If you want to send some instruments out on the lake or the ocean, you’ll want something that floats. Sure, if you need to be underwater, or if you can fly over the water there are other options, but sometimes you want to be on the surface. For stability, it is hard to beat a catamaran — a boat with two hulls that each support one side of a deck. If that sounds like the ocean sensor platform of your dreams, try printing the one from [electrosync].
The boat looks super stable and has a brushless motor propulsion system. The design purpose is to carry environmental and water quality monitoring gear. It can hold over 5 kg of payload in the hull and there’s an optional deck system, although the plans for that are not yet included in the STL files.
It is hard to get the scale from the pictures, but this is a meter long, so this isn’t going to fit in most people’s bathtubs. You can see the beast in the videos below. The videos are about a year old, but the STLs were only published this month.
We always enjoy seeing really large things that people 3D print on ordinary 3D printers. We also love seeing practical prints. Of course, we’ve seen bigger boats, but not with a consumer-grade printer.
Yes it’s an RC boat but how long till the boating industry begins printing full sized vessels?
They already have, it was a record for the largest single 3D printer made by the University of Maine.
This is only missing all the protests of “FDM is’nt safe for food, so how can be safe for marine life!” peeps.
You don’t want an ocean going vessel to be “safe for marine lite”. Shipping corporations spend millions on ablative bottom paint to shed the marine lite that happen to attach. Navies on the other hand get to use “fun” copper arsenic blends.
Thanks for sharing my build! It’s great to see it getting out there! If you have any questions, ask away, or check out the full build series of videos on my YouTube channel. It’s not finished just yet though – it uses a modular deck system that I’ll be adding different auxiliary systems to as I go.
I was just thinking about building something similar for getting fishing bait out on a lake or similar. Thanks for the inspiration and confirmation that it’s possible to do what I’m thinking of doing.
Great idea! I’m glad my build was of some help!
Lol. This is EXACTLY why i’m looking in to this build. We go fishing out on canals or docks, and the passing of boats tends to generate quite some wake, which made our baitboat capsize in the past. This also doesn’t look like the prop vould get washed up in algae.