How long until we see 3D printed components in boat building?

Jonr,

I recently asked for printed parts from HDPE or Polypropylene and was told that those material do not currently have an established process to make parts with.
The minimal explanation was that the materials had to have a "wide processing band" meaning a wide variation in temperatures useable for the printing process. HDPE and PP were specifically pointed out as requiring finer temperature control for success.
Materials like nylon and polycarbonate and epoxy are all currently successful, but for instance you cannot (today) introduce fibers into the process with epoxy to make a structural part.
You would not like the surface roughness of HDPE boats even if you could get a useable process. The parts feel like about 80 grit sandpaper, but not so sharp.

As SukiSolo said, I was told by Harvest Technologies (largest Rapid Prototype facility in the world - they said) that anything over 200 units should be converted to injection molding. In effect they told me to not plan on giving them money for parts - a very unusually honest position for a manufacturing business to be in.

 

I dont see where it would be any advancement at all in the human scheme of things.

 

Joseph, printable zip gun design files are available on the web.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygre...-worlds-first-entirely-3d-printed-gun-photos/

 

Frank,

There are things that can be printed that cannot be typically built. Hollow structures with features inside is the typical type of part.

Are they actually useful or just making cute demonstration parts?
Someone will find a truly useful application, in time. I have faith, but will check the facts as we go.

 

I am quite convinced that 3d printing will revolutionise pretty much all small run production in the near future, including buildings. The limiting factor on larger runs is time, and hence cost - currently it is a slow process. So, small run boats yes, big runs maybe further off.

I suspect that big stuff (buildings for example) will use a combination of big printers (kind of robot tower cranes with a printing head instead of a hook?) and swarm printing- lots of robots; quadcopters in particular would be very versatile.

http://youtu.be/xvN9Ri1GmuY

In terms of materials, there's a huge range already available in 3d print, including glass and most metals.

For exploration of the orientation of material fibres, and differentiation of material properties, the work of Neri Oxman at MIT is surely world leading: the list of projects in her Mediated Matter research group gives an idea of the scope of her investigations into differentiated material properties, and nature inspired 3d print.

http://www.media.mit.edu/research/groups/mediated-matter




Her lectures are wide ranging, exciting and very accessible:


http://youtu.be/FakIQ2wiHG0

http://youtu.be/txl4QR0GDnU

And her silk pavillion project attempts to combinine robot and 'biological printing:'

http://vimeo.com/67177328

 

It really depends on what you are making, and what you consider 3D printing. The company I was working for has a batch of Selective Laser Sintering machines that could 'print' titanium parts. We tested a number of things to destruction, and they were of cap arable quality to milled parts, slightly weaker than forged. Of course at the moment the machines are relatively slow, but they are speeding up all the time.

I ran the number for this on another forum, but right now high end SLS machines can deposit about 1in^3/hr. If you could get 50 working on a hull at once (engineering problem, not tech problem) it would take roughly 5 weeks to print out a 30' titanium hull.

Of course you would still have to finish the interior, add all the components, and deal with the bright work, but the hull itself would be done.


At today's prices this machine would run about 5 million dollars ($100,000/print head). Plus the control circutry. Assuming 10 boats a year, at 10% return this means the machine rental time per boat would be in the $50,000 range. Which is not bad compared to the labor cost of building a metal hull boat.

 

I think the tech is already here to create boats under 50 ft or so.

The same machine that carves out a male plug or a female mold could be fitted with a Snot Head.Herrishoff once called GRP boats ,,Frozen Snot , hence the name.

A std chopper gun that uses fiberglass rope and chops it and mixes it with resin only needs a small attached form to create say a 1/2 by 1/2 strip that could be hardened quickly with a strong lamp.

While solid GRP boats are heavy it might be possible to lay up a different light weight core and then cover it with the required glass to get the required strength with less weight.

As the boat would be quite fair the only required hand work might be a layer of glass cloth in epoxy as a harder more water proof surface .

A boat a day , with the setup and removal being the days work , and the machine being fed all night by a worker should bring the cost of a one off hull below todays cookie hull price. The materials cost would drop with almost no waste.

 

Perhaps a rapid cure urethane foam core. robot finished in glass. Be nice if we could print some marinas to replace the ones turned in to condos, and then maybe print a middle class.

 

Less so. The thing that makes your calculator cheaper is Moore's law. the CPU in that thing is now a few pennies

But for CNC/Printing@home, the cost is in the precision mechanics necessary. I can build a cheapo CNC@home mill for $200 with a Dremel - BUT that is incapable of machining anything of high precision or significant material excavation. And for that the machines cost quite a bit.

Single Arm robots are getting down to $15k or so, but I don't see them ever getting below $5k (in uninflated dollars) simply because of the cost of the precision mechanics.

3D printers are already using as much of the laser printing mechanics a they can. There isn't that much cost savings to be had other than dropping them in quality.

 

Baltic,

But the printers keep getting faster. For industrial purposes faster is the same thing as cheaper.

 

but for industrial purposes, 3D printers are largely at their limit already. The production run you can get out of a 3D printed mold is about 100. That's due to the limitations of the material you print with.

Its spectacular for prototyping. Not good for production runs

 

There was a special on the ventriloquist Jeff Dunham and it showed the whole process of him making Achmed The Terrorist's head. He 3D printed it, but it took like 18 hrs or something. I can see it for prototypes, but for mass production I think it's too slow. Maybe in the future.

Target had calculators with a battery for 80 cents. We bought 5 of them a year ago and and spread them around the place, they all still work.

 

It depends on the material. I know that titanium parts are coming out of laser sintering machines at the same quality level as a milled titanium part. I don't know for sure about other metals but I suspect aluminium is the same way.

And I can promise you they aren't at their limit. Perhaps an individual head is at the limits, but the next step is multiple headed printers able to simultaneously print different areas at the same time. I was just reading a study about using these yesterday.

 

"Titanium is expensive, so anything that reduces wastage is a bonus. It's also poor at conducting heat, which means that the laser is able to very effectively and accurately melt the layers. Aluminium, which melts at a much lower temperature, requires twice the laser power because it's such an efficient conductor. Titanium, especially as a 6Al/4V alloy (6% aluminium and 4% vanadium) is extremely hard, and that makes it costly and time-consuming to machine."

I don't think its competitive compared to machining for aluminum (at least yet).

 

Kerosene,

It depends on the part. Highly complicated parts are easier and faster to SLS than to machine. Smile things like bolts are still going to be machined. But I would posit that a hull is more like a sintered part than a screw. Particularly when a NA can vary material thickness at whim, so instead of just tapered masts you could taper ribs, hull sides, have integral thru hulls, integral chain plates, ect... Many of the sub systems could be printed directly to the part without additional labor.

I want to be clear here, I don't think it is going to happen in the next year or two, but in 10 it wouldn't surprise me at all. And since these large printers could easily be repurposed for new designs, or something other than a boat in a few minutes, there would be a huge demand assuming they are fast enough to be reasonable.