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Cruise Ship Mein Schiff 3 - The stern balconies

Hello dear readers, I am pleased that you are taking the time to participate in the construction of the Mein Schiff 3 model here.


The previous post was about the substructure of the deckhouse. At the front end is the front of the deckhouse, including the bridge, to which the substructure is connected.


The struts of the substructure are also connected to the rear cabins on the stern balconies. However, this will continued later, because the rear cabins are a bit more difficult to design. Since everything has to be designed in such a way that it can ultimately be printed using a 3D printer, we have to print each deck individually at the rear. This also means that these parts must be created as individual parts in the design-software.


Deck 5 is the highest of the decks - regarding the ceiling height. Some of the public areas of the ship are housed here. The public areas of the ship have a higher ceiling height than the areas where the cabins are located. Since there are no publicly accessible plans for the ships, estimates can unfortunately be assumed here, but these correspond quite well to the original and ultimately create a good overall picture. A few centimeters here and there don't matter much anymore and are then reduced in the model to tenths of a millimeter, which then disappear anyway.


Next to the diamond there are more windows, the shape of which is adapted to the slanted struts of the diamond and thus pass on its shape a little. Overall, this works better from the inside than from the outside. Next to the custom windows is an automatic sliding door that leads outside. Everything is symmetrical here, so that the corresponding door and window combination can also be found on the other side. Later, a large sun sail will be attached to the balconies of Deck 6, which will shade the champagne lounge on the port side and the outdoor area of ​​the Surf&Turf Steakhouse on the starboard side. But these are such small things that they are only made at the very end of the construction.


The first cabins with their balconies begin on deck 6 above deck 5. The balconies on deck 6 extend both to the side and to the rear, so that they are next to the diamond and you can look from the balcony into the area of ​​​​"Great Freedom" in the diamond. Contrary to what you might think, there are no suites here. Rather, the balcony family cabins Deluxe are in the appropriate place on Mein Schiff 3 and thus offer families an excellent view and a generous balcony area.


The balconies that follow move forward deck by deck, so that the balconies as a whole form a beautifully sloping stern. This slope roughly corresponds to the slope of the hull wall at the stern and continues with the balconies. However, TUI-Cruises only implemented this with Mein Schiff 3 and Mein Schiff 4. When planning the construction using public pictures, I initially used pictures of MS3, 4, 5 and 6, as I assumed that these were 4 identical ships, which only showed differences on deck 12 and 14. When it came to the design of the stern, I noticed that exactly this sloping stern differs from ships 3 and 4. On the ships MS 5 and MS 6, the stern section of the deckhouse is steeper - this of course gives you a little more space for additional cabins.


Nine balcony cabins extend across the width of each deck above deck 6. On deck 7 are the three centrally located cabins above the diamond. The top surface of the diamond forms the floor for the balconies of the respective cabins. The balustrade for the balcony then continues in the design of the diamond. Since each balcony has its own partition, a partition had to be made here and I then inserted it between each cabin. Along the Diamond's three cabins, I had to lengthen these partitions a bit.


Up to this point, the corresponding balconies of the cabins for Deck 6 and 7 were each individual work. Deck 8-11 cabin walls will be similar, only duplicated and pushed forward evenly on each deck to give the overall look the shape of the full scale model. The cabins go up to and including deck 11. Then the balcony windows had to be inserted. This was also mainly a copy & paste action and took a lot of time. But then all in all good to look at.

For printing, it turned out that it is easiest to print the individual deck segments upside down, so that the balcony area is the adhesion area on the printing plate and the cabin wall located under the balcony is printed on. This gives the balcony surfaces a nice smooth surface. In addition, you get the opportunity to add the support struts under the balcony surfaces, which has a very positive effect on the visual detail - even if you only see it later if you look closely.



The balcony partitions were then copied for the individual cabins. Only one partition had to be created here and the rest copied to the right place using the copy & paste method.


With that all done, the parts were ready for printing. Due to the size of the parts, I was able to print the entire rear stern section of the deckhouse in one print. So the construction of the whole thing was very complex, but it was done very quickly in printing.


Unfortunately, I can only build up the walls on the finished model once the corresponding side wall has been completed. The side wall is symmetrical, so it is sufficient if one of the walls is created on the PC. This is then copied, mirrored and then placed in the correct position. How all this happens, you will read in my next post.


I hope that I was able to entertain you a little with today's post.


I would like to ask you to leave a like. Don't hesitate to comment - I look forward to whatever comes up and if we start a discussion together on the comment board, that's totally fine too.


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I wish you a nice weekend, see you next time!



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