Author Topic: u-564 my first babysteps in u-boats (Read 4450 times)

Roel · « **on:** 10 Nov , 2015, 01:22 »

Some shots of what I have been up to, inner CMK diesel section,
I bought the CMK sets for a bargain price, but as always, bargains are not what they seem. Pieces were broken, painted with wrong colours, etc.
I first took off all paint from the parts using the famous desinfectant, then I painted them again and fixed the broken parts.

Roel · « **Reply #1 on:** 10 Nov , 2015, 01:25 »

Other side

Roel · « **Reply #2 on:** 10 Nov , 2015, 01:26 »

Some hull work, moved anchor forward and put in the new cheeks

OldNoob · « **Reply #3 on:** 10 Nov , 2015, 02:04 »

Looking good!

Roel · « **Reply #4 on:** 10 Nov , 2015, 07:07 »

Thank you! I'll be posting some more steps, when I get further along

SG · « **Reply #5 on:** 10 Nov , 2015, 11:29 »

Excellent start! I like the diesel room. the weathering's just perfect. Standing by for further WIP shots!

tore · « **Reply #6 on:** 11 Nov , 2015, 01:23 »

Diesel engine model.
To make a correct diesel engine model at this scale is not easy and I am afraid the kit you bought is a bit confusing. The main engines of U-564 were, as far as I can establish, of the Krupp Germaniawerft type installed in 1940-1941. At that time these engines were direct reversible, which means visually they had a large vertical reversing cylinder at the top of the maneuvering stand, see my image below. Assuming my large red arrow pointing to the aft is correct understanding of the model, the kit has a strange large installation at the front of the engines which is free fantasy or based on a misunderstanding when reading the drawings. I suggest you remove same.
As can be seen on my image, the dominant Roots blower is not installed and the camshaft- and crankcasedoors are wrong both in numbers and design. For the rest I guess my image speaks for it shelf.
Tore

Roel · « **Reply #7 on:** 11 Nov , 2015, 05:49 »

Thank you so much for the detailed info. That literally torpedoes this engine from CMK to the bottom of the ocean

Were there engines as the one from CMK on other u-boats?

Roel · « **Reply #8 on:** 11 Nov , 2015, 08:06 »

Quote from: Roel on 11 Nov , 2015, 05:49

Thank you so much for the detailed info. That literally torpedoes this engine from CMK to the bottom of the ocean
Were there engines as the one from CMK on other u-boats?

Dumb question, I answered it myself now. This basically means that the engine in the CMK set is highly inaccurate, I have searched the web for images and found also the one posted.
It seems a lot is missing from the kit and there is a lot of room for improvement to this set!
I will look into this more. Thank you Tore for the information

tore · « **Reply #9 on:** 11 Nov , 2015, 08:23 »

Main engines U-boats.
The short story about the main engines of the WW2uboats started with basically two manufacturers having contracts with the German navy to design and build U-boat main engines with the same bore and stroke, output,revs and physical dimensions, they should be made in two execution, 6 cylinders and 9 cylinders. The 6 cylinders were destined for the VII Cs . The manufacturers were Krupp Germanische Werft (GW) and MAN (Motorenwerke Augsburg Nurenberg). The GW engines were conservatively designed having mechanical driven supercharger, Roots blower, which should only be clutched in at high output and revs. The MAN engines were very advanced for its time, having exhaustgas driven turbochargers allways in operation, Buchi system. The experience with the two types of engines turned out that the MAN type was less reliable, but had a lower specific fuelconsumption and ,if I may say, was the "Ferrari" of the two. The GW was the oldfashioned reliable workhorse, having a relatively high specific fuelconsumption. In the latter part of the WW2 the German Navy had a preference for the GWengines as ME for the VII Cs, but did not have capacity to exchange the MAN engines to GW. I guess I shall assume the majority of the main engines for the VII Cs may be GW engines allthough I have not any statistics for this assumption.
Tore

Roel · « **Reply #10 on:** 11 Nov , 2015, 08:47 »

Looking at both engine types, the kit engine looks mostly like the GW type.
The foolish thing is that the CMK kit states that the engine is a MAN GW Diesel F46A, which if I understand correctly does not exist. It is either one or the other. I wonder now where CMK got their plans.

tore · « **Reply #11 on:** 11 Nov , 2015, 09:16 »

MAN/ GW engines.
Below is a sketch of both MAN and GW enginetypes. It is hard to find the MAN turbocharger on your kit.
Tore

Roel · « **Reply #12 on:** 11 Nov , 2015, 14:00 »

I also bought the CMK kit for the IXC and that has the "correct" engine with a supercharger, so the idea is that the engine in the CMK interior diesel engine kit represents the GW F46Ap engine.
I built the entire thing according to the kits manual and added some details myself. Mainly it is the kit engine that my pictures show. Do you maybe have some more dimensions on how the engine looked? I am wondering what to add to improve upon it.
Here is the kit description for building the engine itself, thank you again for your help!
Regards,
Roel

tore · « **Reply #13 on:** 12 Nov , 2015, 06:21 »

CMK Kit main engine.
The nearest engine type the kit sketch shows is possibly a 6 cylinder GW engine without Roots blower and reversing cylinder. The text on the drawing says it is a MAN and GW engine which is of course impossible, however the GW type nomination is correct. The output and rpm stated for the engine is completely wrong. Output,rpm and other parameters can be seen at the testbed graphs below. My suggestion would be you make a model of the 6 cyl GW engine using the kit cylinderblock and valves having square crank casedoors and 3 camshaft casing doors. Fitting a reversing cylinder as per enclosed drawing, fit a Roots blower with air inletcasing green/red above the doublecone main shaft frictionclutch as shown on my drawing below. As to the scale of the drawing you may use the cylinderdiameter which is 400mm as indicated. What kind of equipment the C,F and H is pretending to be is a riddle for me as no such aux. or attachment existed on the GW VIIC engines, so just ignore that. You`ll find a number of engine photos on my thread if you need further details.
Tore

Roel · « **Reply #14 on:** 12 Nov , 2015, 08:05 »

First step taken, ripped the engine out. I think CMK just copied the outlines for the engine from Anatomy of the ship, the type VII, since there are a lot of similarities between the drawing on page 76 and the CMK kit. I have already gone through the entire thread, but could not find other images of the engine except from some shots of the side. I have started to gather more info, even a booklet in polish:)

Roel · « **Reply #15 on:** 14 Nov , 2015, 17:27 »

After examining all the drawings, I can say that the CMK engine room model is definitely flawed in a number of ways. The location of several parts is just plain incorrect, a lot of pieces on the engine are simply not there and it has been mislabeled in the build manual.... Now to figure out how to scratch build this in a proper way adding some of the missing part and tubes/valves

OldNoob · « **Reply #16 on:** 14 Nov , 2015, 20:16 »

with enough old plastic cards and spru you can do just about anything. I am sure you can rework it.
I used to pick up spare plastic cards from motels. i would ask the receptionist if she could spare some blank plastic card keys , and then explain why, i would usually get like 4 or 5.
Thrift stores often have a bunch of broken printers out back, their plastic casings can be used for modeling also.

tore · « **Reply #17 on:** 15 Nov , 2015, 01:07 »

Modeling mainengine.
As long as you don`t have access to a 3 D printer you may use the polystyrene which you find in many packingboxes. Cut it in suitable blocks, glue it together in an approximate shape, cover it with epoxy plastic and do the finishing by filing and sanding. I have done this on my modification of the Revell VIIC 1:72 kit to make the Norwegian superstructure/ Tower.
You could use the exhaust- and inletvalves belonging to the kit. However most of the engine room installation consist of pipes and valves. It is impossible at this scale to incorporate all, but you should try to accommodate the common exhaust pipe along the engine eventually to the pressurehull which include the inner main exhaust valve being fairly dominating aft of the engine. I have discussed this in detail with Simon in my thread a year or two back. Correct arrangement of the crankcase- and camshaftdoors are easy to make by thin sheet plastic.
Tore

tore · « **Reply #18 on:** 15 Nov , 2015, 01:57 »

Below is the part of my model made of epoxy covered polystyrene .
Tore

Roel · « **Reply #19 on:** 15 Nov , 2015, 03:15 »

Thank you for all the tips! I just need to figure out now where to start from, but yes the exhaust pipe is very dominant and should be part of it. That is completely logical:)
I am going to go to a hobbyshop in another city to see what kind of evergreen stuff they have. I have used some of that kind of material before, so I may try to do it also here.
I also found a terrific aid to help me do the scaling on the parts, maybe useful for others too: http://scale-models.nl/scalc.html
I helps you calculate scales:)

Capt Kremin · « **Reply #20 on:** 16 Nov , 2015, 13:29 »

Hi Roel et al,

I use this from my windows desktop just unzip and run, no installing required.

Regards
Jon

Roel · « **Reply #21 on:** 17 Nov , 2015, 01:34 »

Thank you! This will come in very handy:) Now only if I could find some time. That is now the issue, but well patience is a true virtue