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Sea Vixen FAW.1x2


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Tony, have you started taking the same meds as Ced ?  I can hardly keep with your storming advances recently.

Great post again. 

Most of the exciting groundbreaking adventurous stuff is behind us and it's just the boring old sticking it together and coloring it in stuff now

 

17 hours ago, TheBaron said:

And err.. dammit,. I'd forgotten I need to learn photoetching before doing that....

 

Oh good. more exciting stuff to get excited about

 

21 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Yes I am grinning a bit at that as all the time I was planning to do a Vixen, it was at the back of my mind 'I want the dish to be movable' but never quite believed it would be possible

 

Strange how we sometimes fixate on a minor detail in a build that to others may seem completely inconsequential, but to the modeler can make or break a build. The bar top in Pegasus was that way for me 

 

 

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On 2/11/2021 at 8:36 AM, TheBaron said:

50931631383_1909e897ee_b.jpg

(That wasn't the ISS in top right, I checked.)

That is the OrbitJet! I ordered my helmsman to take us lower to monitor a local disturbance in Washington, D.C., and in her zeal, she took us a bit TOO low. The only damage was some singed paint.

Edited by Space Ranger
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*Flexes knees* 'Evenin' all.'

 

On 11/02/2021 at 18:52, Pete in Lincs said:

I've only ever seen that many stars through light sensitive binoculars. What a fabulous sight.

On 11/02/2021 at 19:56, bigbadbadge said:

That sky looks lovely too.

Even out here in what's a pretty good dark sky sight away from urban areas near the Atlantic, it's amazing how much light pollution is visible on longer exposures on even a slightly misty night Pete & Chris, due to the disease in this part of the world of people bunging more external lighting on their houses than an Olympic ceremony.

23 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

I had my new 16" Dob out t'other night when it was 9 degrees (Fahrenheit - I'm a Yank remember) and it was indeed bone numbing. But the views! The whole M42/Trapezium complex just blew me away.    🔭 

:thumbsup2: Cracking stuff Bill- - I envy you such vistas.

I've got some of the faster lenses home from work at the moment whilst and even on a wide angle 14mm, was surprised how much light gets sucked in to the sensor at f1.8 - the fuzzy halo of M31 easily identifiable in the star field. Ideally I'd have the camera body on a tracking mount for longer exposures than 20 seconds to avoid trailing; that purchase'll be delayed though for several years by getting one lad though college and another on the verge of going...

23 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

The intensity of the trail looks pretty consistent - unlike a typical shooting star.   🌠  Maybe an Iridium satellite?

Although you can see a brightness gradient from bottom right to top left in the trail when looking at a close up of the original frame Bill, it doesn't seem to exhibit that sudden characteristic Iridium 'flare':

50936671767_8d99a5cf34_c.jpg

@Martian out testing his new Sunbusters? :hmmm:

22 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Xtrakit Sea Vixen

giphy.gif

19 hours ago, CedB said:

I expect you’ve seen hendie’s summary of the process and the great thread by Cheshiresaurus?

Definetootly! And Steve's Hawk VG adventures!

12 hours ago, giemme said:

Maybe I missed it, but did you mention how you glued/are you going to glue the brass pins to the resin?

Giorgio: either the photopolymer resin it's printed from or an epoxy resin like Araldite should do the job securely. I guess CA would work at a pinch but it's out of fashion with me as an adhesive these days.

7 hours ago, hendie said:

Tony, have you started taking the same meds as Ced ? 

Yes.

7 hours ago, hendie said:

it's just the boring old sticking it together and coloring it in stuff now

Hardly worth bothering oneself with really...

*Yawns, inspects fingernails...

7 hours ago, hendie said:

Strange how we sometimes fixate on a minor detail in a build that to others may seem completely inconsequential, but to the modeler can make or break a build. The bar top in Pegasus was that way for me 

If memory serves Alan there was an extended period when we all fell under the spell of the fixtures and fittings you produced on that build.

Seldom can a bathroom have received such detailed scrutiny!

1 hour ago, Space Ranger said:

That is the OrbitJet!

I had to look that reference up on my television helmet Michael.... 😁

rocky_jones_space_ranger_241x208.jpg

 

 

 

 

Realizing that I can't really do too much more to the test assemblage of XN708 without being able to include the brassworks in the process, I've had to put an end to occasionally mentioning it as being 'in the future' and putting it firmly in the present.

 

To this end then I spent some time earlier in Illustrator, importing the relavent parts for the seats and Ips and such like from Fusion  in order to begin assembling a design:

50936504561_69f3ce191d_b.jpg

One hugely annoying factor is that although Fusion gives you the option to output your drawings there in.dwg format, Illustrator doesn't for some reason read them (despite it being a format Adobe that say it supports). I don't know whether to blame Autodesk or Adobe for this stupid situation, but a classic example of software companies more concerned with keeping you locked inside private ecosystems.

 

What you're limited to then is exporting your drawings in .pdf format (hardly ideal) and putting them together again in Illustrator to produce .ai/svg's. It works, but makes for  a lot of extra work.

 

As of knocking-off time tonight, this is the progress so far:

50935815778_db2b0fe1b1_z.jpg

It'll be a double side print as I'm going to try and reproduce some surfaces relief on the IPs for bezels &etc. - the chairs and IPs still need blocking in with solid colour before adding features and foldlines. I also decided to add the scanner dish for the radar there as a PE part as I reckon it'll be neater than the 'bash it out with a hole punch' method for the kind of fineness needed at this scale.

 

Must remember to get the whole positive/negative thing in the right order too! :laugh:

 

I'll do some more to that in the morning.

 

Bitter cold again tonight so I'm just off now to shave me head and have a soak in the hot tub whilst whistling opera* tunelessly.

:bye:

Tony

PS. This was a fascinating thread during the week:

 

*Just remembered I don't actually know any opera. I'll whistle John Cage's 4′33″ instead.

 

Edited by TheBaron
sheer enthusiasm
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25 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

As of knocking-off time tonight, this is the progress so far:

 

if I can just jump in here Tony and I know you're only part way through the process, but...  the more metal you have to eat away, the longer the process takes, and the faster your etchant gets contaminated beyond its useful life.  I made this mistake many times.

Once you have your parts laid out, just do an offset of 1.5 - 2mm of the part outline, then join all the offsets up (if that makes sense), leaving the tags intact of course.

 

 

29 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Must remember to get the whole positive/negative thing in the right order too!

 

you won't catch me making those mistakes again (mainly cos I don't see me doing PE again)

 

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19 minutes ago, hendie said:

Once you have your parts laid out, just do an offset of 1.5 - 2mm of the part outline, then join all the offsets up (if that makes sense), leaving the tags intact of course.

Ahh..at least I think so! 😁

 

If I get this right Alan you mean in terms of how the whole fret will look, that this procedure is used to create  a 1-2mm negative space around the outline of the parts/tabs concerned, so that this is all that needs etching away by the chemicals - kind of like a moat around a castle?

 

That would make absolute sense in terms of minimizing how much metal needs to be eaten away! :thanks:

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My jaw is still dropped after seeing all of that resin beauty you are churning out, and you're already going to start on another modelling malarkey? You spoil us, Tony! :worthy: :worthy:

 

Ciao 

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On 13/02/2021 at 09:51, giemme said:

you're already going to start on another modelling malarkey?

It has to be done Giorgio, and the process looks just so enticing that I should have tried it long before now.

 

Following my usual method of investigating any (for me) novel process, to get a feel of the kinds of compromises inherent in producing designs for photoetching, I just plunged straight in and produced a whole series of different levels of detail in order to see at what point it fails to represent things of a particular size.

 

The cockpit of course is the main challenge, in terms of seeing how much of reality can be scaled-down and still remain visible at 1/72:

50941680888_8699f55754_b.jpg

There are many cockpit shots in the wild out on the web but many FAW.2 that seems to have a variable number of switches and placements on the pilots right hand panel for instance, so to keep things as consistent as possible I've largely relied upon a combination of James' excellent shots of his FAW.1cockpit, cross-referenced with the PNs for the FAW.1 as seen above.

 

This information was then boiled down to produce something along these lines for the pilot and observer panels:

50941680913_f69c9d3b7d_b.jpg

Major tip of the chapeau to @hendie for the tip on minimizing the amount of metal that needs to be etched away around the parts.

 

Those gaps vary from 1.5-2mm around each part. Having to rely on a highly unsuitable .pdf format as the base for taking drawings into a vector gfx program like Illustrator slowed me down immensely in terms of tidying up even small sections of the drawing - especially Instead of just being able to offset the existing path outlines, I had to resort to hand drawing them in. Damn you both Adobe and Autodesk for such a stupid refusal to talk. 👊

 

Satisfied that this was about as much as would meaningfully reproduce on the inkjet, I added fold lines where required on the back and front sections to various parts and similarly added those little bits that hold the etch parts in place on the fret and which I have no idea what they are called.

 

Then hit 'print' on the highest quality setting for a paper test:

50942376611_1a363e7518_b.jpg

Then belatedly remember that the output should have been reversed prior to printing to look like this! :laugh:

50941696803_d0a9c630eb_b.jpg

At least I think that's the right way round.... :rofl:

 

Some time ago I did buy some high quality inkjet transparency from the Modellingelectronics crowd so intend to split these back and front halves into separate sheets and go for test output onto it during the week if time permits.

 

Thanks for looking in.

:bye:

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 2/9/2021 at 7:21 PM, TheBaron said:

That's a date Terry. Food and books constitute a top day out in my view! 😄

Indeed about 1/3 of the naval books on that bookshelf in the bench shot I posted earlier have been gathered from Books Afloat on various holiday jaunts over the years. It's such a magnificent nook I feel morally obliged to buy something from them each time.

(I do hope they're still afloat at the end of all this though.)

I hope they are too Tony, so all things crossed. The book selection (certainly for my variety of interests) is second to none IMHO. I can easily lose myself in there for hours on end, and always come away with some reading matter. It's on my bucket list of places to go post Covid!

 

Nice start on the etch there.

 

Terry

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An unexpectedly disruptive week happening at the homestead. After waiting for several months for the local star plumber to be free, they finally arrived this morning and in pretty short order it became apparent that a simple job of unblocking an upstairs waste pipe was in fact going to involve a few days' remodelling the top floor plumbing altogether;  that'll be the credit union acct. emptied then...

 

Oh well. I'm still luckier than so many in having a paying job at this time, and feel that luck with ever greater intensity the longer this pandemic goes on.

 

On 14/02/2021 at 16:35, giemme said:

This is looking good already

Thanks G. :thumbsup2:

On 14/02/2021 at 17:05, Terry1954 said:

I can easily lose myself in there for hours on end, and always come away with some reading matter.

I know! 😁

Particularly upstairs, when you're paranoid about knocking over a pile of books or one of those ships models and bits of old cruise line crockery he specializes in booby trapping the place with!

On 14/02/2021 at 17:11, Brandy said:

Yes. Lost.

#Howd'yathinkIfeel?

:rofl:

Domestic matters aide, the build has been progressing sporadically, starting with test fits of the dish mechanism onto its central pillar:

50949381013_cc743a640e_b.jpg

Only at this point did I realize that I'd in fact printed those two top outer 'drums' twice - once as part of the lower nose section and once as a standalone set of all three!

 

Amazing what you miss isn't it?

 

I'll take a look at the parts in due course to alter the print to whichever of the two options promises the simplest assembly process. Certainly it all looks the business inside there now:

50949381048_6b004558cf_b.jpg

 

50950088146_e52113f8d6_b.jpg

 

I haven't spoken much so far about the exact nature of the etching process I'm going to use for the brass parts. Having spent a few hours studying the various options available, it won't be anything out of the ordinary in terms using sodium hydroxide as the developing agent and ferric chloride to etch the metal itself; in terms of masking the metal though I'm going to use  Positiv 20 spray-on photoresist instead of the  photoresist film that people seem to struggle with at times. Plasmo makes a good case for the lacquer here, although strangely he lets his dry over 24 hrs whereas the manufacturer states you'll get better results using a more rapid incremental method:

 

'The drying temperature should be increased slowly to 70°C and kept at that temperature for approximately 15 minutes. Infrared or forced air drying is possible. When air drying at ambient temperature is used (24 hrs minimum), the quality of the film will only allow very simple work.'

 

Looks like it'll be an old tea tin in the oven for me then! :laugh:

 

So far I've gotten as far as printing out the back and front masks onto transparency - the first time doing it the wrong way round (on the right) as is, I believe, mandatory, before doing it in the correct reversed form (on the left):

50949380978_738665eea4_b.jpg

These were printed out on the inkjet at the highest quality/photo paper settings and in my opinion, it's well worth paying extra for a good 'premium' inkjet transparency medium - the sharpness of those prints is superb.

 

After cutting out the four panels, the back and front designs were taped together to form a 'wallet' with one end  left open to slide the brass into for exposing under UV:

50950088026_59cc507e80_b.jpg

I won't be in aposition to do any spraying/exposing until the end of the week with everything else that's going on around the house at the moment, but I did work out a hack to help me when spraying the photoresist onto the brass in darkness - the red cover of the Elegoo printer with an LED strip shoved up inside makes for a perfect ad hoc darkroom light.:

50950183197_61a0217823_b.jpg

Might stick it over me head next Halloween and go as a Cylon....

 

Yours affectionately from the Basestar.

:bye:

Centurion Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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9 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

I won't be in a position to do any spraying/exposing until the end of the week

It's a bit chilly for that sort of thing anyway.

 

Even I more or less followed the etching process so far. There may be hope for me after all.

 

And, in other news, on yahoo yesterday I saw that In Israel they have been printing ribeye steaks. D'you see what you've started?

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6 hours ago, TheBaron said:

An unexpectedly disruptive week happening at the homestead

 

That's way better than my day so far.  Last night the sewage pump in the basement packed in so this morning job was to replace it.  Option 1: Find a plumber, wait a few weeks and pay an exorbitant price to have it swapped out.  Option 2: Get my hands dirty (again).

Sadly, option 2 won out.

 

6 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Certainly it all looks the business inside there now:

 

it certainly does.  Wonderful imagery.

 

while you're at this alchemy stuff, it's worth thinking about any alignment aids or tools/positioning jigs etc.  that you may need in this or future builds - you may as well get all your etching done at one go.

 

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On 12/02/2021 at 21:10, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Paging Ced...

Sorry chaps, recovering from my jab… er, fnaar! :D

 

6 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

It's a bit chilly for that sort of thing anyway.

Pete is on hand (snurf) anyway and far better than me at picking these up…

 

Great PE work Tony, I can't wait to see the next stage :) 

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Wotch modellers.

 

On 16/02/2021 at 16:42, Pete in Lincs said:

It's a bit chilly for that sort of thing anyway.

pay-and-display-sign-CRXXX5.jpg

On 16/02/2021 at 16:42, Pete in Lincs said:

Even I more or less followed the etching process so far. There may be hope for me after all.

You and me both Pete!

As with many processes we come across in this game, what seems reasonably understandable at first suddenly balloons into something a little more perplexing when you encounter the range of variables involved (and the range home setups that people use)

 

. Having @hendie & @Fritag's historically recent etching forays on here to read up on was of a great confidence builder of course, and then thankfully you've a number of PCB fiends on the web to talk you through some of the other options. King & Watkins':

51A72RVPH8L._SX349_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

- also displays a brilliant wealth of knowledge on the practice.

Of course the theory's all very well but at some point you do actually have to stop reading and actually dip a toe in the chloride....

On 16/02/2021 at 16:42, Pete in Lincs said:

And, in other news, on yahoo yesterday I saw that In Israel they have been printing ribeye steaks. D'you see what you've started?

Ahhh.

You've sussed that my next build is going to be a cow I see... 😁

On 16/02/2021 at 18:12, bigbadbadge said:

making PE too, very clever fella.

Whoaa...slow down there Chris. The word 'attempting' needs to go in there somewhere... :laugh:

On 16/02/2021 at 23:02, hendie said:

That's way better than my day so far.  Last night the sewage pump in the basement packed in so this morning job was to replace it.

I'm starting a 'Sewage' thread over in the Chat section Alan.

We have much to discuss.... 😁

On 16/02/2021 at 23:02, hendie said:

it's worth thinking about any alignment aids or tools/positioning jigs etc.  that you may need in this or future builds - you may as well get all your etching done at one go.

Way ahead of you with my cat litter tray and toilet roll photoresist spraying booth! :rofl:

50962445037_b2441a70a9_b.jpg

#inyourfacebluepeter

 

You're quire right of course that a methodology for multiples needs to arise out of these experiments; I salvaged a whole pile of these old Urell 4x5" plate/negative holders from the darkroom at work about a decade ago when they switched the photography area to digital only:

50962344156_0d4378e3ed_b.jpg

They've sat on the shelf since then looking for a problem to solve and I think will make an excellent stacking system for baking-on the photoresist in the oven in multiples I used a single layer earlier to bake two plates side by side earlier and they worked a dream. I need to check though how stainless steel and ferric chloride get on in order to see if they'd do for some kind of etching racks as well.

 

On 16/02/2021 at 23:04, CedB said:

Great PE work Tony, I can't wait to see the next stage

Still a few steps to go yet Ced! 😁

Rex_Matter_of_life_792012bu.jpg

 

To today's update then.

 

As I mentioned above to Pete, it soon becomes apparent that photoetching offers a number of routes, so I don't intend repeating a lot of what is already out there and easy to find, simply to show what worked in this instance.

 

After thoroughly cleaning the surfaces of the brass itself, these were sprayed with photoresist, the first side dried for a couple of minutes with a haridryer to avoid damaging the surface when you turn it over in order to spray the other side. Once this was done, I popped them into the negative holder and baked them inside a biscuit tin in the oven at about 65-70°C for just under 30 mins (the alternative method being to leave to dry for 24hrs at room temp...).

 

Having printed a fresh set of marks - the correct way round this time - I decided to go for the 'hinge' method of aligning and sandwiching the brass as from seeing other people use it: it's both simple and reusable without causing damage to the transparency each time:

50962445027_49301483da_b.jpg

Being a believer about getting some kind of calibration for a new setup, I wanted to find out for myself what exposure levels the combination of light power and distance required, so reverted back to something I haven't done since learning to print b&w photographs back in the darkroom in the late 70s.

 

Based on the (visually pedantic so not worth photos) results, I then exposed the resist on the brass plates at the following two durations as an experiment:

50962445062_527070fc8a_b.jpg

I'd read that over-exposure can affect definition so wanted to see the results for myself - interestingly enough a parallel with over-exposing resin during printing -  the longer exposure on the right in close-up shows slight 'bleed' into the surrounding areas.

 

I then fired the right hand one of these plates into the ferric chloride for the magic stuff:

50961634773_157b091cf9_b.jpg

 

Did it work ok?

Well, yes and no.

This is definitely an extremely poor quality first attempt:

50962571026_57c0243c65_b.jpg

Finer details like the bezels actually exceeded my expectation about what level of detail would actually show up, however the biggest problem as you can see is the fact that in may areas there is a 'fringe' of undissolved metalwhich in some places (like the seats) has not been eaten away nearly enough:

50962571076_dd14f4dd81_b.jpg

In terms of the fringing issue , on closer examination I can see that I carelessly didn't have each sides of the masks lined-up and this is (I think) leaving one side still visible around its counterpart. In terms of those larger areas with not nearly enough metal dissolved away though, I wonder is this due to residual photoresist that I didn't clean off enough when washing after development? It's odd how that latter problem seems to get worse going vertically down from top to bottom though.... :hmmm:

 

A minor consolation is that least my fold ideas about building the pilot/observer IPs as a single integrated unit seem to have worked:

50962671237_3e9c44c8c0_b.jpg

 

I'm going to ruminate on those problems overnight now and have another go tomorrow- by all means shout out if you can see where I'm screwing up.

:bye:

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

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That looks rather good for your first attempt Tony. But it's allways good to see that you want perfect quality for your builds. It will be worth the next try for sure. Only your own satisfaction will do in the end.

Cheers

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59 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

by all means shout out if you can see where I'm screwing up.

:bye:

 

Agitation. 

We're you agitating the etchant at all?

It can make a big difference to the end results.  A fish tank bubbler is ideal, or you can sit there and stir it.

I would try and keep my plates a good half inch or so above the bottom of the tank, and move the bubbler around occasionally to help keep things moving.

Every now and then I'd also give the plates a few shakes to detach some of the bubbles that get caught.

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1 hour ago, TheBaron said:

 

As with many processes we come across in this game, what seems reasonably understandable at first suddenly balloons into something a little more perplexing when you encounter the range of variables involved (and the range home setups that people use)

 

. Having @hendie & @Fritag's historically recent etching forays on here to read up on was of a great confidence builder of course, and then thankfully you've a number of PCB fiends on the web to talk you through some of the other options. King & Watkins':

51A72RVPH8L._SX349_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

- also displays a brilliant wealth of knowledge on the practice.

Of course the theory's all very well but at some point you do actually have to stop reading and actually dip a toe in the chloride....

 

Just the piece of information I've been looking for Baron! I've tried many times to get my Photoetching process to work but to no avail. Mostly with the photo resist film(which is all you can get in the U.S as  far as I know.)  Getting the Images to line up properly bothered me for a while, I finally worked out building the front and back in layers in Photoshop so they and the markers matched. I figure the same idea would work in any paint program.

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54 minutes ago, hendie said:

 

Agitation. 

We're you agitating the etchant at all?

It can make a big difference to the end results.  A fish tank bubbler is ideal, or you can sit there and stir it.

I would try and keep my plates a good half inch or so above the bottom of the tank, and move the bubbler around occasionally to help keep things moving.

Every now and then I'd also give the plates a few shakes to detach some of the bubbles that get caught.

Does this mean that the already etched parts let residual etchants stay close which may then sit on the bits that didnt get the etch going leaving some etchant less strong than other pieces I wonder?

 

Do I know what I am talking about?

 

Yes, can I express it lucidly?

 

Less so.

 

I imagine that the agitation lets unused etchant pop round to add its sixpenn'orth to the mix.

 

Does that explain what I  mean better?

 

yes.

 

Tony for a first try that is blooming magnificent mate, try agitating the tank next time, it allows for a constant supply of fresh unused etchant to get in and do a bit.

 

;)

 

 

(If I keep up a barrage of twaddle some deluded fools might think I have any/some/a fair idea what is going on here...)

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