Monday, November 9, 2015

Flames of War, 3D Printed, Bailey Bridge

I have had a long term interest in building models, from the typical airplanes and tanks of a young me, to radio controlled planes and boats as an older me.  The stuff that I have been doing for Flames of War is another avenue of that interest.  At the moment I am working on designing a 1:100 scale version of the famous Bailey Bridge of World War Two.

From Wikipedia:
  • The Bailey bridge is a type of portable, pre-fabricated, truss bridge. It was developed by the British during World War II for military use and saw extensive use by British, Canadian and the American military engineering units.
  • A Bailey bridge had the advantages of requiring no special tools or heavy equipment to assemble. The wood and steel bridge elements were small and light enough to be carried in trucks and lifted into place by hand, without requiring the use of a crane. The bridges were strong enough to carry tanks. Bailey bridges continue to be extensively used in civil engineering construction projects and to provide temporary crossings for foot and vehicle traffic.
I am doing the design in Sketchup from images of plans that I have found on the Internet.  I am trying to be as accurate as possible in terms of following the famous design, but I am obviously having to make allowances for the scale such that it be assemble-able, for the fact that I am 3D Printing the parts, and finally, that I want to minimize print time as much as possible.

I am at the point now where I have an initial design and have done a first complete assembly.  There are, obviously, some fit issues but you can still see where I am going with this model.  The bridge as I have chosen to construct this version, is neither fish nor fowl.  The original Baley Bridge would have been in one of several configurations, Single-Single, which I have chosen for one side, and Double Single which I have chosen for the other side!  I am not doing a Triple version though one could use the parts for a Double Single to create a Double Double.....!

Anyway, the bridge that I have constructed consists of two bridge segments which were 10 feet long making the bridge 20 feet (or 6.096 meters or in 1:100 scale a 60 millimeters).  Obviously we are talking assembly by tweezers here!

 Once complete the bridge will be available, as a kit, on eBay with the other "bling" that I have created for the game Flames of War (which I don't even play)!

Here are some more images of this project.  In later posts I will talk more to the design and also how to assemble the model once I make it available.











More on this project:
Background
Flavors of the Bridge
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