CAD Model for an I-Boat Hull

Relax, kids, poor dude's just trying to do something helpful for the hobby and hasn't realized what a bunch of skinflints this crowd can be.

(There's a reason I tell everybody - never make a hobby your job, especially this one. It'll ruin your hobby and friendships and ... yeah, stuff like that.)

((If you don't believe me, just consider the grief that the BC guys get on this board, right???))

Anyway, my advice would be to relax, take a step back and not take anything too seriously. It's just toy botes, right?

(And btw, I have considered offering someone $1K to make me a custom 3D printed Kaiser class dreadnought hull, to my specifications. Still not sure I want to chum the waters like that, though. It would probably be cruel and unusual punishment. And if I really want it, I should probably do it myself.)

 

When I was designing my first few ships I asked allot of questions too, but I never inquired about money prices. But here I am in El Paso with no one to battle with so I'm just taking my time and still building on my first ship... plus started a second ship but the second will be a full fiberglass build that I am still figuring out, got it mostly figured out, about to move out of the mockup phase.

I tend to Edit my posts my self but that is because I tend not like how my post reads so I am guilty of correcting my miss spellings or that my post just reads wrong from how it sounded in my head.

 

Let me just say my very first nats I spent hundreds of dollars on hotel/gas/food to have a good time battling with friends. Tuesday night while patching my fiberglass Courbet I went into my hotel room only to hear a crash behind me. She had rolled off her side and crashed to the ground. Surprisingly, nothing was broken except a drag disk which was easily glued back in. The durability of the fiberglass hull was excellent and saved me from a potentially week-shattering irreparable damage. Before I invest in this kind of hull I'd be comforted to know it could handle a reasonably similar blow and not fail in some way. If it would fail then it's value is $0 as one little slip up could ruin a weekend or weeklong event. If the durability (especially long-term) is similar to a fiberglass hull then the value would be similar to available hulls right now with the added benefit of less time and effort needing invested. Hope this helps.

 

You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around, and that's what it's all about. Good times with friends. Even if my Bismarck broke at Nats this past year, I'd have had a good time with the guys, some of whom I've known for 30+ years. We've all had our rocky bits from time to time, but as others have said, you come for the boats, you stay for the people.

(Still miss Marty and Steve and Bart and ... (sigh), though)

Anyway, back to the topic, I'm half regretting foisting that CnC cut westfalen hull off on Kevin a couple of years back. It would be interesting to see how well it would have performed in battle. I just wasn't interested in a 28 second German boat at the time. I saw on the discord that Ronny was mentioning the idea of printing the ribs flat so that the filament paths would be in a favorable (strong) direction, and then printing the other pieces to slot in like a puzzle. I kind of like that idea and am curious as to how it might work out.

I'm just not sure I'm up to designing such a beast. My specialties so far are straight lines and boxes. I don't do curves so well.

 

So... say it survived a 4 foot drop test? Would that be worth a bit more? Looking at my "competition" I don't think their design would. It would be interesting to compare video.

 

Marty was a good guy. I would have liked to have spent more time with him.

 

I don't think my Strike Models fiberglass I boat hull would survive a 4 foot drop test onto concrete, for comparison purposes.

 

OK. What would be the go no-go test to alleviate people's fears about 3DP hulls? I'm not willing to wait 3-5 years, as people have suggested, to see if my design is sufficient.
Is a 3 foot drop onto a wooden floor a more realistic requirement?
How about a ballistic impact test with the kinetic energy of a nagato or even a yammer?

 

Drop at 1ft, 2ft, 2.5ft, 3ft etc till destruction. Would be good info for science.

 

It takes 2-3 years to properly R&D this stuff, you're talking about a totally new way of doing things. Print one out, test it to failure. Reinforce the failure prone areas, repeat. When you stop causing failures with workbench testing, it's time to put it on the water and see what reality does to it. Water is the true enemy, no plan survives contact with it.

 

I've been doing it for longer than that. My first test was in 2016 as documented here : https://rcwarshipcombat.com/threads/3d-printed-liberty-ship-live-fire-test.444813

 

There are standard printable filaments and there are filaments with carbon fiber that are stronger. Time+money to perform the same test a couple of times + revisions can get expensive.

 

You are correct. I've tested a lot of filaments and printing configurations. What I have found is that it is much more efficient for me to build and test sub-assemblies. I've proposed that super structure parts or small walls be used but, not gotten anyone else to work with me. I sent a batch to Texas but never heard back. I tried to buy a bunch of fiberglass turret covers from BC for comparative testing a few years ago but, they cancelled my order.

 

Mark II with combat windows is ready for printing and will be impact tested soon.

 

Nice to meet you, Purchased my first boat from a gentleman in Maryland. Will we see you at a battle this year?

 

So this is a slight detour from the 3DP version of my I-boat hull. A friend of mine, who does amazing work on 1:1 scale boats including making a mold that has produced several 15 foot skiffs that are super stable and seaworthy, took the time to make a mold from the 1:350 scale test hull that I made a while back. He did a great job and I'm sure that the eventual 1:144 scale version will also be very nice.

 

Refresh my memory, swampworks had fiberglass Invincible hull. And then strike. Was it the same mold?

Having a fiberglass Invincible available again for the hobby would be great.

 

I was under the impression that Strike Models had purchased the Invincible mold from Swampworks, but I could be mistaken.

 

This board is a little old, but is there an update on this 3d print project? Looks awesome and I'm trying to figure out Freecad right now for a similar project, any advice on the best place to learn it?

 

I have not updated this thread in a while but, I've made a lot of progress and I'm still working on refinements and different versions in different scales. So far, 1/144th scale, I've printed 2 complete hulls . Here's a picture of them from a couple of weeks ago. :