Space Shuttle Launch Pad 39A with Challenger STS-6

[Mustermark]

Great progress. Have a very happy Christmas Manfred, and thank you for all the education and entertainment this year!

[roma847]

Hello my friends,

 

only a little Christmas shot from my MLP, where now is also Christmas, as one can see on the true to scale sapling (approx. 15 mm), which would range the Rainbirds only up to the upper cartridge belt.

 

 

 

In this spirit I wish you all furthermore Merry Christmas.

[RichO]

Happy New Year, Manfred!!

[roma847]

Thanks Rich and Happy New Year to you and Teresa too. 

[roma847]

 

Hello everybody,

 

I hope you all had Merry Christmas, have no spoiled stomach and are in a good mood.

 

In order to prevent possible withdrawal symptoms, I have continued after a short breather with the still missing supports for the rear 18'' outlets and attached their frames first and then the tiny stiffening corners.  

 

 

 

In the upper row lay the two supports of the outlets behind the LOX-TSM, and below the supports behind the LH2-TSM. After the right support was already finished, now also the last support got his four corners. 

 

 

 

On these images, the different arrangement of the stiffening corners can be compared once again, first at the outlets behind the LOX-TSM, which are identical on the front and back, both in their number and in shape.

 

Source: NASA

 

While the arrangement of the corners of the outlets behind the LH2-TSM on the rear side is identical with the corners behind the LOX-TSM, 

 

Source: NASA

 

the upper triangle is missing on the front of the outer support, as can be seen in this picture.  

 

Source: NASA

 

But exceptions famously confirm the rule.  

 

Then I have glued the crescent-shaped pipe holders. 

 

 

And this is how the test fitting of the supports looks at the MLP.

 

 

 

Now I can turn to the eight supports for the 12'' outlets, for which I first have to punch the sickles with Ø 2 mm.

[Vanoyen]

My God!  The level of detail you've put into this is mind boggling. I've been skipping through looking at various stages and I keep seeing what look like reference photos of a NASA build site but then I see the modelling tools and things in the background and realise it's your actual progress pics!

 

Truly amazing work.

[Mustermark]

Nice update. I was starting to worry about my withdrawal symptoms.

 

Happy New Year, Manfred! I think you will get to the paint sometime in 2017!

[roma847]

6 hours ago, Vanoyen said:

My God!  The level of detail you've put into this is mind boggling. I've been skipping through looking at various stages and I keep seeing what look like reference photos of a NASA build site but then I see the modelling tools and things in the background and realise it's your actual progress pics!

 

Truly amazing work.

 

Thanks Vanoyen for your nice compliments, 

 

I am glad if you like what I am building here and hope you will stay tuned further on. 

[roma847]

4 hours ago, Mustermark said:

Nice update. I was starting to worry about my withdrawal symptoms.

 

Happy New Year, Manfred! I think you will get to the paint sometime in 2017!

 

Thanks Mark for your continued great interest and Happy New Year for you too. 

 

Next year everything will be painted, and then I will finally start with the launch tower ... 

[roma847]

Hi everybody,

 

and now to the announced eight support for the 12'' outlets.  

 

At first the sickles with Ø 2 mm were to punch, which is why I have used again my Punch & Die Set.  

 

In order to obtain the same web widths at least on one side at the lower curve, I have attached a stop with a distance of 1 mm from the stamp,

 

 

which has worked well again.  

 

 

After that, the sickles were cut off with the cutter chisel.

 

 

Then I have glued the angles on both sides onto the frame profiles (0.5 mm x 0.5 mm).

 

 

 

 

and then separated. 

 

 

So far, so good, but stop! Have you noticed something?   

 

Okay, me also not so far. But suddenly, when I did count the roofs, I always came only up to seven, although there must be eight supports.  

 

So my first glance went intuitively on the floor again, but there was nothing to be seen.   

 

Oh no, not again, I thought to myself, and began to look at the table in front of me, which is not so simple, because there lies much too much stuff around.

 

And lo and behold, at the edge of the cutting waste I saw the 8th angle lying next to two other angles, which were however somewhat too narrow, and so I was jolly glad.

 

 

All's well that ends well, and so I can go on tomorrow.  

[Space Ranger]

Very clever use of the punch-and-die set. I'll have to remember your technique of fashioning a stop next time I need to punch a uniformly spaced row of holes (or a row of uniformly spaced holes).

[roma847]

Yep, you just have to know how to help yourself and then have the right idea. 

[roma847]

Hello everybody,

 

before the clock of the old year expires, I want to quickly report myself with the last pictures of the supports.  

 

Since the procedures are meanwhile well-known, I can make it short and let the pictures for themselves to speak.

 

 

 

The glueing of the sickles was again such a tricky business, some had unglued from the strip and were glued tight only in the second run.

 

 

 

This should have been it for this year.

 

I wish you all  

 

 

Cheers!!!

[alanstew]

Roma this sure is a mamoth build I have been looking at it since joining the group. Your detail is amazing I wish I had your patience, I look forward to the next stage of the build

[roma847]

Thanks for your nice words, 

although these details take lots of patience and time, I do not want to miss them. 

[roma847]

Hello everybody,
I hope you all had a good start into 2017.

After the new year is now again two days old already, I want to open the 1st round and show you the last Supports with their tiny stabilization corners.

 

At it an extra calm hand and a lot of patience were asked, which has now become a routine in this area of dimensions. And the headset magnifier and a pointed tweezers were of course also part of the standard tool again.  

 

Since for glueing of the corners a stable position of the unwieldy roofs is indispensable, I have reflected about a special jig for today's support finale.

 

For this I have squeezed the angles into a corset of three steel rulers, which I have clamped with small supermagnets (NdFeB) on a sheet metal. This allows to glue the strips without overhang with the 45° slant directly onto the angle and still position it when using a simple Styrene glue.

 

 

And so one could let yet a few tenths space up to the upper margin, because the stabilization corners do not close directly with the angle edge, as one can see in this image. But later on this will hardly to be seen with the naked eye any more.

 

Source: NASA

 

And after the same procedure on the back side

 

 

and trimming off the lower supernatants, the first of the eight supports is already finished and looks well.  

 

 

 

But there are also supports with some other stabilization corners, as one can see here at one of the front outlets behind the TSMs.

 

Source: NASA

 

And these corners were made according to the same pattern, first on the front,  

 

 

and then on the back side.

 

 

 

 

And now all eight supports have been finished so far, because now only the sickle holders have to be glued. 

 

 

In the upper row lie the front supports of the outlets behind the TSMs and below it the middle supports behind the SRB supports. 

 

And an exception in this image confirms once again the several times stressed rule, but perhaps it won't be even noticeable.

 

And so we're back in business.

[Mustermark]

I see it, but I still don't believe it. I'm sure that cent you keep showing us is a 10cm diameter fake! 

[roma847]

Hi Mark, you are pulling my leg, but fun must be. 

 

BTW, you are not the first guy with this presumption, but it's still only 16,3 mm. 

[roma847]

Hello everybody,

 

so friends, it is so far, now all 12 supports for the front outlets are finished, and I can once again breath deeply, because I often had to hold my breath during handling the treacherous midgets in the tweezers to glue the gusset plates and fragile sickle holders. 

 

Now, here are the six supports behind the LOX-TSM, and on the right the six behind the LH2-TSM. 

 

 

The next step was the test fitting of these 12 supports together with all the other supports of the SSWS, i.e. total of 52, which now gives an imposing picture.

 

 

And to round off the picture, I have also added the Rainbirds again.

 

 

 

 

With the glueing of the supports on the two ring lines, I have to wait however still something, because before the clamping rings have still to be attached, because afterwards would certainly be a little too stressful.

 

And these clamping rings want to be produced first, what will be again a tricky fiddling, whereby I want to use this time a different technique, which we had already discussed at some time earlier.  

[RichO]

Outstanding photos.  Gorgeously complex looking structures Manfred. Only a little more work to finish this chapter.

 

I was just curious tho, will the paint dept. have to paint every thing in place, or will everything be disassembled and removed to be painted?

 

Good work!

[roma847]

Thanks Rich for your nice compliments, 

 

all the outlets are already glued to the ring lines and the entire skeletons should be painted together and have to be removed. 

 

Actually, I wanted to glue all pipe supports also before the painting, but first I have still to glue the tricky clamping rings onto the ring lines, where the supports should be sitting. 

[Bell209]

Fabulous work! I've built the Apollo LUT and am almost done on the Crawler/Transporter but they're not a patch on yours!

[roma847]

Thanks Bell209 for watching, 

 

have you a link to your models for us, because nevertheless I am interested in it? 

[roma847]

Hello everybody,

 

well, then let's go to the Clamping rings, there is no way to avoid it.  

 

After I had read again in my building report from the midyear of 2015, I once again checked the different shapes of the screw connections of all clamping rings on the MLP-2. 

 

While the majority of the clamping rings are made up of six bolted ring segments, as shown on the right, there are also some, which consist of only four segments (on the left).  

 

Source: NASA

 

In this panorama image one can recognize the differences from a different perspective very well, and as one can see, the screw connections of the four-part clamping rings are somewhat longer than those of the six-part clamping rings. 

 

Source: NASA

 

And with the aid of this picture, I had already determined the dimensions of the clamping rings and screw connections in those days, whereby the diameter of the 24" pipe (4 mm) was used as reference. 

 

Source: NASA

 

Since the image of my stock taking at the time seems to me to be somewhat overloaded from today's point of view,

 

 

I have once again shown the number of screw connections of all clamping rings of both ring lines separately. In this case, the red arrows indicate the position of the supports, at which there are no clamping rings.

 

Here first for the ratios at the ring line behind the LOX-TSM,

and here at the ring line behind the LH2-TSM. 

As one can see, the type of the clamping rings and the number of their screw connections is not identical on both sides.

 

After checking the dimensions again, I will use Evergreen Strips 0.38 mm x 0.5 mm for the six-part clamping rings and for the screw connections strips 0.25 mm x 0.75 mm, where 0,75 mm corresponds to the length of the screw connections. And for the somewhat longer screw connections of the four-part clamping rings I will probably use strips 0.25 mm x 1 mm.

 

The construction of the clamping rings should be carried out accordingly to the lattice technique, which I have considered at the time. 

 

For this I first marked the distances of the screw connections on the peripheral length of both types, left for the four-part clamping rings and right for the six-part rings.

 

Thereby the strips 0.25 mm x 0.75 mm (or 0.25 mm x 1 mm) for the screw connections are placed over parallel lying clamping ring strips 0.38 mm × 0.5 mm and glued with MEK, and subsequently separated.  

 

 

So far as the theory, next time prototypes of both types of clamping rings are to follow.  

[roma847]

Hello folks,

 

before I can start with the small series production, I have tried the first two prototypes of the clamping rings first without using the lattice technique, in order to see whether or how well the lengths and distances resulting from my templates will be okay.

 

For this purpose, the four strips for the screw connections were positioned on the clamping ring strip (0.38 mm x 0.5 mm) and gently glued with MEK on both sides. 

 

 

The strips then stuck so tightly that they could easily be cut off on both sides. 

 

 

The gluing of the clamping ring on the 4 mm rod took place step by step with CA, because MEK is not suitable for this, which I had to observe unfortunately at that time, and I did not want to make the same disastrous mistake again.

 

 

But only after I finished with this four-part clamping ring, it occurred to me that I had not used the wider strip (0.25 mm x 1 mm) for the screw connections, but the narrower (0.25 mm x 0.75 mm) for the six-part clamping rings. But no matter, I have still noticed it in time.

 

After the same procedure, the six-part clamping ring was built, in which the screwing strips have moved closer together.

 

 

 

This time, too, everything went smoothly with the gluing of the strips, 

 

 

and here one can see both clamping rings next to each other.  

 

 

And so it looks then at the supports, wherewith I am for the time being quite satisfied.

 

 

And if one would now round off the edges of the screw connections, it would look even more pleasant from near, which I have tried here at least once on the right clamping ring. 

 

 

All other clamping rings I now want to scratch however after the lattice technique, for which I however need appropriate spacer.  

 

That's it for today.