Boat Challenge: Infinitely extensible boat

thingiverse

This boat design can be printed in one print volume of a MakerBot Replicator 2X printer, but I made it more printable by breaking it down into sections. You can also add as many parts as needed to fill any body of water, and this boat will hold as much weight as you want. To extend the boat horizontally, simply connect more base pieces in a puzzle fashion, while adding barrel support frameworks will allow it to be extended downward. As tested, using some imperfect pieces and older designs, this boat held 1 lb. 3.6 ounces of pennies, or $2.12. When creating a winning design, my initial thought was that I'd need the biggest base possible to hold the most weight, but I'm also limited by using a library printer with only two-hour time slots available. Sometimes I get longer periods, though. My first idea, floating a large platform on several pontoons, wasn't original - it reminded me of my family's old boathouse on the Mississippi River near La Crosse, Wisconsin. After printing and testing, I added connectors to the final design so that the walls wouldn't fall down as easily. Since cats are good luck for sailors, I used them as connectors, along with waves and fish symbols. This boat was designed by Lori Schaffer, my son's mom, using his account because it's based on my email address, but he mostly uses it. My design notes and work are included in the photos of my notebook! If you want to take a closer look, just enlarge the pictures so that you can read the whole page. This thing was made with Tinkercad - feel free to edit it online at https://www.tinkercad.com/things/6mzTyYZXvDi