This week’s selection is the World’s Largest Benchy by Emily the Engineer.
Emily is a popular YouTuber who presents a series of highly unusual build projects, often involving 3D printing. Some of her projects include a 3D printed “third arm”, a 10ft 3D printer, and even a 3D printed toilet. She explores some of the more fantastic possibilities enabled by the technology.
This month she released what could be the most classic 3D print project of all time: an enormous 3D printed #3DBenchy that you can pilot on a lake.
The #3DBenchy 3D model, developed in 2013 by Creative Technologies, has become the go-to 3D model for benchmarking 3D printers. While it’s now not the greatest benchmark object, it is hugely popular and quite possibly the most-printed object of all time. I seem to print several each week.
I’ve seen some rather large #3DBenchys produced myself, typically by large format 3D printer manufacturers looking to show of their equipment, but Emily’s project is quite different.
Emily performed some basic tests to ensure the seaworthiness of the little boat, but it seemed somewhat unstable in water. That became much more important later in the project.
The model was scaled up hugely, and then segmented into quite a number of parts that could be assembled. These were printed with five perimeters, and glued or plastic-welded together to create a full-size boat. Two entire days were required to assemble the boat.
Initial testing showed that the boat was quite unstable on the water, which is not surprising given its design goals. Emily and team decided they required some floats on the side of the boat to ensure stability, particularly when using an electric trolling motor on the back.
In the end Emily was successful — with some modifications — in getting a real, 3D printed #3DBenchy on the water. It’s clearly not the best boat, but it’s one that every 3D printer operator will immediately recognize.
Via YouTube
