking that I might need to make all or part of the deck separate parts to avoid having distinct seam lines where the parts join. More on this later.

CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 103

I wasn’t finished yet…

You may have noticed that I didn’t do anything with the outline for the toroidal hydrophone. That is because I wanted it to be square to the world and not the sloped hull. I don’t know why. I just did. Anyway, I had 2 pictures that I used for this, the post part that I took on Batfish…



…And one Scott sent me.



The image below shows the hydrophone tracings on the model.



I started by moving the circle up and extruding it into the deck.



Since the hydrophone will be a separate part, I made an attachment point for it.



I joined the attachment point to the extruded circle and subtracted them.



Having made the female connection, I next made the male part. The male connector has a diameter that is 95% of the female diameter. The lower part of the post has a diameter 98% of the cutout diameter.



The image below shows the lower part of the post.



I subtracted an extruded circle from the base post leaving 0.005” diameter “walls”. The smaller blue circle in the image below has a radius of 0.005”. It will be used to locate and size the nuts and bolts. The larger blue circle has a radius of 0.02”. It will become the post.



The picture shows there to be 8 bolts, so that’s how many I added.



I’m not sure how tall the post is in real life, but it is about the same height as the fence which I would guess is 2-1/2’ to 3’ tall, probably closer to the latter, so I made mine 3’ tall, or 0.25” on the model.



I didn’t document it very well but I next added a collar, a flange and 10 nuts and bolts, with the bolt heads on top and the nuts on the bottom. There appear to be 12 in the picture, but I tried 12 and it looked to crowded, so I went with 10.



I didn’t document making the business end of the hydrophone either. I get on a roll, and forget to stop to take screen shots. Anyway, I made it with an extruded ellipse, with sliced ellipses of the same size revolved to make the ends.



The image below shows the part removed from the model.





Lest we forget what size we are talking about, here’s the hydrophone with the scaled dime.



CHEERS!!!

[scott t]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

Looking good Russ. I won't take credit for the hydraphone picture as it came from somewhere on the web.

Scott T

[salmon]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

I second what Scott said about enjoying this e-build. Every extra detail added may not be helpful today, but as 3D printers are getting better and better. In a few short years the fine details will be printed by a desktop 3d printer.

Russ thank you for doing this!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

“I’VE GOT BLISTERS ON MY FINGERS!”

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

…Seriously, I don’t have a blister but I do have a serious mouse callous pad on my right index finger from the mouse wheel, similar to what you get on your fingers from guitar strings.

I wonder how many times that little wheel has turned.

Hey, there may be a song in there somewhere for somebody. I can almost hear Dylan singing it.

“I wonder how many times that little wheel has turned.
Who has it helped? Who has it burned?
Where has it led? What have we learned?
The wheel keeps turning. There’s no turning back.”

[salmon]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

O.K. Officially, You lost it......get some sleep!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 104

I just woke up from a 4 hour nap, but you may be right about losing it.

I don’t know where that came from, it just popped in my head and I am not a musician and by no means a poet.

Anyway, back to Batfish…

I’m glad you guys are enjoying this build log. It has definitely been a mutually beneficial experience. I have had a lot of fun, learned a LOT, and found some new friends along the way. Without you guys, there would be no model. The pictures you have sent (that you took or got from the web) and the information you have provided has made it all possible. And really, we all have Tom D to thank for sending me those initial plans of Permit. That was the start of this journey.

It’s too bad that the technology isn’t to the point that my models could be printed by a desktop 3d printer. If they could, or if I had more money now, the detailed Greenling model would already be printed and we would know a lot more about what the limitations really are, what can be printed and what can’t. But then, I would have spent the last few months building Greenling and not re-designing Batfish.
Speaking of Batfish, today’s journey led me to the Air Salvage (AS) Connections…

The first thing I noticed was that the two forward AS’s that I had made were on the wrong side. I thought I had corrected them but I guess I missed ‘em. Rats!

So the first thing I did was fix it, and as you have seen, undoing things is not always as easy as doing them. Using the outlines from before…



…And mirrored them where they belong.



I then removed the old ones by extruding the rectangles and subtracting them.



Next, I traced the sections on the ends…



…Extruded them.



..And joined them to the deck. You can see that for some reason there are some vague lines where the removed SA’s were. I’m not sure why.



Anyway turning to the design of the SA’s the image below shows the way I did it. The red extruded rectangle is a 0.002” plate. At 0.002” it will barely be noticeable and will essentially be level with the deck. The blue cylinders will be cut out after the plate is joined to the deck. The green is a very crude replication of the connection and valve stem extension. The smallest circle used is 0.005” for the valve stem extension. To give it more support I made it cone shaped. I did the same for the connection and added wings in the form of connected 0.005” circles. The outline of this feature is best seen at the bottom.



Here is what the assembly (that I copied to a reference point) looks like in solid form…



…And with the cylinders subtracted.



Here it is on the model.



…And copied to the other position. Note that I didn’t just copy it, rather I used the blue lines to orient a coordinate system and copied it using the clip board and a base point that I selected as the intersection of the lines. Then I realigned my coordinate system to the blue lines where I want to copy it to, and again used the clipboard to paste it.



After copying it, I first joined the plate (red) to the deck…



…Then subtracted the circle…



…And joined the inner workings to the part.



This process was repeated for all of the SA’s on the part.





Here it is with the dime.



CHEERS!!!

[rdutnell]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

UPDATE 105

Good Morning Guys!

I didn’t get much more done last night, but I did do a few touch ups.

First I repaired the area where I removed the mis-located AS, starting by drawing a couple of polylines and extruding them.



I then moved them forward slightly to make sure the ends were removed…



…And subtracted them from the deck.



Next I extruded existing square batten sections that I had previously drawn…



…And joined them to the deck, which did the trick.



The next touch up I did was to add an AS aft of the skid hinge that I had missed.




Looking at the wood deck plans again, I realized that I had missed a davit socket aft of Hatch No. 2 and a Kingpost on the starboard side. To make these, I used the outlines I had previously drawn for the davit socket aft of the forward escape hatch. I copied it to the proper location and then prepared to cut out the wood deck around it. To do this I drew a rectangle on the cut end (because it is easier to assure proper alignment of the section), and copied it to the forward and aft sides of the socket.



I then lofted between them…



…And subtracted it.



I then did essentially the same thing for the Kingpost.





At this point, I believe that the first 3 hull pieces are completed, unless I decide to make the deck, or parts of it separate, which I think I will probably do. For now anyway, they are completed, and here are a couple of images of them.





CHEERS!!!

[raalst]

Re: 1/144 Scale USS Batfish (SS310)

how big are your files by now ? this is a heck of a lot of detail ....