USS St Louis was a protected cruiser, built at the time when the US Navy was expanding. Commissioned in 1907, she was obsolete almost before she was finished
The model is from 'World of Warships', and hosted on the Printables website of Josef Prusa. The model is free to download, for private & non-profit use.
The model is scaled at 1/150 which would make it 860mm long. The hull is in 5 sections, my printer could handle this, but the printing times would be very long, something like 17-18 hours! I decided to scale it down to 1/250 - this gives a hull length of 520 mm - each section takes from 10-12 hours to print. ( I've been hoping that we don't have any power cuts )
The first two sections - they're printed in the vertical position & don;t need much in the way of supports. After printing the bows, I reduced the infill ratio from 25 to 18%, this reduced the printing time, used less filament & weighed less!
The instructions are in the form of a 21 page .pdf file - nicely illustrated
The hull is joined by connectors that have wings, which spring out into slots internally - which can't be test fitted, as it's strictly a one-way operation. I'll use 2-part epoxy adhesive, as it needs a very strong bond between the parts. It will weigh quite a bit & I don't want the thing to come apart. I'll need to print out the stand. Most of the construction will be with CA, although I will use epoxy on the bigger parts, like the funnels. There are a load of small parts that need to be printed out, which will probably take more hours than the hull sections.
I don't think the model will take a complete 1kg spool of PLA filament, but as this only costs around £12 a spool that's not a lot - the time factor is not something you cannot ignore, it's going to be quite a marathon! After the hull sections are done, I'm going to do a bit of maintenance & tlc on the printer......................
Dave
The model is from 'World of Warships', and hosted on the Printables website of Josef Prusa. The model is free to download, for private & non-profit use.
The model is scaled at 1/150 which would make it 860mm long. The hull is in 5 sections, my printer could handle this, but the printing times would be very long, something like 17-18 hours! I decided to scale it down to 1/250 - this gives a hull length of 520 mm - each section takes from 10-12 hours to print. ( I've been hoping that we don't have any power cuts )
The first two sections - they're printed in the vertical position & don;t need much in the way of supports. After printing the bows, I reduced the infill ratio from 25 to 18%, this reduced the printing time, used less filament & weighed less!
The instructions are in the form of a 21 page .pdf file - nicely illustrated
The hull is joined by connectors that have wings, which spring out into slots internally - which can't be test fitted, as it's strictly a one-way operation. I'll use 2-part epoxy adhesive, as it needs a very strong bond between the parts. It will weigh quite a bit & I don't want the thing to come apart. I'll need to print out the stand. Most of the construction will be with CA, although I will use epoxy on the bigger parts, like the funnels. There are a load of small parts that need to be printed out, which will probably take more hours than the hull sections.
I don't think the model will take a complete 1kg spool of PLA filament, but as this only costs around £12 a spool that's not a lot - the time factor is not something you cannot ignore, it's going to be quite a marathon! After the hull sections are done, I'm going to do a bit of maintenance & tlc on the printer......................
Dave
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