Centurion Mk III Scratch build

[AlwynTurner]

Thanks Carl for the good words, much appreciated.

Here is the design for the top of the turret, the cupola hatch still to do but my eye's are crossing
The cupola hatch and gunners hatch will be openable.



This is not getting finished today!

Alwyn

[midlife306]

You have a well earned rest Alwyn, you deserve it mate
Cheers
Wayne


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[midlife306]

Well, Cura said the middle section should have taken 18 hours with my settings, actually took 23.5 hours, I’m proper glad that’s over with

Cheers
Wayne


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[AlwynTurner]

Here's the completed turret. The quality is a lot better than the Chieftain turret, running it though Blender (even though I didn't know quite what I was trying to do) seems to have smoothed out the hull.




The experiment with dark green filament has yielded something closer to emerald green, and I'm not very impessed with it. Probably back to grey then.

Alwyn

[AlwynTurner]

Well slightly disappointing news. The turret which I spent 2 days printing doesn't fit on the hull. Firstly the hole for mounting he turret to the base is too far to the rear (my fault as I put it in the centre of the model without checking) but no problem I have a fix for that.

The main problem is that although the turret has the right overall dimensions, the shape of the lower part of the turret is just plain wrong and doesn't fit.

When comparing the 1/35 model to the printed turret, you will see that the 1/35 model has a much leaner shape to the rear of the turret. As a consequence to make it fit I am going to have to chop off and rebuild a major part of the underside rear of the turret. Some mods will probably be required to the front of the turret as well so as not to foul the rear deck.

You can see where I have marked for cutting

And to make it presentable this section has to go as well


I will then rebuild with styrene sheet and tidy up aesthetically with milliput filler

To say I am disappointed is a slight understatement and I did exercise some choice anglo saxon obscenities on the situation generally, however it's no good crying over spilt milk, just part of the scratch building challenge.

Alwyn

[midlife306]

You can’t beat a good bit of Anglo Saxon


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[AlwynTurner]

I am starting to suspect that this turret is about 5% oversize as the front of the turret doesn't fit either. Had I printed the turret before completing the rear deck I could have made allowance for this and made the rear deck slightly shorter. If I build another Centurion (a big if) then this is certainly what I would do as 5mm would have probably done the trick. Moral of the story is - print the turret before building the upper hull.

Alwyn

[AlwynTurner]

I have now mutilated the lower turret component beyond repair and it looks a complete dogs breakfast. It will never look half decent, so time for plan B.

I have pulled the turret and upper hull apart and am now reprinting the lower turret. I will then see how to make the turret (unmodified) fit the upper hull, which is what I should have done in the first place.

Hopefully it will all go together without the need for major modifications. Hindsight is wonderful isn't it?

Alwyn

[AlwynTurner]

Everything back together again. I stripped the turret and reprinted the lower half (ten hours of tedious printing)

After mounting he turret on the upper hull I then determined the extra space required by the non-scale part of the turret and modified the upper hull, basically by moving the rear platform back by 9mm






Now I am printing the top of the turret, I'll publish the design when it's printed. It was a messy fix but it worked out in the end.

Alwyn

[midlife306]

Nice one Alwyn


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