3D Prints: Will it Float? Applying it to Boat Designs

 

We took all of the first wave of 3D Printed boats and placed them inside a container in the classroom that was filled with water.    We had tested the viability of the designs via the motion part of the Tinkercad program, which suggested that there was some issues with the design.

A clear example is the first version of the 'Titanic' which when floated by the students, as shown left, clearly showed that the design was not balanced and tipped to one side.

The more recent update of the Titanic, shown left, successfully floated.  It included four life boats (the original had twenty) and the typical four funnel stacks.

The decks and the top of the boat were balanced and as a result the ship floated comfortably in the water.  The student concerned wants to add additional feature to the ship, in doing so they want to ensure balance, so if they add something to one side then they indeed doing something on the other side to match.

This was the design which featured the name 'Emily' on the first page of first wave of designs.   It included four funnels and two decks, but no additional features.   The student wanted it to be used as a basic boat that floated and was able to achieve this with the design.  As with the others that are in series the student is currently working on adding additional features that she can include with the design to make it more realistic.  Again with the other prints and designs in the series the student wants to base the design on the template of the Titanic.

One design that strictly speaking did not work was the design shown left.   It did float - however the design is top heavy in that the weight of the design cause it to topple over, and while the student felt that it met the brief, that it floated it did not float as desired.

Which then started another discussion with the students would a regular print float or sink?

We looked for some designs that we had from our example box and selected several items - and posted the question to our students, literally, will this float? Most of the students thought that the tree would sink to the bottom of the container, but it didn't like the others, it maintained its floating ability and stayed on the surface.   An attempt to cause it to sink by placing a light amount of force on the design, and pushing it to the bottom simply caused the design to remain on the bottom until it was released, as noted by the students this is similar to the fluter boards that we have recently used for swimming and water safety.

The original junior Christmas tree print was located here.

The final stage of the testing was to find a range of designs and prints, many of which have featured on this blog.  

Without exception all of the prints floated - one or two of them floated at the top of the waterline but all of them remained buoyant.   

The students by this point were able to determine that all of the prints were able to float as a result.

3D Printing: Projects Currently Operating

 

Print shown left: A thirty two hour significant print, this was a commercial designed and available version of the Britannic, sister ship of the Titanic.   We have a student at school who has a particular strong interest in this class of ship and wanted to do something special for him, to allow him to have more projects that would develop off it.   In this case it was locating a design of a ship in the series, and printing it.   The size really tested the limits of our Snapmaker Printer - it took thirty two hours to complete and during the process we were constantly checking to ensure there was no PLA issues and the print remained robust and the print worked.   While there were no design features that the students created with this we have already had significant and detailed discussions with the student about the boat, the painting scheme and what else we can add to the project.

While the integrity of the boat remained during printing there were some very subtle features that did not survive the removal of the rafting, chiefly a radio mast at the front of the print and a corresponding print at the back that would have been no more than 1mm across.   

We are continuing to experiment with our 'rainbow PLA' and range of others that have allowed us to print in a finished state without the students wanting to then spray paint the results, saving an additional step.

The examples shown left are student designed labels for multi-purpose items, the labels measure 60mm long and are 20mm wide as well as being 5mm thick.

The print time for these is thirty minutes.