Design inside the hull
After the middle part could be well assembled in the second version and the drive and rudder part under the stern in the design is finished, I could take care of the interior space in the stern of the model.
In the interior, the cutout for the stern tube of the driveshaft still had to be made. Since grease nipples were to be attached to the stern tubes, I had to provide a recess here as well.
For the model I used two 6mm stern tubes with a length of 210mm. I have. But since I needed significantly longer drive shafts, I had to order two 450mm long shafts with M4 ends at the same time. I then prepared the rear section for these parts. I made the holes in the fuselage, in which the stern tubes are to be stored later, smaller, so that they can later be fitted with the right drill and glued to the fuselage. For the engines, I had to make the thick double floor, which I planned to cover the entire bottom of the hull, a little thinner. The corresponding outer walls have of course remained the same. Otherwise I would have had to connect the motors to the shafts via a gearbox, which would have led to greater noise. The most logical decision was therefore to use a trough for each engine in the corresponding section.
To do this, I immediately inserted the appropriate motor mounts and provided the frames with sufficiently large holes to ensure the passage of the drive shafts. I then planned the position of the motors in a section in which they are only halfway. I inserted the bracket for the servo on the platform from which the stern tubes lead to the outside through the bottom of the ship.
For the dimensions of the bracket, I used the dimensions of standard servos. I don't see a mini or micro servo as necessary here - there is enough space in the ship. The interior design was mostly limited to two sections. These two sections required a lot of time, because I first remodeled internal parts such as servos, shafts, stern tubes in the sizes that can be bought in order to create a perfect fit here. Then I was able to prepare for printing the first two rear sections, feed the printer with data and start printing.
Exterior design
Then I could concentrate on the stern of the ship. A little fine-tuning was needed here, since all the openings for the maneuvering deck, such as the fairlead, were still missing.
I made up for that, whereby the openings of the deck, with a depth of approx. 5mm, were only indicated and the fairleads and pulleys were reconstructed accordingly and inserted into the openings, so that the result was very impressive.
It got very tricky when dividing the rear section, because I didn't want to open the panoramic windows on deck 4 here. Luckily the division of the sections was such that the stern piece could be separated into three parts. So the middle part had to be very wide and the outer parts very narrow. However, I had to be careful that the outer parts didn't get too narrow, since the frames or flanges didn't get too close to the outer wall here either, because I had to put screws in there to screw everything together after gluing.
Printing the parts
The pressure of the rear sections went almost smoothly. After I revised the system of prints, there were almost no misprints. One or the other pressure created a few errors, but that was bridgeable. In the area of ​​the large double braced Atlantic window, the printer suddenly printed with very unsightly streaks and threads.
Considering the printing time and the fact that the rest of the print is of very good quality, I decided to keep the print as is and improve on it later. In the meantime I have decided to remove all struts and to replace them with self-printed window seals including struts. It's more work, but it also makes the skin look more realistic. But more on that later when the time comes.
There was also a string-pulling problem with the panorama windows in deck 4. I also damaged two struts in the outer window when connecting the parts. I will correct this when filing and removing the threads on the window struts.
After all parts were glued and screwed to the rear, the rear was finished and could be connected to the middle section.
When assembling the holes guiding the stern tube, I glued the stern tubes at the same time in order to get an exact fit of the tubes and the components. That worked perfectly.
For the test I put the drive shafts together with the propellers in the stern tubes and was satisfied.
I wish you a nice weekend. The next post will be about the bow of the ship.
Thank you for taking the time. I look forward to comments and discussions.
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