I've been toying with the idea of having a hull rapid proto'ed. I've got a lot of experience with FDM's, and while it's not a suitable technology for a ship (it yields a pretty crude product), I've seen other types of rapid proto's that were great. I forget the name, but the material came out really smooth and uniform, as good as any machined plastic. And the best part is that the supports dissolved it hot water, rather than having to cut them off by hand. Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else had considered this. I'm a big fan of CAD, and modeling a hull simply by shelling a rib structure would be easy. Best of all, it would make it easy to add guns, etc and keep them all aligned by simply designing in mounts or whatever.
The biggest problem with rapid prototyping will be the cost. Back where I used to work, we had a simple little box rapid prototyped (don't remember which style, but the surface finish was very good although it was not very strong). This box was ~12" cubed including lid with 1" walls and some other misc. features on the side. It cost us 4 grand.
At the company I worked for, we paid about $100 per run on FDM. The envelope was 2'x1'x1'. Of course, we owned that machine so the $100 is just cost, no profit. I didn't realize rapid proto was that expensive. My cousin works for a company that uses the better rapid proto technology that I mentioned, and he's allowed to use their machines for outside projects for free, so cost for me is a non issue. Now I've just gotta find the time. Too many projects, so little time.
