Hi Martin, this looks fantastic, could you tell me about your ASD's please.
Nige
Thank you very much Nige.
Well, I designed them myself because no commercial drives was available in the size that I wanted. Looks-wise they are more or less designed or modelled on the original Frigga's thrusters, the Aquamaster CP US 3001 azimuth thrusters. I made them as scale looking as possible with the limited material I had on the thrusters.
When I designed them I wanted them to operate as the original, thus rotating through 360 degrees (only 360 degrees, thus 180 to each side). I thought about servos, but by talking to another guy who build som 2:3 of the size of mine, I was convinced that a worm gear was the way to go. This would allow the thrusters to rotate freely as I wanted, and also, the gear would lock the position of the thruster during operation, as was one of the problems with a servo.
After designing the thruster i turned the underwater part from three different pieces, the nozzle, the lower gear housing and the verticle shaft. These were then soldered together to form the final lower thruster. Before this I had turned bushings in brass and placed o-rings to seal the shafts.
One thing I can say is that the design has changed a thousand times during the build, and if I were to do them over again I would do alot of things different, but of course thats the way it is with all scratch building.
The top brass gear housing holds the main drive gear with a 3:1 reduction and the worm gear. The main drive shaft enters at the top centre shaft and the round shaft input at the side is for the input shaft for the turning motor.
I have not yet tested them in the water, so that is something that I look forward to and of course I hope my design will work without to many problems, but that only time will show.
I you have any further questions, please feel free to ask.
Brgds
Martin