Scratch Build – In Progress ISD KRAKEN - Leviathan Class Star Destroyer - 2Servo Turbo Laser Turrets – Mechanical - 26-02-2021

HE'S BACK !
I was just thinking MOTY was strangely absent of large spaceship builds.

 

Hahaha, there are never enough spaceship builds !

 

ISD KRAKEN – The Stand metal work
Now to start the work on the stand. The idea was to be able to picth and jaw the ship.
Or dip to the left and to the front and then to the right. While this was a awesome idea it posed a lot of problems.

1. How to create a mechanism to allow that motion.
2. How to prevent the liquid cooling fluids for staying on one side when tilted and casing the blocks or pump to run dry.
3. How to fix the ship in a specific angle.
4. How to be able to route cables for display, power, network etc through the center of the tilt/jaw mechanism.

The answer to question 1 was a "constant velocity joint" we got from a frontwheel suspension of a landrover.

The answer to question 2 was integrating 3 pump/reservoir combo's in the system. One in the front that would allow flow when tilted forward and 2 in the back that would allow flow when tilted backwards. The backside pumps would be at the furthest position possible to the left and right sides to allow flow when tilted to either side.

The answer to question 3 would be to integrate heavy duty screws that would prevent the ship from tilting further or not remain level. The mechanism would become very thick and beefy due to the 50 kg the screws would have to hold in position with shifting fluids.

When we started thinking about how to run cables through the center of the mechanism we ran into the biggest roadblock so far. Just isnt possible without compromising any of the previous questions. We worked on this for about 2 weeks but couldnt solve it. The main issue is that the mechanism isnt hollow. Therefor we needed to get the cables outside the tube and that would cause a lot of structural weakness, exactly where it needed to be the strongest.

Ans then disaster struck. The guy helping us with the Constant Velocity Joint was a friend of my father in law. Great guy, well in his seventies who lived and breathed cars and trucks. He died of corona complications about 3 weeks before we were going to do the actual work of integrating the landrover parts into the stand. Rien, we will surely miss you!

So after recuperating of the loss we opted for a simple rotational mechanism with more then enough room inside to route cables and also keep the costs down be excluding a pump/reservoir combo.

Heavy duty steel bars act as a counterbalance for the 50kg ship thats on top. We were able to drastically reduce the width of the pipe by using steel instead of iron. The stand pipe still allows for more then enough room to route cables through easily. The base will be covered with aluminum plates resembling a tiefighter wings.

The stand barely fits into my car but getting it home from the welder it turned like a charm. The 3mm steel reinforcement plate has holes to allow for airflow to the PSU and for the location of the 2 servo turbo laser turrets across the hull. Even though 3mm aluminum has a great amount of strength, i opted for the steelplate to make sure it would survive the potentially bumpy flight to the US.

Also we had to do some tests. This was the most important one. 40kg stress test to make sure it will hold the 50kg of the ship!
Passed with flying colours and my kids loved it.





Looks great at the fitting session but something is off. It just didnt feel right.

After staring at the ship for a few hours I finally found the issue!

Its easily visible when the design of the stand pipe is adjusted to the real life position.


My welder had the great idea to fix the pipe at the exact center of gravity of the steel reinforcement plate. Which normally is a good idea. But he didnt see the whole picture and with the bulk of the weight (radiators and fluids) being at the backside of the ship I intentionally placed the tube more to the back.

Also the design of the ship and the reactor dome which moves forward with the position of the pipe, didnt feel right anymore.

We tested the ships ability to prevent tipping over while rotated in several directions and it didnt even budge a little but the design was compromised in my view. The top picture is the original location, the bottom one the new one.

I have tasked my welder with putting the pipe back into its original position.

Which do you think is best?

 

The client probably doesn't want design changes either. Worst case scenario: You could add a leg with a wheel that stays under the nose. -Attached to the support post only, of course.
Shipping to US... Airline baggage handlers are even scarier with fork lifts. That bill, though.

 

Sorry to hear about what must have been a rough few weeks
I dont feel like it really alters the appearance too much, it you hadnt have mentioned I dont think we would have noticed.

 

Yeah we have budgetted about 3000 euro just for shipping. It will be massively expensive. I have bought a set of tilt and bump sensors for on the crate.

Thank you, was a real shock. One week we was brainstorming and drawing up plans and the next i was at his funeral. ******* virus.

Yeah its only 15 cm more to the front but i and spacec know its not in the original position. Its hard changing stuff on something so extensively deliberated. Thanks for the comment though mate!

 

ISD KRAKEN – 2Servo Laser Turrets – Mechanical

Time to show you the work on the turrets so far.
I made several designs , some more compact, some more battleship style but all still pretty basic as i needed to figure out first how to make it all move!
The ship will have a grand total of 24 Laser turrets meaning 48 servo's ! This will be a challenge to control by itself.


Lets start with the work i did a while back. The main idea was to have the turrets use actual lasers. But a few complications arose ... offcourse ...

The main issue was the size. Cheap lasers from china were just too large to fit into the scaled down turrets. The actual laser turrets were more of a proof of concept to see if i could get it working but when I had to design turrets that would actually fit the ship I had to scale down about 300%. There just arent any afforable lasers at that size. And we needed 48 of them! So back to the drawing board and do some box modelling to see what and how.





The turret uses 2 servo's controlled by a arduino microprocessor. To run all 48 of them we need more then one arduino but thats for a later post.

The first servos controls the rotational movement. The servo is connected to a ballbearing to prevent friction and keeps the angle perfect. The second servo controls the barrels and uses a custom connector block to hold the POM gear , LEDS and Turrets barrels. Its connected at both sides to a small 10mm ballbearing to again prevent friction.

The support pylons are used to screw the turret to the hull.

I am using small brass pipes inside a carbon fiber tube for now. These will be resin printed when its time to design the exterior.


This is the final part without its cover to make it look pretty.

A full description on what i used to print this will come in a later post as there are quite some deliberations on what material filament to use.

I could run RGB leds in the turrets .. but should I ... *Raises one eyebrow*



And there you have it, the turret in a very simple program firing its lasers (yes i know its the wrong colour )

The programming will be controlled by capacitive touch sensors allowing it them to all point forward when touching the nose of the ship for example. I think that will be a dramatic sight, having 24 turrets abruptly point towards you and shoot their guns!

Now to make 23 more ...

 

I found some at about .2" square, but nearly $3 each. I see your problem.

 

We could only find some that had casings of 12 mm. The barrels are 6mm. So they had to be inaide the body somewhere. But if we enlarged the body then they wouldnt fit anymore in a row on the bow.
Whats the smallest you found mate?
Its never too late to switch back to lasers hahaha

 

https://www.futurlec.com/LED/laser_red.shtml

Now that I look, the TO-18 they use for dimension might not include the brass casing.
I'll warn you now, they are slow as balls, and ship from Thailand.

 

We found some 6mm (outside casing) red lasers that are cheap. Dont know why we havent found them before. Maybe we did and disgarded them cause of the wrong colour. But yesterday we decided we could work it into the lore cause we have a non standard power layout of the ship anyway. So we are switching back to lasers !!!! Ordered 60 units and will be here in about 3 weeks.
Am so happy that i didnt start mass printing the turret bodies yet as its all going to have to be redesigned now. They are 5mw so relatively safe to bounce 48 laser beams around a room at the same time ...
So stoked lasers are back on the menu!!!

 

Maybe you could use fiber optic cables so that the lasers dont have to be inside the turrets?

 

Yeah thats how the newest laser cutters all seem to work, not sure how difficult it is to get working, but definitely worth a look into.