Print your own boat

[newtothis]

Will boats be a breakthrough for 3D printing tech?

 

[Roberto]

This is the ''making of'' the first one, as usual at the time (2019) the Americans established all sorts of world records

 

[Concerto]

Looks like plastic fantastic boats are heading our way. Interesting development prospects that could include consumer specified changes. Work boats and power boats would seem the initial market, but what about one off race boats. This could allow design changes to be included and tested against the previous design in extra quick time. Why stop at boats, why not cars, aircraft or weapons like large drones? Hand guns are already being produced.

In modern boat building factories, decks have a CNC machine to cut all the openings like windows and drill bolt holes. This reduced the time to manually do this from a week to a day. 3 printing would be able to do this in the printing process, not only saving time but material cost as well and reduce waste materials. If as quoted recycling plastic mixed with fiberglass will certainly reduce landfill, especially if end of life GRP boats could be used.

Very interesting innovation and I look forward to more news and developments.

 

[Rappey]

A polyethelene canal boat has been built. 20mm thick but still lighter than steel.

 

[Minerva]

Bring it on I say - my basic home DIY 3d printer is frankly phenomenal and far better than anticipated. I am pretty sure if I change the nozzle I can print out carbon fibre reinforced end products so a far shout from plastic fantastics.

I can see a real market for custom 3d printed boats; each one tailored to the end buyers needs. Work with a boat designer / or do it yourself to tweak your ideal boat; whether it's longer / wider bunks, higher headroom, flush deck, lifting keel, pilot house, where the heads is located... The posibilities are endless. One you're happy with the result, send it off to a printers' and you have the completed hull, deck and interior delivered in a fortnight so you can hang your curtains, step the mast and off you go!

 

[ylop]

Bring it on I say - my basic home DIY 3d printer is frankly phenomenal and far better than anticipated. I am pretty sure if I change the nozzle I can print out carbon fibre reinforced end products so a far shout from plastic fantastics.

I can see a real market for custom 3d printed boats; each one tailored to the end buyers needs. Work with a boat designer / or do it yourself to tweak your ideal boat; whether it's longer / wider bunks, higher headroom, flush deck, lifting keel, pilot house, where the heads is located... The posibilities are endless. One you're happy with the result, send it off to a printers' and you have the completed hull, deck and interior delivered in a fortnight so you can hang your curtains, step the mast and off you go!

I can see it working in the niche workboat type stuff but it doesn't make sense to me for production boats - laying up the hull isn't particularly slow is it? fitting it out, internal furnishing, rigging etc all take longer. It would be interesting to see how the weight compares - rotomolded HDPE boats are heavier than GRP equivalents - perhaps clever "infill" can achieve weight reduction. GRP layup is a lot more technical that just slapping glass and resin in a mould these days - you use particular weave of fibre in high stress areas to distribute loads, achieve stiffness etc without adding weight. You possibly can do that with 3D printed braces etc but you need real engineers involved. But I could see it being used to make the original mould tools for production yachts.

Every variation on design is going to need RCD work to stop people doing stupid stuff.

 

[Minerva]

I can see it working in the niche workboat type stuff but it doesn't make sense to me for production boats - laying up the hull isn't particularly slow is it? fitting it out, internal furnishing, rigging etc all take longer. It would be interesting to see how the weight compares - rotomolded HDPE boats are heavier than GRP equivalents - perhaps clever "infill" can achieve weight reduction. GRP layup is a lot more technical that just slapping glass and resin in a mould these days - you use particular weave of fibre in high stress areas to distribute loads, achieve stiffness etc without adding weight. You possibly can do that with 3D printed braces etc but you need real engineers involved. But I could see it being used to make the original mould tools for production yachts.

Every variation on design is going to need RCD work to stop people doing stupid stuff.

The printer wouldn’t need to just do the hull though - it could build the whole hull / bulkhead / interior / chainplates / mast step as it goes in a carbon composite. Completely monocoque and stiff.

Most decent 3d CAD software these days has 3d strain analysis based on the material used- it’d be trivial to get the layup just so to spread the loads.

Only manual part needed would be to run wires / plumbing through the conduits and install soft furnishings plus the heads..

 

[lustyd]

Most decent 3d CAD software these days has 3d strain analysis based on the material used- it’d be trivial to get the layup just so to spread the loads.

The problem though is that 3d printing (as far as I know) can’t put sheets down, its point by point. Stress analysis will put down more material but could it lay biaxial cloth?
Even with metals cold forging is stronger than CNC and printingos less strongthan CNC.

 

[capnsensible]

Simply print enough money to buy a boat.