@carlsonf
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This intellectual property discussion is interesting – does it mean we are downplaying LUGDoug’s travels? Seems like we should avoid tagging him on social media.
@greg, I did want to have it done for the Home Show but it’s not worth the aggravation and rush to try and solve it before Tuesday. I think that it is not minifig scale – I think minifigs are proportionally too tall. The tower would be about 19 inches high but a real cooling tower is around 660 feet.
@rcgrier3406, thank you for your good ideas as well. I will bring it along at Home Show setup and maybe during the course of the event, my expert advisors can help me find a solution.Thank you @greg for your thoughtful answer AND your attention to proper grammar. I will welcome your thoughts when you get to take a look at it.
@greg, such a nice offer and what a fun-looking cone. Am I reading the room correctly that glue is NOT an option?!! I’m trying to figure out how a cone would look as part of this. Maybe if I could build enough supports on the bottom and the cone could sit on top of the supports, maybe it would work. I still don’t think the top cylinder connections would be stable enough. Let’s touch base on this topic after the Home Show setup. Hope you are OK!
@greg yes you are right, hundreds. So depressing. I had originally thought about that design you posted, but when I found the AP1000 I dropped everything.
I forgot to add the picture of the Studio Stability warning. In my opinion based on handling this thing, the Studio warning does not even highlight half of the poor connections. So bummed!
Then I started playing around with building some internal supports but again, the angled connections between that top cylinder and the slanted sides are just too frail. The whole cylinder itself is very frail as well. It’s a series of hinge clips sitting on jumpers, so each hinge is supported by only one jumper stud on each side.
It’s awful. It might be possible in a no-gravity situation to put this together, but on Earth it will not stick. At one point I thought I could build a paper wall to hold up the sides, but it didn’t fit (I would have to cut it out later). Then I thought of a balloon, which I still think is a great idea (I just have to pop it later). But it doesn’t matter – the yellow fences are not stable enough, the long sides are only connected to the structure at their tops and bottoms (and not to each other) and there is absolutely no way that the little top cylinder will attach – and hold – to the long sides.
Without glue.
I’ve concluded my cooling tower absolutely will not stick together in real life. Either I use super glue or waste hundreds of dollars. Any thoughts? Will I be shunned? It’s all my fault for being naive in Studio, which clearly states there are “122 clutch power issues (106 warnings and 16 cautions) and 22 stability issues.” Of course I never looked at the “Stability” tab until now….
If I will be allowed to stay in the LUG after using glue, can anyone recommend the best glue?
I bought a Hazmat Guy and I had to change his head to a smiley face because he looks too frantic. He came with what looks more like a pressure washer. I’ll have to put that Geiger counter on my list of things to get… Thanks!
Today I finished the AP1000 reactor building. I’m looking forward to displaying for the first time at the Ross Park Mall! The roof will just be resting on top so that it can be lifted off easily and people can see the inside better.
Thanks Tim, it will be a cutaway view of the containment building, so people can see the plant components inside. The outside containment is basically free-floating so maybe I will be able to lift it off to reveal the entire inside build. But if I decide that’s too risky, the main components will still be visible.
Thanks Greg – yes, I’ve gotten a lot of help from LUG people who have way more experience with building.
I took a long break from this project, but the 2023 Q4 meeting gave me a huge boost in confidence and energy so I got back on track. Classic FOAK (First of a Kind) project! The designer of the LDD file advised me that I might encounter some stability issues – and he was right. I’ve made some adjustments for stability but the more I’m building, the more I see that some of these structures would be better with a different configuration of parts. However, I already bought the parts generated from the LDD/Studio design so I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that it’s sound enough to stay together in my car when I drive it to a display venue. This past week I’ve been ordering a few more parts so that I can finish off the reactor building with a cutaway containment. Here are a couple of pictures. The long flat rectangle laying on the table is the outside containment wall, which needs a few more parts before I can stand it up and curve it around the inside containment.
Ha ha very funny @greg. At least my plant will have a containment!
Here is an update. I have the plant components most finished. I’m just waiting for the top of the Accumulator (the little round thing on the right-hand side of the piping). There are stability issues. The scariest so far is that each steam generator is clutching only three studs below. Between that and the precarious 5-stack of round 1x1s attaching the Dragon Egg bottoms to the steam generator, they are pretty shaky. I might be able to come up with some way to attach them to the reactor shield wall in the back, I’ll think about all that later.
Also there is one part of the piping in which the Studio design indicates a Technic, Pin with Short Friction Ridges (2780) connected to a Technic, Axle 1L with Pin without Friction Ridges (3749). I have these parts, but in my world they do not connect. I’ve temporarily replaced it with an axle.
Also I did get in touch with the designer Evan Schultheis and he was interested to know that I was building it, and he did warn that there are going to be some stability issues. He is interested to see a photo of it when I display it.
I’ve also concluded that I am going to have to move this to a 48×48 base, and so my plant will end up being a group of 4 48×48 bases, one with the containment building and one with the cooling tower, and whatever I can come up with for the other bases.
@greg, I’m loving the tire idea! Maybe in my NEXT nuclear plant I will make “sport” steam generators with tires holding their Dragon Eggs on.
Because of the 5-stack of 1×1 rounds, I’ve had to add one plate thickness in height to the reactor shield wall on either side of the reactor, so that the piping enters the Steam Generator at the correct location. I also added a layer of tile at the top of the reactor shield, for stability. These small height differences shouldn’t affect anything else, I think there will be plenty of room above the components.
I’m gaining an immense amount of perspective and appreciation for how the whole building process goes. I naively thought it would be mostly about building, when in fact it turns out that 85% of this project is going to be data management, shopping, and inventory receiving and management. I don’t know how you guys do this all the time! I just want to build my nuclear plant and go back to sorting!!
Just to close the loop on my noob emergency, here is a photo of the Steam Generator with the simple yet elegant 5-round-plate (in trans colors) attachment for the Dragon Egg. I also finally found an email address for the designer Evan Schultheis and I emailed him to let him know I’m working on the plant. Thanks again for your help!
@bengood921 genius. I had been fixated on the idea that some type of pole had to stick through the Dragon Egg and that a Technic axle had to stick in the plate. SO SIMPLE!!!!! The five round plates work perfectly. Thank you.
As to the discussion on licensing and buying designs, I’d also like to point out that I downloaded the LDD design for free. The designer Evan Schultheis had posted a link to the file in one of his posts on Twitter or maybe Imgur where he showed a lot of images of the design. My only plan for this plant is to display it with the LUG and maybe at some Westinghouse retiree event. No plans to try selling anything. Yesterday I responded to him on Twitter but I’m not sure if it worked because I haven’t used Twitter in years. I’m going to find another email address for him and touch base with him to let him know I’m working on the plant.
Attaching a screen shot from Studio of the way the Steam Generator is attached to the base. It looks like the Dragon Egg has two things stuck into it – 1/ a chrome silver round brick (71075), 2/ a black Technic 1×1 brick with hole (6541). That brick sits on top of a red 1×2 plate which appears to be resting on top of a tile and not attached. The Technic brick is attached to some of the piping so that will help with stability. The silver brick and the Technic brick fit into the round area of the outside bottom of the Dragon Egg around its central hole. There’s not a whole lot of clutch there, but at least they fit.
I guess if I have to bail on the trans purple umbrellas and Dragon Eggs, I can set up an employee cafe next to the plant and use the Umbrellas for the tables and use the Dragon Eggs for planters.
@bengood921 Thanks for your detailed response. Here is a picture of the inside of the Dragon Egg. I agree the Cylinder Hemisphere might be a better choice and actually does make more sense but if I can use the Dragon Egg with some type of connection scheme, I’d like to. If I switch to the Cylinder Hemisphere you suggested, I would probably switch out the trans purple umbrellas on top for a grey umbrella if available. I would lose some of the fun of the design but it would actually be much more realistic.
It’s also very clear that the designer did NOT design for physical stability. A good example is the Steam Generator bodies – I built them as designed but for stability the pieces should be alternating instead of stacked right on top of each other. The only stability for the Steam Generator comes from the middle, top, and bottom round plates that hold everything together.
Thanks again for your comments and help!
What’s the etiquette anyway for using someone’s design? I have been wondering if I should reach out to the designer, just in general, to let him know I am building his design. I just haven’t done it yet.
