The Ship Model Forum

MFSYD / thanks for the consideration, I dont disagree with the above. If it can be done or not, its up to a test. Perhaps someone with Jim Baumaneseque fingers and attention to detail will nail the groove placement and PE, while someone with my fingers will get it right once, and will have a cows chewed railings next time. And I understand you dont want people to get frustrated and dont expect everyone to work with the loupes in 1:700. So no worries there, if you can make it work / great. If not - no biggie, railings included is already ok.

MFSYD - Thanks, it took some doing, but perseverance pays off!!

I tend to agree - in fact, last week at a local IPMS monthly meeting (I was there as a guest) - I got rid of all my PE making stuff. Taking up space and I would probably never use it. As for RR modeling, I still have some very early brass parts that I bought in 1962 for a Varney locomotive - add ons - quite well made for the day!

Hank

[quote="FFG-7"]pe rails for straight runs & 3d printed for non straight runs. also pe is stronger then 3d printed.[/quote]
Well that may be the case if they were all the same thickness, but if a PE foil is say 0.2 mm (I haven't measured it myself, but seems close to the actual number to my eye) and make say 0.4 mm thick printed railings, they're still going to be pretty thin for the scale, and the resin is about as strong as an actual length of PE railing - which is very relative considering how small they are, and how susceptible to damage if not handled properly.

Hank, those printed railings look very good. Although for mass production they do look a bit too thin and fragile to me (particularly the rods going horizontally through the stanchions), but we'll test different thicknesses and options and see what works best.

In any case we'll evaluate different options and do some testing, after which we'll publish the results in a separate thread.

@blw, notwithstanding the fact the model railroad world and model ship world are two very different beasts considering scales, 3D printing technology is continually evolving at an incredible pace. Even for us makers it is hard sometimes to keep pace.
There are already some new manufacturers that print railings on model ships, but they are integrated with the hull, and therefore far from the best (besides the print quality itself, they are hard to clean for obvious reasons, and get in the way of painting and handling during assembly), so we've decided to do a round of tests to see how far apart the most efficient for us and most attractive solution for the modellers are. On one hand, it is pushing the limits of what's currently possible, but on the other it can be done. We need to figure out what are the requirements for achieving that.
Also, PE can be used for lots of other stuff. I'm not saying PE is useless, but for a lot of ship parts where you have to bend things multiple times in complicated shapes, and often repeat it lots of times (a 1/350 1945 Yamato kit has 61 triple 25 mm mounts. Until not long ago you could only get aftermarket AA guns made of PE to bend and glue together. Now do that 61 times. Yeah that gets boring pretty quickly), 3D printed parts are just better. It's a lot less work for a much better result.
Hope that clears out some of the problems we ship modellers have and some of the differences between these two modelling worlds :)

[quote="blw"]Not that I'm a master 3D printer, but I can't even get 1/87 railings to come out right, I can't even fathom doing them in 1/350 let alone 1/700. Maybe someday, but IMHO that some day is not today! I'd love to be proven wrong, though. In the meantime, I'm investing in my own PE capability for my railroad stuff.[/quote]

Brian,

OK, so here's a sample of my 1/357 scaled lifelines that I printed last year -
[attachment=1]1-357 scale Main Deck Test Sect_2.jpeg[/attachment]
and here's another one with a bit different angled view -
[attachment=0]1-357 scale Main Deck Test Sect_3 MG.jpeg[/attachment]
These were using H shapes for the stanchions and rods for the handrails. For an older BB (or CC), the stanchions were round, so this is what I will design for my version. These two text examples did not have a base plate; I added that later.
So, the answer is, it CAN be done. :thumbs_up_1:

I've actually thickened the base plate for the 1/350 scale parts to 0.25mm which I think will be more than enough to support the run. I'm putting stanchions 10' apart or to whatever the design calls for.

Hank

Not that I'm a master 3D printer, but I can't even get 1/87 railings to come out right, I can't even fathom doing them in 1/350 let alone 1/700. Maybe someday, but IMHO that some day is not today! I'd love to be proven wrong, though. In the meantime, I'm investing in my own PE capability for my railroad stuff.

pe rails for straight runs & 3d printed for non straight runs. also pe is stronger then 3d printed.

[quote="FFG-7"]why not do a pe railing that has an extra wide bar that gets bent 90 degrees to create a foot that is either glued into a trough or onto the edge of a deck?[/quote]
That is a possibility, but given the tiny size of PE bars and their fragility, we're afraid that with the constant bending they could get damaged or broken during handling. Plus there's the problem of bend them for parts that need curved railings.

why not do a pe railing that has an extra wide bar that gets bent 90 degrees to create a foot that is either glued into a trough or onto the edge of a deck?

[quote="ModelFunShipyard"]However I would like to ask you lot, were we to provide printed railings with a bottom plate, would that be better/worse, or an alternative solution to putting grooves for PE railings?[/quote]

MFSYD - I appreciate your reply, etc. My answer would be that it would be great if the kit(s) would include the waterway in the deck design of the model, as I think this would be appropriate for most, if not all major 20th century combatants. You could also incorporate the chocks (if so desired) into this design, as well since they normally are located above the waterway. Designing the printed stanchions/lifelines may take some time, but in the end, I think possibly an alternative to the PE option. At 1/350 scale, I made those bottom plates 0.1581mm thick, but those will be "evened" once I get back into that design after I have the kit in hand, etc. I may try to make this as "thin" as possible, which may take a few tries...nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? :thinking:

Since this era of ships had "pointed" ends, I had a similar situation with the BB-55 model at the bow. I made a separate "V" shaped part which worked out well -
[attachment=0]BB-55 Bow Railing Section.JPG[/attachment]

In this instance (LEX Class CC's), a similar part could be designed for both ends of the model.

Hope this helps!

Hank

Thank you Hank for your comment, it is indeed a big improvement what you have designed. But more to the point, currently we are only providing PE railing, so putting a bottom plate like you've done is not currently feasible, although I could see it as a possible solution. I don't know to what point test printing PE railing in 1/350 scale have gotten, it may be something that need discussing with 3D-Wild first.
It would be a best solution for all probably, but while we would like to go in this direction at some point, it is likely not going to be anytime soon. So for the foreseeable future (at least the next 3-4 kits) are going to have PE railing.

However I would like to ask you lot, were we to provide printed railings with a bottom plate, would that be better/worse, or an alternative solution to putting grooves for PE railings?

Re. the question of a "groove" (or more properly a [b]waterway[/b]) included in the deck design of the model -

I was also curious about whether or not the kit would include this detail as I hadn't looked at the pictures of it recently. So, while I agree in theory with Pascalemod's question, I also see the relevance of MFSYD's point of view as to actual kit production (time vs cost, etc.).

After reviewing photos of BB-38, I see that the ships of that era did have waterways along the length of the hull in which the chocks were located as well as the weather deck stanchions for the lifelines. This would be typical for U.S. steel warships. Last year I provided 1/357 scaled handrails for a refurbish build of a 1941 cardboard USS NORTH CAROLINA model and these handrails (obviously) were quite an improvement over the original printed handrails (cut out from the page of instructions. I was quite surprised that I was actually able to produce a complete set of these for the main deck. So, on my version of this kit my intention will be to print all the stanchions/lifelines utilizing a very thin bottom plate (much as Pascalemod has indicated) to hold these in place. Since I'm under no constraints (other than The Admiral's... :doh_1: ), something such as this is "doable" - not so much for a production kit designer.

Here is an example of my initial design for these lifelines -
[attachment=0]1-350 scale Main Deck Lifeline_1.JPG[/attachment]
This is just a prototype - there will be refinement to the final version.

edited - sentence structure
Hank

@pascalemod It is in principle a good suggestion, but I can see some issues with trying to implement it. Namely: making the grooves too wide and will be noticed even after glueing PE in place; said grooves making the thin border where the hull meets the deck too fragile, particularly where the hull slopes inwards like on the bow; practicality in terms of what we can actually achieve with the printer setup at our disposal; and finally, the large amount of time needed to implement such a feature.

We will definitely look into it in the near future, however I don't want to make false promises by saying we will implement every suggestion that we receive, because while it may be good in principle and a life improvement for the modellers, if it takes for us as long to include it in each model as the rest of the actual modelling part in terms of time sunk into the enterprise, I'm sorry but that is not a beneficial trade for us and therefore our continued existence as a business company.
But maybe we'll be able to strike a sort of 'happy medium'. We'll see.

May be an unpopular and causing too much work question, but I try.

Have you considered making tiny groove all around the decks to allow fitment of railings photoetch into them (for easier installation and allowing the bottom part to sink into the deck, making it look seamless - more accurate?)

Today we tend to glue the bottom rail to them deck itself, causing it look less nice, plus making it follow the contours of the deck is always a tricky task, on bends especially. If there is a deck groove, it would not only help with it, but probably would be a first in modelling and might work well.

Just curious on your thoughts around it.

you are welcome as I have seen my name mentioned a number of times on a few of your products even the 1 that might not get to market tho I did email a suggestion on that 1 on how to get it to market in a somewhat different form.

Thank you, David, for your suggestion--like publishing scientific research papers, we have been including lists of fellow modelers/warship experts in acknowledgment when we post news of product release on social media, and we will keep doing so. We hope this not only show our gratitude and respect to the ones who helped us, but also let readers know that we have been actively taking suggestions from modelers/warship experts to make as good products as possible!

True, you make a good point. I shall discuss that with 3D-Wild and see what we can do about that.

I saw issues with it but thought others here should see it to see the differences in design between ours(input) & theirs(no input).
maybe there should be a blurb in the instructions that there was input & plans from this site to show there were actual modellers' involvement with this model.

[quote="FFG-7"]take a look at this.
3D Printed kit 1/350 USS Constellation Battlecruiser (full hull)
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/355631025246?itmmeta=01JQ09XBMRD033TJPTSR6R8820&hash=item52cd42cc5e:g:gugAAOSwoHZlbumw[/quote]
Thanks, I already know that thing exists. If you take a look extensive look at it, it has a lot of problems to it, from a historical point of view, let alone printing ones.
We are trying to make it somewhat different so that they are different enough to make their own market niches.

take a look at this.
3D Printed kit 1/350 USS Constellation Battlecruiser (full hull)
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/355631025246?itmmeta=01JQ09XBMRD033TJPTSR6R8820&hash=item52cd42cc5e:g:gugAAOSwoHZlbumw

Really liking how this is panning out!