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Wednesday 17 February 2016

Ship Cargo Winch Model

A friend, Don, had been looking for a small cargo winch for a model ship he was making.


He'd seen some very good models produced using 3D printing.  My guess is these were professional prints and I was unsure if my 3D printer could create sufficient quality models in the tiny size required for these winches. I eventually thought I could give it a go.


The 1:150 plans are a bit vague on the details of the winch but I was able to find a web site about a similar ship.  http://www.lanevictory.org/laneVtour_mast_boom.php




The above are some useful photos of the winches from that site.  Those combined with some photo's of the model, as work in progress, I was able to guess a suitable scale.


I've created a 3D model based on those photos.


The winches are very small at the scale of the model. About 12mm wide by 11mm tall.  The first attempt needed some adjustment to try to get a better result.

First attempt with a melted mess where a pin should be


Revised design

The main change was to remove the tiny locating pins. They just ended up as melted blobs, each being smaller than 1mm.


The pin holes however worked well so if an alignment pin is required to locate the 3 parts a tiny brass rod could be used. I have found it very easy to align the parts without using anything to align them.  Just super glued together.




The lesson learnt from this is that a tiny tube prints out much better than a tiny solid cylinder.
I am happy with the end result. Hopefully they will look good in place on the ship.

3D Printer settings:
Layer height 0.1mm
Fill density 100% (solid)
Print speed 30 mm/s


Downloads:
Blend file
STL files (zip)
Licence attribution

My designs on YouMagine.com

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