3D printing our own hull shapes and testing model

We can now print nice parts on our own printer

This has a lot of plastic in the hollow areas.  It is heavier than it needs to be. We will experiment with the settings for filling in and reduce the weight on future prints.

There are 4 places in the current design that went straight sideways over open space.  This is not something our 3D printer can do well.   Some printers with 2 print heads can make support structures out of a material that you can easily dissolve later.  Because of this these 4 sections on our part are messy and and had holes in them, so they were not waterproof.  It is sort of amazing that they printed at all.   We use gorilla-foaming-glue and then also painted the parts with Styrospray to make them waterproof.  Then we used quick ties to attach the 4 printed floats to a platform.

It can tip to either side and stay there

When the model tipped there was enough more weight on the down side that it would not come back up.  So we need more flotation at the waterline.  This is also very sensitive to the amount of weight.  The next shape we want to try is with the thin part as long as the rest of the float.   This will give more waterline area but no more drag.

We now have the ability to 3D print floats but we do not yet have the perfect float shape.  We can keep trying different shapes easily enough now.   If we do the designs right they should be waterproof without any glue or painting.

Note that this float design did not work well enough to even try in waves.  We will get further along soon.

If we rotate the part 45 degrees in the printer so it is going diagonally across the print bed we can print rather large parts.   We will do this at some point.   The bigger the floats the more weight the model can carry.  So we want bigger floats if we are going to put on batteries, solar, motors etc.

Along with testing float shapes we also want to eventually make 3 models that we make into drones so we can develop software for a train of our boats connected together.   Turning in a train of boats will be different than for a single boat.  The boats need to work together.   We want this software working well before we get to full scale and far more expensive boats.

3D Printing Learning Curve

 Last night we made our first attempt at printing a boat part.    It was not completely successful.  :-)   First, we intended to print something about half this in each direction or 1/8th the total volume.  Ooops.  Second, the base seems not to be strong enough and the object seems to have wobbled as it got higher.

There is a learning curve on using new tech, so one should not expect everything to work perfectly the first time.  :-)

We can make the base and float merge together so it is a stronger connection.
We can have the heating pad go off after the first few layers, which might make them harder and less wobbly.  We can have a honey-comb structure inside so it is not just hollow.   There are lots of other things to try as well.  Of course printing a smaller object should help.

We put the  printer at work for several reasons.  There is more free room at work.  There is a cat at home that I could imagine attacking the machine or scratching it or at least getting hair into something.   It makes noise but in the office it is far enough from where I work not to bother me.  Also it seems a fun window display that people might find interesting.  However, we may need to set up a web cam so we can check the progress of 3D prints from home. 

Welding and a Workbench

 Ethan, Teryn, Morrel, and I are trying to learn how to TIG weld.  Morrel has welded aluminum using MIG, so he is kind of a ringer.

 Teryn is playing with 200 amps of current.  Ethan in orange.  Need to tighten the side things so that mask does not fall down.

 Morrel and I made a workbench.

 So we had a place for a chop saw and a grinder.

Amoni and I painted it.

Welder and 3D Printer on same day!

We were delayed because the tank delivered to us was not really Argon and then the guy going to teach us how to weld was busy carnival week.  But today we really started welding. 

Also got our 3D printer yesterday and got a test print going today.

Build something new to change the world

Parts for Quadmaran 14

We have collected parts for building our next Quadmaran.  The floats, solar panels, trolling motors, and aluminum.    Also have a welding machine.   Had to get the machine here, get it wired up, and get some Argon gas.   But learning to weld aluminum and making this boat is our summer project.

First 3D Printing Experiment

3D Test 1

We are getting into 3D printing.  It is nice for testing ideas with scale model boats.  Also, if we want to make multiple models to test out software for a train of boats it would be nice to be able to just 3D print parts for the boats.

For our first 3D printing experiment we just paid shapways.com to print the design.   We also got a new friend in their forum that did the 3D design.   We are now learning FreeCAD since that is what he used and it looks good.   We can open his design and make small changes so far.   The ShapeWays price goes up fast with the weight of the object so we printed 4 very small floats.  

The idea we are looking at here is a sort of 4 float SWATH design.  There is minimal flotation at the waterline so the waterline can go up and down with waves without changing the lift of the float very much, so not much tipping.  This should make for a very stable platform.   I think the idea is very promising and we will explore this more.

This model is really too small to make a good test in the winds of Anguilla.   I have always used outdoor wave tanks (pools and ocean) and so don't have control over the wind.   This means winds are always very high for my scale models.  When I get to 5 foot models it is like we are testing house size boats in simulated hurricane conditions, which is ok.  But smaller than that does not really work. But the point this test was really to test 3D printing.  That did work.

We have ordered a 3D printer so we can print our own larger floats and will do so as soon as it gets here.   Takes a couple weeks for stuff to get here.