Everything possible on a ship 3D printed

Hello!

I have had an idea of making an entire ship 3D printed, each section with its part of the superstructure, and then fit together like legos, with a resin waterproofing coat over everything. Yes, with windows for balsa but bottom is solid. This concept could lower costs from hundreds to maybe 30 for a hull and top.

 

How to print an entire ship

 

I saw that, but he had a wood backbone and ribs. I mean everything that is possible to 3D print is 3D printed. Also making .stl files for these ships. Kinda like a wikipedia task force.

 

IJN Nagara class

 

Like that but for even more ships!

 

There is no problem printing the entire ship from the technology stand point. You don't even need the resin waterproofing, just a little acetone to make sure water doesn't get in the center of the parts.

The limitation is really the size of the part you can make. I only have an 8x8 bed, so doing a 60" cruiser is going to require at least 8 pieces for the deck. Personally, it's easier for me to just make a single piece deck out of piece of plywood. All the required CAD work to break the pieces up and then the time to assemble them doesn't appeal to me. But with bigger machines and high flow nozzles, those problems will mostly go away.

I do have 24" convoy ship drawn up that I need to get printed. Even it requires 7 pieces for the hull.

$30 for a hull is little low, I have about $30 into my Dunkerque superstructure alone, about $40 if you count scrap and rework. I'm guessing $75 is about the minimum for a decent cruiser or small battlecruiser.

Post your ship when you get it drawn up, I'll probably have a go at printing one.

 

IJN Nagara at 2 pounds took slightly over one kg roll due to supports. so $30 for a destroyer and about $60-$80 for a big BB also the Nagara really need MASSIVE redesign to make the best use of a 3d printer. mostly in rib design and interlock support for the separate sections as well as overcoming layer delamination along the keel as you put 10-20 pounds of weight in it with water.

time spent designing the printed Shimakaze was about 8x what it took for the wooden version. Nagara was about 4x due to things already being done.

For the secondary user I could see advantage of a 3d printed boat. takes about 1 week to print then you assemble it and while you put the hull together you print the SS and detail bits.

Printed guns have a LONG way to go mostly in formatting and space (BIC is a 40 round gun not 50 and could use to be laid on it's side to fit in smaller ships.)

also not having your own printer would make getting parts WAYYYY more than building them. shimakaze printed from shapeways was like $150. just for the hull no SS or Deck.

 

I printed the hull for a Liberty Ship in 8" sections and it came out pretty well, even though the joints were simply super-glued together and didn't have any overlap.
Now I'm working on a 44" long 3DP hull for the Steampunk Flotilla that I plan to print in 4 sections on an 8"x8"x12" printer.
If we all keep chipping away at it, we'll get there : )

 

Xanther,

As drawn, your PC hull will not meet the requirements of SP. With the AC and BB hulls under construction currently, the format has settled on the design philosophy of flat bottom, slab sided design. The PC hull I'm designing is following this design philosophy (it's a scaled down version of the AC). Unilateral introduction of a design that deviates from this is counterproductive IMO. Of course your welcome to design and build whatever you want but please understand that the model would not be considered Punk.

 

Hmmm.. I think you may have posted this in the wrong thread?
I respectfully disagree that exploring alternatives is counterproductive and I'd like to point out that "Punk" is all about non-conformity anyway : P