If you've ever wanted a boat of your own, it turns out all you need is a 3D printer and, well, a boatload of patience. Today we've got an incredible creation to share from maker Emily of the YouTube channel Emily the Engineer. She's using one of our favorite tools—a 3D printer—to create a huge working boat. But it's not just any boat, she's 3D printed a giant working Benchy.
Benchy is the name of a tiny 3D printable boat that makers use to test their 3D printers. It has angles and vertical holes that are tricky to print which makes it a great benchmark file — hence the name. To develop one big enough to use in the water, Emily printed larger and larger Benchy boats, testing their buoyancy along the way to help develop a working life-size version.
The final big Benchy is comprised of many small pieces which allows Emily to print it over time using small printers. The pieces were designed digitally to snap together with alignment pegs. However, some of the pieces had gaps when fitting together which needed to be sealed watertight.
Many of the gaps were sealed using 3D Gloop, a type of adhesive made specifically for the types of materials you'll commonly find people printing with. In addition to the 3D Gloop, a soldering iron was used to melt some of the pieces together. The outer seams were sealed using epoxy.
The giant Benchy boat was a working success but it wasn't very stable, bobbing a bit in the water. This was alleviated using a pontoon system Emily built using PVC pipe. To avoid paddling the boat around, she threw in a motor, making it self-propelled. All the work culminated in a successful trip across the lake to go get some Wendy's.
If you want to get a closer look at this giant Benchy boat in action or just see how it went together, you can check out the full video over on YouTube. Be sure to follow Emily for more cool creations as well as any updates to this one.
