# Bandai Yamato 1/350 build



## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

I decided to get back into the hobby of building models. Unfortunately for me, I picked a rather interesting one to start off with:

The 1/350 scale Space Battleship Yamato, the one with the remote control and special effect gimmicks. I thought I was out of luck, as these kits were discontinued a while back and my last source in Japan ran out of them sometime around 6 months to a year ago. In the meantime, this approximately $320 kit started selling for nearly three times the original price on auction sites. Nonetheless, I managed so source one for about $270 plus $110 shipping and five days later: it's in my hands.

Several people built these before, and it's pretty neat with the lighting and sound effects: wave motion gun, wave motion engine, and moving turrets and AA guns using an IR remote.

This simply isn't enough.

Bandai also released several preassembled "Soul of Chogokin" Yamato models that are around 1/625 scale and do pretty much the same thing, just no motorized guns. In fact they can do a bit more - they also have pre-recorded music from the series as well.

So the model uses a controller that is encased in a sealed plastic housing that mounts in the ship somewhere forward of the main guns. It has leads to the IR receiver, outputs for LED lighting, outputs for the motors that operate the guns (these may actually be servos - I hope), an output for sound that goes into the base/stand where there's a speaker and audio jack, and a power input that comes from batteries in the stand/base.

What I hope to do is chuck the controller unit and roll my own with an Arduino, a WAV Trigger (more on that later), and a PWC controller for the LEDs. I'll figure out the motors later once I know exactly what they are using. Both Bandai ships use sound effects available on one of the Yamato CD's as extra tracks, and I just happen to have that CD. Why the WAV trigger? because the SoC unit is polyphonic. I assume the model kit is also polyphonic. The WAV trigger allows me to mix, fade and loop sounds as necessary - so the main guns will swivel, elevate cannons, and fire, all with appropriately-timed sound effects. Since the ship can fire laser as well as cannon shells, it will have the option of firing both. The biggest issue I see is getting RGB LEDs into the cannons themselves (they are brass). The WAV Trigger will also be a jukebox, so aside from the 4 or 5 brief melodies the SoC unit plays, this will have some undetermined amount of CD-quality audio to play.

The only problems I see now are where to put the WAV trigger. I don't have many choices - I was thinking of repurposing the speaker lines to RX and TX and putting the thing in the base where there's tons of room. This will also preserve the stereo sound. This will need to be determined later, as the ship itself is fairly well-packed and I may not have a large enough void for it.

The only other problem I have is my painting skills. I haven't the slightest clue how to "weather" a ship, and hope to get some tips here eventually.

That's about it for now. I'll update later when I get the Arduino, PWC controller, and WAV Trigger talking to each other over the weekend.


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## Fozzie (May 25, 2009)

The WAV shield is pretty large, especially when mounted on a standard UNO. Unless you have a pretty huge void in that ship you're going to have to put it in the base.

I think you should put it in the base for another reason--accessibility. If you want to tweak what you've done programming or music wise, you're out of luck if all that is embedded in the model.

From one Arduino maker to another...just my two cents! :smile2:


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Fozzie said:


> The WAV shield is pretty large, especially when mounted on a standard UNO. Unless you have a pretty huge void in that ship you're going to have to put it in the base.


It's not the WAV shield, it's the WAV Trigger. It's a separate board about 6.5cm x 6.5cm and depending on how I wire it up, it's only a few mm tall.

The base is likely where it's going to go, that will give the best sound output options. There's an existing 4 wire connector on one of the base arms that fits in a slot on the bottom of the ship. Two wires are for power, the other two are mono sound from the ship to the speaker in the base. The Arduino is a pro mini and that will be going in the void left by the old controller. If the WAV Trigger goes in the base, it'll have mono sound (with the existing speaker) and stereo sound through the audio jack.


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## teslabe (Oct 20, 2007)

rworne said:


> I decided to get back into the hobby of building models. Unfortunately for me, I picked a rather interesting one to start off with:
> 
> The 1/350 scale Space Battleship Yamato, the one with the remote control and special effect gimmicks. I thought I was out of luck, as these kits were discontinued a while back and my last source in Japan ran out of them sometime around 6 months to a year ago. In the meantime, this approximately $320 kit started selling for nearly three times the original price on auction sites. Nonetheless, I managed so source one for about $270 plus $110 shipping and five days later: it's in my hands.
> 
> ...


Welcome to Hobbytalk..... I looked at the instructions and the motors for the canons do look like close-loop/custom servos, I don't recommend opening them up unless you don't plan on using them again,
I think the box is part of there gear support.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

teslabe said:


> Welcome to Hobbytalk..... I looked at the instructions and the motors for the canons do look like close-loop/custom servos, I don't recommend opening them up unless you don't plan on using them again,
> I think the box is part of there gear support.



Apparently the gearboxes for the main guns do both rotations and elevation.
The side AA guns is a motor hooked up to a rack that slides back and forth, to make the guns strafe left and right.

As for the servos, do you think Bandai would roll their own? Or would they be some off-the-shelf unit. The magic may be something else happening in the gearbox.

Well, curiosity go the best of me. No servos. Looks like two small motors - one to drive the gear to rotate the gun, the other to operate a screw to change the elevation. At least that's what I think they do. No need to disassemble further for now. See attached pic.


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## teslabe (Oct 20, 2007)

rworne said:


> Apparently the gearboxes for the main guns do both rotations and elevation.
> The side AA guns is a motor hooked up to a rack that slides back and forth, to make the guns strafe left and right.
> 
> As for the servos, do you think Bandai would roll their own? Or would they be some off-the-shelf unit. The magic may be something else happening in the gearbox.
> ...


Looking at the board, I thought there might be a limit switch but it's just the leads for the motor's +/- and case. I have some small 3.7 gram servos I'll bring into work on Wednesday for you to look at, they might work for some of the guns, I still think the Neo-Pixals and some optical fiber would work with the brass tubing. As far as the servos in the kit, I think the mechanics are custom but the PWM signal should be the same, bring one to work and lets look at it with a scope.


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

FYI, the main gun elevation is produced by tabs rolling over a pinion, not any actual control. When you rotate the turret the guns will move, elevate into firing position.

It would take some serious re-working to make the guns elevate and lay into a specific firing position on command.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Steve H said:


> FYI, the main gun elevation is produced by tabs rolling over a pinion, not any actual control. When you rotate the turret the guns will move, elevate into firing position.
> 
> It would take some serious re-working to make the guns elevate and lay into a specific firing position on command.


That's odd - the guy over on TrekWorks built a couple of these (stock) and he had control of the rotation and elevation of the guns. He demoed it on his YouTube channel (advance to 8:45). It works pretty much as you described, but it appears you can rotate the pinion as well.

[ame]https://youtu.be/KcjW4U3dyeM?t=8m46s[/ame]


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

While I wait to show some of the parts to teslabe, I am continuing to work on the electronics.

Nothing to show yet, but i have this setup:

1x SparkFun Pro Micro (3.3v version)
1x TLC5847 24-channel PWM LED controller (will eventually be two or three of these)
1x Wav Trigger board

The WAV Trigger is loaded up with various sound effects
Currently, my test code can play the "rotating turret sound", and the moment it completes, fires the guns. Audio and LEDs are synced. This works for both "cartridge" and "shock cannon" (laser) mode.
Music plays well enough, and everything is polyphonic unless you try to play another music track or hit the stop button.

Now that I know it's all working, I tore the code apart again and added pseudo-threading so everything can run "at the same time". WAV Trigger has an update thread, and the buttons have their own polling thread w/software debouncing. Engines, Guns, WMG, and the Jukebox each will have their own thread. If I run into difficulties with it doing too much at once, I can always split up tasks on multiple Arduinos.

I'm currently tearing apart the code for the guns and converting them into a state machine that will work well with the threads.

Only issue I am having is with the sound effects. 

For the SoC Yamato, the SoP Yamato and the 1/350 Yamato, all use pretty much the same audio effects. The SoC 2199 Yamato has updated sound effects which do not exist anywhere but on the BD discs.

There's a real good cannon SE near the end of EP 25 of Yamato 2199, but I had one heck of a time trying to separate it out of the background music. But it's done. :grin2:

Need to get a cleaner gun rotation sound - I located a good one on Yamato 2199, Ep 6. I'll get that one when I update the SD card in the WAV Trigger again.

Something needs to be done about the gun servos/motors, but that's a battle for another day.

Each of the cannon barrels is brass. Like completely solid brass aside from a deep enough dimple in the front to make it look like it's hollow. They are tapered too, these are going to be a pain to put LEDs in them,


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## teslabe (Oct 20, 2007)

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1411

Good morning rworne,
I'm sure you plan to replace the solid brass tubing with hollow, let me know the size, I might have some to get you started, also I'll bring in a sample of how to use a Neo-Pixal LED with that tubing, this way every canon can have a unique effect.....:thumbsup: Did you plan to use something like this 16 channel servo controller for some of those canons?


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

Huh. You're right, elevation does seem to be controllable. All I ever saw was that the elevation and laying of the guns was synched to turret rotation. So,bonus! 

I have problems with some of the design choices made in creating this specific kit but there's not a doubt in my mind that it's a magnificent chunk of plastic. Have fun!


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

I now have a bunch of code that handles the gun firing and sound on a per-turret basis, though I only have enough parts now to do two turrets. There are five turrets all together with 45 LED signals to consider: 3 lines per RGB LED * 3 barrels * 5 guns. Colors for the LEDs still look a bit off even though they are gamma-corrected - this is because the individual colors are offset from each other and reflect off the inside of my test "barrel" - a length of shrink tubing.

While the Arduino is busy firing the guns, it is still free to do other tasks - like run the engine effects and sounds and wait for additional commands. More experimentation to follow before I start putting plastic together...

Here's a demo video. Please excuse some of the errors describing the LEDs and some of the button pushing. The setup for the video was 180 degrees off from how I use it to develop the code.


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## teslabe (Oct 20, 2007)

Excellent work so far, multitasking from an Arduino Pro-Mini, I see endless possibilities with that.......:grin2::nerd:


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Spent some time reworking the cannon firing sequence to a C++ class/Arduino Library. That was an hour well spent.

1 hour of coding to do the first main gun, just five more minutes to do the remaining 4 guns, and they all (should) work. I'm still limited to just two at the moment (those work fine) until I get some more TLC5947 boards.

Since the current goal is to cram everything onto one Arduino, I need to be as efficient as possible.

No building as of yet - I am waiting to get together with teslabe to check out how Bandai did the turrets. No need to reinvent the wheel if these can be used as is. I'm also trying to source new brass cannons for the ship. I see someone already makes custom brass barrels, so I need to see if I can get a set where the barrel is hollow all the way through, not only a few millimeters like the Bandai ones. So even if I manage to get hollow barrels, the size is just too small for an LED. Each gun will need to be lit using fiber optic strands.


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

I'm not commenting much on this thread, as one does not trifle with wizards and their works lightly. 

Most of any comments I might make are more towards the ship itself, the plusses and minuses of changes and whatnot. 

For example, as much as I know it's nice to have brass cannon barrels, for the use and application desired I think it would be perfectly fine to pull a RTV mold off the kit barrels and cast in resin so you can run either LEDs or fiber optic thru them.

Conversely, tapping someone to tool up replacements in 3D printing may also be an option, as that might give a totally hollow barrel. 

I don't think the barrel movement (elevation and laying to battery) would be affected by a change in materials. It's all gearing and pivots and pinions.

Just a thought.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Steve H said:


> I don't think the barrel movement (elevation and laying to battery) would be affected by a change in materials. It's all gearing and pivots and pinions.
> 
> Just a thought.


Looking at how it all goes together, the barrel is pushed up, but it requires gravity to lower back down. This is why I'm assuming they used heavy brass, otherwise the barrels would tend to stick when elevated. On one of TrekWorks' videos (his 2nd build) it had just this problem on one of the turrets, despite the heavy barrel.


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

rworne said:


> Looking at how it all goes together, the barrel is pushed up, but it requires gravity to lower back down. This is why I'm assuming they used heavy brass, otherwise the barrels would tend to stick when elevated. On one of TrekWorks' videos (his 2nd build) it had just this problem on one of the turrets, despite the heavy barrel.


I think the brass cannon barrels are as much 'tradition' and 'prestige' as anything else. Metal gun barrels have been a 'thing' in ship and tank modeling for some years now, stemming from the old days of inaccurate or just plain poor stock kit plastic barrels ( for example, the seam in a multi-part plastic tank gun)

Heck, it might go all the way back to when people used hypodermic needles for machine gun barrels in aircraft. 

But saying that, it may well be that the gun laying function has the weight of the brass barrel factored in. I would think that careful polishing of the hinge and pivot points would help in that. Also, if the mechanism is THAT precision balanced there may be issues with running LED wires or fiber optic thru the barrel, causing binding.

So, fantasy time. Would this even be possible? 3D printed replacement barrels, printed in metal, hollow, with a space in the 'breech' area for a micro LED.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Quick update:

I was getting tired of wiring up buttons to test effects and also wanted a more complete setup. So I ordered more parts.

The first new Arduino board failed shortly after hooking it up, I have no idea why at the moment, but the replacement came in today and it was plug-and play.
One Arduino is handling all the sound effects and lighting, and it "multitasks" so you can fire multiple cannons, fire the cannons while the engine is on, play music in the background. I'm starting to get near the limits of what the system can do right about now, so I'm looking at some more optimizations.

Control of this beast is now over Bluetooth LE. I can create any number of effects and automate them from my iPhone.

So the effects are now being tweaked: the engines look pretty good at the moment, the wave motion gun has a bit more work to do on it. The sequence for the WMG is very long, and I plan on doing what the Soul of Chogokin does: play the long "power up" sequence, and any time during that sequence, you can fire the gun. If you wait too long, it just spools down.

I'm also starting to implement the "rules" for how the ship operates in the show. This is what's planned: 

Cannons do not fire until all guns are targeted/finished moving. 
Cannons do not fire at the same time, they fire by barrel, then by gun.
Shock cannons (lasers) follow the same rules, but they fire all barrels on each gun and multiple guns can fire at the same time.
When the WMG charges up, the engines go off and the ship's lights dim
Engine startup is a long involved process with first the sub nozzles firing, the flywheel spinning up, then they "dump the clutch" at 120% output and start the main engine. It'll do this, but also have a faster startup where the engine will just fire.

There will also be a stirring selection of background music for atmosphere or to recreate scenes from the show.

Here's the video.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Steve H said:


> So, fantasy time. Would this even be possible? 3D printed replacement barrels, printed in metal, hollow, with a space in the 'breech' area for a micro LED.


No fantasy. Shapeways will do 3D printing in brass. It's just not cheap.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*Cannons*

An issue popped up with the brass cannons - I cannot get anyone to drill them out or make me a set of cannons in similar material with a hollow barrel.

Supposedly it can be done, it's just time consuming and not worth anyone's while to do such a small job - it's also prohibitively expensive, since there's 15 of them to do. I really do not want to use hollow brass rods because there is a slight taper to each barrel.


So off to find another way to do it. Shapeways apparently can 3D print in brass (or other metals). So I broke out the CAD software and micrometer, forced my way up the learning curve, and drew up a set of barrels that should be OK for Shapeways to print out.

Unfortunately for me, they won't print barrels in groups, I need to pay for each one individually - we are looking at $300+ here for the work (more than the cost of the entire model kit). So to group them, I'll have to make a sprue connecting all of them so they are one mold. I don't know the cost offhand, but it will be quit a bit less than $300. Attachment is my current work on the barrels. All done except for the sprue.

Update:
CAD drawings are done and single barrel samples are ordered from Shapeways: 3x regular white plastic, 3x hi-def resin, and 1x raw brass. Brass comes out to $14 per barrel, and there are 15 of them. So gotta tread carefully and look at all the options.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*More CAD stuff*

Working with the CAD tools. Why reinvent the wheel when Bandai already did it for me?

Reproduced one of the gearboxes in TurboCAD for printing on my 3D printer. This is so I can customize the interior to hold the mechanism to move/elevate the guns - and it'll be a drop-in replacement.

Still waiting on the gun barrel samples from Shapeways.


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## MartyS (Mar 11, 2014)

rworne said:


> Brass comes out to $14 per barrel, and there are 15 of them.


Yikes, at that price you are 1/3 the way to a new Sherline lathe, even closer if you get a used one...


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

3D printing is magic 

I was wondering about printing the new cannon barrels with the breech block areas so it could be hollow all the way thru (easier to mount a LED) but then I recalled the turret build requires the breechblocks to be individual and different due to the elevation and gun laying cam and pinion, so I guess just making an easy to repeat hollow barrel is the best way to go.

I don't think the 3D printing process could handle making hollow barrels for the AA guns. What's needed on those is some kind of elevation mechanism. I think the kit just moves them side to side.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*First prototype gearbox*

Pulled the Makerbot out of mothballs and fired it up.

It still has the annoying issue of the corners of prints curling up, but that can be fixed. The first test print came out great.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Steve H said:


> 3D printing is magic
> 
> I was wondering about printing the new cannon barrels with the breech block areas so it could be hollow all the way thru (easier to mount a LED) but then I recalled the turret build requires the breechblocks to be individual and different due to the elevation and gun laying cam and pinion, so I guess just making an easy to repeat hollow barrel is the best way to go.
> 
> I don't think the 3D printing process could handle making hollow barrels for the AA guns. What's needed on those is some kind of elevation mechanism. I think the kit just moves them side to side.


Brass is likely going to be ruled out completely. The only thing that seems to work is the resin-based printing, since the wall thickness of the secondary guns is less than .5mm. Even that may be ruled out because it may be simply too fragile.

The AA guns may not be so bad - and they won't require 3-D printing. A Japanese modeler did a 1/500 scale with lit AA guns, and he just used lengths of coated fiber optic for the barrels and plastic sleeving for the thicker portions of the barrel. It worked out great. Here's the video of what they did:


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Steve H said:


> 3D printing is magic
> 
> I was wondering about printing the new cannon barrels with the breech block areas so it could be hollow all the way thru (easier to mount a LED) but then I recalled the turret build requires the breechblocks to be individual and different due to the elevation and gun laying cam and pinion, so I guess just making an easy to repeat hollow barrel is the best way to go.
> 
> I don't think the 3D printing process could handle making hollow barrels for the AA guns. What's needed on those is some kind of elevation mechanism. I think the kit just moves them side to side.


Here's the relevant portion of the assembly instructions. 

The parts that elevate it are in fig 11-1, Y1, Y2, and Y3. The barrels plug into these.
Y5 rotates and that is what elevates the barrels.

When the samples come in I'll be looking at how it all goes together.


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

Thank you for posting the instruction illo. I forgot they actually put some English on the pages, it almost confused me to see that 

I am always in awe of Bandai's attention to detail. 'barrel alignment tool'. Of course you might need that because stuff moves when you're putting an assembly like that together. man.

I was going to suggest optic fiber and plastic or maybe putty for lit AA gun barrels but you beat me to that.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Steve H said:


> Thank you for posting the instruction illo. I forgot they actually put some English on the pages, it almost confused me to see that


Hmm, there's no English at all on the Bandai instructions, the image was from someone who translated the instructions to English.

Link is here


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## Jomi (Jul 20, 2017)

Amazing work! love the battleship Yamato


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

rworne said:


> Hmm, there's no English at all on the Bandai instructions, the image was from someone who translated the instructions to English.
> 
> Link is here


Well, no wonder I didn't recall English on this specific kit, but the job done looks very much like what Bandai has done with their Star Wars kits, it fooled me!

When the giant 1/350 kit came out it was part of yet another abortive 'push' to think about considering having a discussion about maybe forming a committee to discuss somewhat the possible idea of trying to launch Yamato in the USA because of once again the dread spectre of a live action 'Star Blazers' movie rearing it's terrible unnatural head (spoiler: nothing happened. again. lather, rinse, repeat.), so partial English instructions would not be impossible. (but they wouldn't translate any of the supplemental booklets, oh no, no, too scary for non-Japanese, impossible.  )


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Wow.

I started the build today.

Just put together the base for a fit-check, along with the stock electronics. This gets you to the point where you hook up the electronics and run a system check to make sure everything works.

Applying power, the guns rotated and homed themselves. The remote works pretty well - the pulse laser guns swivel back and forth, making their normal sound - well normal, but a bit muddled?!? Started the engine - woah - sound is totally crappy. WMG, sounds like a severely over compressed MP3 file or a super-cheap kid's toy.

But all the motors and LEDs work as they should albeit with noisy gears. I spent 15 minutes going over all the connections, hooked up an external speaker (which made it sound even worse), and came to the conclusion that my control unit was somehow defective. Then I went to Youtube and looked another builds and listened carefully - no, that's actually the way it's _*supposed*_ to sound.

I was totally confused at this point. I have several Soul of Chogokin ships from Bandai that use pretty much the same effects and they sound WAY better - ah, but the SoC units came out in 2011 and 2014, the 1/350 model came out in 2007. The effects in this thing are 10 years old, and it shows.

Now I have no issues ripping out the stock parts.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*3D printer progress*

Nearly finished with the CAD drawing of the "brain" controller box. Here's the latest prototype.

It's pretty much usable as it is, but the cross-shaped beam that supports the electrical contacts needs to be made a little beefier since it will be seeing stress when the model is put on and removed from the stand. In the attachments, you see the fitment of the original box, the new one, and a side-by-side of the old box and the new one. The PC board on the top of that photo is the old "brain". I haven't moved the wires over yet.

Access for the USB port is on the forward edge, and there's tons of room left inside. I haven't decided yet whether to seal it up like the original or leave it open.

The wiring won't be the original configuration: red and black are power - that stays the same, but the yellow wires are for the speaker connection in the original (speaker is in the base). In my implementation, they will be the serial communication to the WAV trigger that will reside in the base, along with the power supply and speaker(s). There's a lot of room in the base. It takes 3 "D" size cells that I have no use for, so the space ultimately can be used for other things.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*Sample parts came in!*

Solving the hollow barrel problem:

I has some sample parts come in from Shapeways. 3x high resolution clear, 3x white plastic, and 1x brass cannons.

Between the three, the brass is by far the best, but it's $14 per copy. The others are $4.70 or so for the clear and under $2 for the white. Brass required no post-processing, it's ready to go. The plastic and resin both required progression drilling of the barrel to get it to the 1.5mm diameter. Then a 1.8mm drill for the first 2-3mm of the barrel.

Fit check for all three materials is perfect. The fatter portion of the barrels are very tight, and I did not want to force it in so in some shots it may look a few mm too long.

It's also now obvious why Bandai used brass for the barrels. The entire barrel is in front of the pivot point and gravity returns the barrels to the "down" position. They are quite heavy for their size. The other materials are also heavy enough it seems to work as well.

The last photo is with the all brass barrels: the two stock barrels next to the one I created.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*A setback*

This is the second time this has happened...

Apparently K&S has been backordering a lot of their brass tubing in particular sizes. So supplies of it are scarce. My go-to for impulse buys (big internet company with an "A" for the first letter) happened to have it in stock (3rd party, fulfilled by A).

Ordered it and at the last moment, I get an email saying it is now out of stock. Well, out of stock for the $4 or so per package I originally ordered. It's in stock if I now want to spend $30-35 for the same thing.

I did not bother to check the 3rd party to see if they pulled it after the sale and relisted it at a higher price. This HAS happened to me before.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Quick update:
Still waiting for some parts to come in, mainly the fiber optic cable and the brass tubing.

In the meantime, I've played with some servos and while I was trying to figure out how to make them work for controlling the cannons on the ship, I got ahold of a couple of motor shields and tried to retrofit the stock motors and gearboxes to work with the Arduino. Surprisingly, this has worked out great and I still have a few spare pins to try to implement the stock IR controller.

Paint has come in along with some various parts.

Some issues have been worked around:
1. Centering the guns is simple enough. There are two limit switches on each stock gearbox and one switch for detecting the center of travel. The center switch isn't exactly on center, it's about 20 degrees off. This is so the ship can easily and quickly home the cannons each time it is turned on. Rotate until it hits a limit switch or center. If it hits a limit switch, reverse direction. If it hits the center switch,change direction towards the center and run the motor for 1 second. This centers the cannons.
2. Pulse lasers/AA guns are a simple motor that drives some racks that rotate the guns. These can run while the cannons are operating
3. Elevation motors turn in sync with cannon rotation motors, so the cannons do not change elevation while rotating. Separate buttons controls the cannon elevation. The stock controller cannot do this.
4. Cannons can rotate/change elevation/fire in any order simultaneously. Stock controller only does one at a time. Both my controller and the stock controller control the cannons in two groups - front and back.
5. Engine fires. While the engine is spooling up, ships's weapons (aside from the Wave Motion Gun) are operable. Stock only does the engines/bridge lights simultaneously.
6. Wave motion gun powers down the engines, guns are inoperative. This is not a technological limitation, but enforcing how it works in the show.
7. Still does sound effects and plays music.
8. As a bonus, I'm planning on having the model act as a fully stock model when using the IR remote.

I still am meeting my goal of having everything controlled by one Arduino (Adafruit Feather BLE).

All of this is controlled via an iPhone application. Screenshots of the work-in-progress app are attached. I'll need to prep a video demo of what I have so far, but I'm having too much fun as most of the automation and effects are now fully functional. Only the nightmare of wiring the LEDs remain.


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

Excellent modifications, everything sounds 'to spec' in my opinion. Breathtaking work!

There are two things that the 1/350 kit did poorly that I wonder if you have considered addressing, if it would even be possible.

1. Bow Missile covers. If I recall correctly the stock kit has this as a manual feature, with small levers sticking out, and a faux missile sticking partially out. I found this shockingly inelegant. I wondered why Bandai couldn't have used a motor and a camming setup to cycle the missile doors and expose the tubes. I mean, obviously it was likely a cost and space available issue but maybe the missile covers motor might have done double duty for the rocket anchor winch, which I also found somewhat crude in execution.

2.covers for the Counter missile batteries P/S. Again, inelegant execution compared to the animation. 

Might be impossible to motorize both those things, but maybe worth looking at?


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Steve H said:


> Excellent modifications, everything sounds 'to spec' in my opinion. Breathtaking work!
> 
> There are two things that the 1/350 kit did poorly that I wonder if you have considered addressing, if it would even be possible.
> 
> ...


I haven't begun to look at the bow missiles. I have a pretty good idea of how they work, and it may be possible to automate it and shave the levers. The missile batteries on the port and starboard side (or is it only one side on this model?) are crudely done with a removable panel, along with the wings. Automating the wings would be totally awesome, but I do not think anything I have on hand has the torque necessary to do it that will fit in the crammed space inside the hull. I need to fit in the Arduino with two stacked shields first. At least I know those will fit. The rocket anchors also have an issue, because the controls to reel them in are two wheels sticking up through the deck in front of Main Gun 1.

Bandai did a much better go-over with the 1/500 scale. That one I believe was made from the same 3D plans they used for the ship in the show. And the pictures I've seen of the detailing are insane.

The problem (or big worry) I have is that I last worked on models as a teenager. Working on something this rare (as in hard to get) and expensive after a 30+ year hiatus is nerve-wracking. And I was never that good a builder back then either. I should have started with something a bit smaller, but so far it's going well enough.


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## teslabe (Oct 20, 2007)

rworne said:


> I haven't begun to look at the bow missiles. I have a pretty good idea of how they work, and it may be possible to automate it and shave the levers. The missile batteries on the port and starboard side (or is it only one side on this model?) are crudely done with a removable panel, along with the wings. Automating the wings would be totally awesome, but I do not think anything I have on hand has the torque necessary to do it that will fit in the crammed space inside the hull. I need to fit in the Arduino with two stacked shields first. At least I know those will fit. The rocket anchors also have an issue, because the controls to reel them in are two wheels sticking up through the deck in front of Main Gun 1.
> 
> Bandai did a much better go-over with the 1/500 scale. That one I believe was made from the same 3D plans they used for the ship in the show. And the pictures I've seen of the detailing are insane.
> 
> The problem (or big worry) I have is that I last worked on models as a teenager. Working on something this rare (as in hard to get) and expensive after a 30+ year hiatus is nerve-wracking. And I was never that good a builder back then either. I should have started with something a bit smaller, but so far it's going well enough.


Bring in the instructions tomorrow and we can talk about the wings if you'd like.


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

The key problem with the wings is, it would be very difficult to develop the needed 'interleaving' feature to make the wings extend as far as they show in the original anime yet still fit within the space available (let alone the 'real' space available in the hull taking into account interior features). 

Many fans simply ignore the wings unless their static build has them fully extended. Then they tend to scratch build in order to get a slightly more aerodynamic wing instead of the slab that usually results from a moving, mechanical wing.

I've said in the past that I have some disagreements with stylistic choices made in this kit by Bandai (too much influence from the Japanese Playstation Games Yamato design the main) but it's still a very impressive kit. 

There's some nice history on the kit here: Yamato Models by Bandai | CosmoDNA and searching around might uncover other discussions (such as the beautiful kit in 1/700 made for the Japanese DVD 'hi def' release of the first Yamato series).


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

Actually the wings show some promise. I just looked at the instructions.

They are spring-loaded, and when the wings are stowed, pushing in the tip of the wing will allow them to pop out. The wings are each in two segments that expand, like a folding fan. All I need to do is worry about retracting them. A short retraction will let them pop out - but whatever I use to do this will let them "ease out". A long retraction should pull them in until they latch. This will be fun to tackle. It all depends on how much room there is to work with.

Oh, and Bandai made it easy for me it seems. The outer wing segment has a top and bottom half. So I can run a cable out to the wingtip where I get more of a lever-arm action and possibly still keep it hidden. See attached.

The bow missiles on the other hand are a disaster. I thought the levers opened the hatch and exposed the missiles - nooooo.

You push in on the hatch with a finger and it pops in and the missile pops out. You pull back on the lever to retract each missile to allow the hatch to close. Yes, three levers for each side. What were they thinking?


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

The wings, while the 'folding fan' approach does a good job (and was sort of made canon in Yamato 2199), it still doesn't make the wings as large as seen in the original series. Plus the need to have the edge double as 'door cover' when folding means it's not the aerodynamic shape as shown in the show. (granted, the entire reasoning for the wings is...well, they exist because it looks cool I guess. I don't think the lift they provide is really necessary given the incredible thrust of even the secondary engines  )

Those bow missile hatches, I just don't know. I *think* they wanted to motorize them and may have run into a cost/benefit problem, the addition of the motor, the mechanism and the needed 'space' for the command function may have threatened to push the cost over the allotted target.

What I envision is something like a motor connected to a screwjack driving a pinion up and down, so the hatch covers cycle like the show, top middle bottom open, maybe with an option for a slight pause so only the topmost are open. The existing springs hold the doors closed. The pinion would be pressing on the levers/pins/whatever holding the doors open.

I think the existing 'missile holds the door open, retract to close' deal may be a fumbling way to work within the boundaries of a similar concept that had to be canceled. I'm sure the project head insisted the doors HAD to open because the easy solution would be "hey, we had to ditch the motor, so we'll just have the doors snap in place and mod the part so it won't move" and boss man said "no way, dude!" 

The rocket anchor winch, that's just a mess. It would need a motor, a clutch (so it stops when the chain is run all the way out or fully wound) and another clutch that could switch from port to starboard anchors. My thought was MAYBE the missile door motor could have done double duty (a controlled switching gearbox would be called for I think) but that seems like a fairly complicated setup. It might not be possible in the space available. 

If there was a feature I would consider omitting from the kit, I would pick the rocket anchors. As fun as that can be, it's not as visually interesting as the turrets and all that. If you can't SHOOT the anchor, what's the point? 

But that's me. I would also do things like fill in the limber holes and try to re-sculpt some of the hull (the curves and 'transition area' from the bow to the mid hull is just way off to the classic look) and leave off the added little fins and junk. Granted, the amount of work I would want to do would probably keep me from ever finishing it, soooooo


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*IR remote working*

Figured out the wiring of the IR receiver included with the model, wired it in, and ripped the IR codes from the Wave Motion Gun remote.

Added this into the code, and now the whole thing works with the Bluetooth LE iPhone app I wrote and also with the (more limited, but cool-looking) stock remote. Only real change is I need to make a new firing mode for the cannons, since there's only one button to fire them on the remote.

I'm now at 5% memory free for the Arduino and three unused pins. I'm really pushing this thing.

I also have to get a demo video up soon.

Included pic is of the rat's nest, but it really isn't as bad as it looks.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*Video demo of current progress*

Here's a video of the work-in-progress.

It shows the stock (noisy) gearboxes being controlled via Arduino, along with sound and LEDs. Also working is the original IR remote and auto-centering. It went pretty well, aside from a debounce glitch while pushing the rear guns to their limits. Yes, it never did this until I tried to film it.

Code needs some optimization as well since the Arduino is being pushed to its limits right now. Apologies for the odd thumps during the video, the iPad case was making tons of noise.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*Finally, another update*

Progress came to a halt as I was pondering how to get a set of hollow barrels.

3D printing brass seemed to be the answer, but it would only work for the main guns and came at a hefty $15 per barrel (x9 barrels). That's half the cost of the model right there.

The second option was rebuilding the barrels from scratch using brass tubing. This had two major drawbacks: First, I don't know what I'm doing. Second, there was a shortage of the proper K&S barrels in the marketplace. So I had to wait until October (nearly 2 months) to get the sizes I needed. Then when checking sizes, K&S put the wrong size tubing in one of the packages (1.5mm OD tube in a 2mm OD package. Since the 2.0mm was going to be my barrel size to hold the fiber, I needed to get more tubes - and they are all out of stock again.

Last week I finally sourced more tubes and got them in a variety of sizes and wall thicknesses, including some I thought I did not need. This turned out to be fortuitous since I now can experiment and compare sizes and came up with a better solution. Using tubes, I can have enough material to do the whole ship for less than the cost of 2 3D printed brass barrels.

Here it is - it still needs some cleanup, but this is the closest I can get. A 3.0 mm barrel with a 2.5mm ID. I have various sizes of tubes that can bring that down to a 2.0 or 1.5mm ID for the fiber optic. Here, it seems the fiber optic size is "bigger the better" since the light output of the main cannons should be very large and bright, closely followed by the secondaries. The AA guns should just "twinkle". Hard to do if everything the same diameter fiber.

The base "plug" is a 3.5mm sleeve that will be an exact fit to mount into the turret. The white bulge is 3/16" polystyrene that just happens to have an ID that fits the 3.5mm tube and is a lot easier to handle than the thicker-walled brass equivalent.

Best part of this arrangement is that as long as I cut the barrel 1 or 2 mm short, the whole thing is adjustable to get them into uniform lengths. What you see below is a "fit check". I'll probably be recutting/reshaping the polystyrene once I figure out how to get better 90 degree cuts and file the ends of the plugs down a bit - or putty the ends and sand it into shape.

Ultimately this will all be painted. Now I'll have to build up 5 more of these, followed by some prototypes for the 6 barrels of the two secondary cannons, followed by the really big job: the AA guns with approx 100 barrels between them.


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## rworne (Jun 30, 2017)

*First set of three done*

First three barrels done. They fit quite well.

Attached is a photo of the progress done. The barrels are lightly pushed into the mounting holes on the turrets. When fully pushed in, they will slide in another 3-4mm or so and will never come out again. Same goes for the original set. when fully pushed in, the lengths of all the parts will match up. I decided to go with the slightly thicker #9821 brass tube than the thinner #9835

The barrel diameter is 3mm OD, 2mm ID, which when looked at straight on, has a reasonable thickness - and may eventually wind up looking better than the original parts.


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## Steve H (Feb 8, 2009)

Turning out very nice indeed! Now you just need to put the proper rifling grooves in there... :devil:


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