Hello all!
We just heard from the folks at
Seafair, and we'll be showing our boats in the Parade of Boats at 12:30pm, and racing at 1:15PM after the military category. We'll be racing last years boat against the new boat from this year.
Come on down and show your support for WOOF and additive manufacturing. Wear your UW colors!
It's been a long process, and Big Red has become quite a bit easier to work with. We'd also like to thank everyone that helped out along the way, from our milk jug collectors to our sleepless printer operators, we couldn't have done it without your contributions.
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| Planning and pre-heating |
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| The first layer needed a lot of pre-heating to improve adhesion. |
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| Building the walls! |
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| Once the walls were built up, the heating element alone was sufficient for adhesion. Much easier than last year's printer! |
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Even with the heating element, the HDPE would cool and shrink. Our boat's geometry changed significantly, so we used supports to continue printing.
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Eventually the warping got too bad, and we had to stop printing. Our boat is a cool 9.5" tall, and looks great!
Again, a HUGE thank you to everyone who supported us. We couldn't have done this without you! We'll see you at SeaFair!
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Warping can be avoided, by placing transversal sections, to give it structural rigidity.
ReplyDeleteA completely hollow hull, is not a good idea.
If there is a single leak or flood, it will fill the entire hull, and it will quickly sink.
Remember the Titanic: even having several distinct sections did not save it, once more than one is compromised the ship is doomed.
Having just one section (entire hull), makes the ship doomed at first breach.