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| How the gun emplacement will look when the pieces are assembled (or at least that is the hope). |
Today I managed to do a mock up in finn and foamboard to allow me to sort out the dimensions of everything. I'd picked up a (badly) built Bassie off eBay before Christmas so I ripped the Earthshaker off and cut/sanded the gun base plate down which allowed me to determine the size I would need to make the centre of the emplacement.
The central hole in the base is 70mm, around this the base pieces (each one being 30 degrees of the whole) are 32.5mm, so the overall diameter of the base is 135mm. The walls are planned to be 15mm thick, so 165mm diameter in total - smaller than the Mark I version I built (which was too big).
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| Above is the base mockup (the blue area in the assembly). The cast base pieces have a lip which the central gun platform will sit on. |
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| The walls will be 22mm higher than the base, giving cover as shown in the pic for the troops set up behind them. |
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| The gun platform in place, top right showing the underneath, bottom right shows the overhang and clearance. |
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| The gun in position and one of the crewman behind it. On the right you can see that the gun just clears the wall when in its horizontal position. |
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| Tight fit but they can squeeze in there. |
Looking good - I really like seeing how this is coming along! Looking forward to seeing more!
ReplyDeleteThe idea is working well... To be a pain, how do envisage the mechanism to rotate the thing would work "in real life"... I mean, is it hand cranked using a wheel on the gun itself... maybe there is a separate crank for it... perhaps it is computer operated?? in any case, you see where I am going - do you need to factor in some sort of control device just to top off the finished look?
ReplyDeleteCheers for the comments.
ReplyDeleteOink: There will be a crank handle as per the original gun emplacement I did. It can be seen in this pic http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c80/squirrelnation/Lost%20and%20the%20Damned/Artillery/005.jpg This time though it will not be mounted on the gun plate, but at the rear of the emplacement.
Perfect... look forward to seeing the rest of the things coming together. So, is the final plan simply to send the bits off to be "printed"? and have you decided upon which company to do it??
ReplyDeleteBasically yeah, the finalised 3D models will be uploaded to them to print, then i'll use those printed pieces as the masters for casting.
ReplyDeleteHowever due to the number of parts required (five as a minimum, six if I do the gun platform as well) it won't be cheap so I will be doing the defensive wall pieces first as a test run (see the earlier post linked at the beginning of this post). If they work ok i'll think about investing in the gun emplacement - hopefully a few people will buy cast sets off me as well to help with the initial cost.
Probably going to go with shapeways.com or sculpteo.com
I had a quick look atthose sites when you pointed them out in the other post. Are you going to divulge prices to us in the future? It's be interesting to hear how things might compare.
ReplyDeletePrices can vary greatly depending on the material you select. I am hoping I will be able to use a material which would put the straight defensive wall at around $22 from Shapeways with the corner wall (which is smaller) being just over $19. However if that material turns out not to be good enough then the alternative is double that - probably making the whole process too expensive. I should be ordering the defensive wall pieces in a week so hopefully it won't be too long before I have the masters in my hand...
ReplyDelete