3D Printed Vessels Set Sail

Stratasys has been a co-captain on American Magic’s journey through two cycles of the venerable America’s Cup competition. Just as the NASCAR competitive racing circuit leans into 3D printing to turbocharge design innovation, the New York Yacht Club’s team has tacked towards Stratasys’ carbon fiber materials and additive manufacturing (AM) systems to quickly iterate and create high-performance parts with the partnership now focused on prepping the next-generation race yacht.

Stratasys is seeing expanded use of 3D printing for more mainstream commercial and consumer marine use cases. Carbon composites, metal AM and thermoplastics materials and technologies are being leveraged for a range of applications. Among them: the jigs and fixtures used to form vessel structures; propellers, impellers, as well as replacement parts; and customized assets such as bezels, brackets, mounts, housings, even furniture.

“Marine applications are an up-and-coming market for us,” says Fadi Abro, global director for the transportation vertical, at Stratasys. “There’s more opportunity to implement AM because these are high-value products, typically with low volumes and lots of customizations. AM tends to be able to support those use cases much better than traditional manufacturing methods.”

Material advances—such as high-performance carbon fiber composites like the fused deposition nylon (FDM) Nylon 12 used in the American Magic craft—and more affordable, large-scale 3D printing systems are helping the technology gain traction in the marine sector. AM brings a range of advantages to what’s primarily remained an old-school, hands-on manufacturing process, including accelerated time to market, a reduction in skilled, manual labor and the ability to get more creative with innovative, lightweight component designs.

“Traditionally, the marine industry uses quite a bit of fiberglass manufacturing—it’s an old-style industry with a lot of hours going into manual labor and some limitations on what design changes can be made,” says Rahul Kasat, vice president, 3D Systems. Kasat had been CEO of Titan Robotics, maker of the high-speed, large-format Titan Pellet industrial pellet extrusion 3D printer, which was acquired by 3D Systems in 2022. “3D printing can bring a lot of innovation to this industry.”

America’s Cup Sets Off

As part of the initial collaboration on American Magic, the challenger for the 36th America’s Cup, Stratasys Fortus 450mc printers and carbon fiber reinforced FDM Nylon 12 were engaged to produce repeatable final parts, including essential brackets, fittings and mounts. In one example, the printers produced aerodynamic fairings for the hull as well as hydrodynamic components.

One of the key advantages of AM is quick turnaround, transforming what traditionally might be a multi-day process into overnight production of 3D-printed parts.

“I can have someone come to me with a part that’s needed for the boat and I’ll CAD it that afternoon, put it on the printer for overnight print, and hand them the piece in the morning,” says Robyn Lesh, a designer for the American Magic team. Precision and accuracy is an upside to the Stratasys technology, ensuring the team doesn’t have to iterate on simple elements like fit or piece size, Lesh says.

As the American Magic team looks to the 37th America’s Cup, it is continuing use of 3D printing, including Stratasys technology, to produce parts for the AC75 boat, “B3,” which is slated to compete in the race that kicks off in August in Barcelona.

“For American Magic, it’s all about the speed at which they can iterate and develop new features to help them go faster and further in the water,” Abro says.

Domin, manufacturer of specialized motion control and hydraulic systems, is part of the 3D printing wave transforming the America’s Cup and general marine use cases. The company partnered with INEOS Britannia, one of the sailing teams competing in the upcoming race, to supply state-of-the-art 3D-printed servo valves designed to enhance the race craft’s performance and agility. The custom-designed servo valves operate at high performance at a high-pressure level while minimizing leakage. This contributes to the race team’s overall lightweighting goals and helps reduce aerodynamic drag.

“INEOS is aiming for something that is as small and light as possible while also being reliable and high performing, working under high pressure,” says Jerome Carson, product owner at Domin. The custom-designed servo valve fits with any number of control applications on the boat, from lifting foils to controlling sails—anything involving linear actuation, Carson adds.

Domin counts 3D printing as one of the key technologies in its toolbox to revolutionize hydraulics, along with digital electronics, brushless DC motors and modern control algorithms.

“3D printing’s freedom of design allows us to create these highly efficient, curved flow galleries for extremely lightweight, power-dense products,” Carson says, calling out marine use cases as one of its fastest-growing market segments. “Anything that moves in a boat is controlled using some form of actuation, and AM and clever hydraulic systems are a great way to add efficiencies to those applications.”

Large-Scale AM Takes Shape

3D printing is driving efficiencies and innovation outside of the marine racing circuit as well. 3D Systems is seeing a lot of activity and interest in use of its systems, particularly the Titan Pellet large-scale pellet extrusion 3D printer, for tooling applications, including thermoforming molds used to create the exteriors of boats as well as other layup tools. In one demonstration of what’s possible, the company used the Titan Pellet Extrusion system along with Titan carbon fiber acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (CF ABS) pellets with gel coating to build a radar mounting mast for a boat.

The CF ABS pellet materials ensured better durability and corrosion resistance compared to a metal solution, 3D Systems’ Kasat says, and the team was also able to achieve a 25% weight reduction. A 0.5-mm gel coat layer was applied directly to the 3D-printed part to ensure ultraviolet (UV) protection and a smooth finish surface. Total print time was 116 hours with a material cost of $117, Kasat adds, and notes that the same part made with more traditional practices would cost upwards of several thousand dollars.

The Titan Pellet’s faster speeds, breadth of material choices and ability to accommodate large-scale prints (up to 6 feet tall) make it suitable for many boat applications, Kasat says.

Extrusion systems now can print up to 30 lbs. of functional engineering-grade thermoplastic material every hour, according to Kasat.

“You can achieve significantly lower costs with the same type of materials used in injection molding to print larger parts,” he says.

The scale of Massivit’s 3D printers and the speed at which they print are also highly suitable for marine industry applications, officials there maintain. The Massivit AM platforms enable boat manufacturers to reduce the number of components required for a build, which helps minimize water leakage.

The 3D print technology, which involves curing the materials with UV light, allows for up to 30x faster printing speeds compared to other AM technologies, greatly accelerating time to market, officials claim. Moreover, the technology is backed by 50 patents. With no requirement for internal supports, customers can create hollow, lightweight structures, saving time and money.

In comparison, conventional boat manufacturing processes are lengthy, labor-intensive and costly, requiring weeks to build a master mold while subtractive technologies like computer numerically controlled (CNC) milling can impose limitations on designs, not to mention significant materials waste.

“We can have a full 6-foot part printed within 6 to 7 hours vs. something that, depending on the manufacturing process, could take weeks,” says Juergen Huemer, head of sales in North America at Massivit, who says the marine industry is currently one of the company’s fastest-growing segments. Massivit is seeing increasing AM use for a variety of marine use cases, including customized end-use parts such as fins, masts, radar antennas and dashboards as well as for interior fixtures like bathrooms and sinks. Directly printed large molds are another growing use case.

Velum Nautica, a Croatia-based company that specializes in the maintenance and repair of boats and cargo ships, is using Massivit 3D printers to build custom molds and full-scale parts. In addition to accelerating time to market, the Massivit 3D printers also help reduce manpower.

“With Massivit, we need one [person] while with traditional methods, we need five to 10 workers,” says Kate Popovac, co-owner of Velum Nautica. “While the printer is operating, other workers can tend to other projects and we save time.”

Al Seer Marine, which provides an array of marine services (including custom boat building) in the Arabian maritime region, commissioned a specially configured composite robotic arm 3D printer from CEAD Group to build what it claims is the “world’s first” AM-produced water taxi. At 11.98 m in length and comprised of 67% recycled materials, the 3D printed taxi fits 29 passengers and was produced with CEAD’s Mega II 3D printer, which has two robot arms on rails and performs pellet extrusion. Given its size, it is primed for producing entire boat hulls and large-scale structures without incurring the usual gantry and foundation costs, according to Chuck Fluharty, regional sales manager, USA, for CEAD.

Fluharty says interest in marine use cases have significantly increased with CEAD working on over 22 global projects, including selling a CEAD AM system to a U.S. company for a boat application. However, challenges remain. “Overall, the market is still in an early adopter phase as existing boat manufacturers seek solutions to historical challenges such as low-volume production, expensive hand labor and long production cycles,” Fluharty says.

While AM can be the solution to many long-standing constraints, the technology ushers in its own set of hurdles. Availability of the right materials is a big one as marine use cases are subject to extreme conditions. In addition to the usual requirements around durability, lightweighting and performance, marine materials must embody specific characteristics for resisting corrosion, saltwater, and prolonged exposure to UV light.

Size and scale is another issue, as boat parts can be quite massive. While the large-scale extrusion 3D printers mitigate some of the size challenges, questions remain about the impact of build orientation and build capacity on the final structure and makeup of parts, experts say.

In the end, however, the usual resistance to change might be the most onerous hurdle to widespread AM adoption for marine use cases.

“Manufacturers are used to doing things in a certain way—it will take time for them to educate themselves on 3D printing and figure out how to adopt it on the manufacturing floor,” says 3D Systems’ Kasat. “You need forward thinkers who want to adopt new technology.”

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