Make Your Own 3D Printed Swamp Boat with This Instructable

I live in the Florida panhandle, where bayous and swamps are not a rare sight. Therefore, swamp boats are a fairly common sight as well. These are very simple flat boats that are usually steered using the motor in the back — easy for navigating the tricky terrain of the swamps.

If you aren’t quite in the market for a regular size boat, but like the idea of controlling a mini motorized swamp boat through your own backwaters, you can always try this Instructable from “RCWeinstadt” — Sebsastian Huber, of Germany — for a 3D printed swamp boat that is made of two different parts and then screwed together.

Huber begins the Instructable with the CAD design, which is described as being done so that all of the necessary cables can “run the hull in a cable duct.” Also, the boat is designed so the receiver and ESC are covered in the boat’s front part, while the battery is placed in the back of the boat in order to keep the gravity center behind the middle of the boat. This designer has thought of it all, right?

Next, in Step 2, Huber lists everything that you’ll need to make this boat, like a 3D printer and 4 pin needles. There’s also an extensive list of links to Hobby King’s online store, where you can purchase all other non-printed parts for the project, too, for your convenience.

For Step 3, the 3D printing, the parts were printed using these Thingiverse files and a modified Tantillus 3D printer. Parts were printed in ABS with rear and front infill of 15%, control surfaces at 20% infill, and everything else at 50% infill. Also, the control surfaces of the boat need to be modified, so in Step 4 Huber explains that you’ll need to “heat a pin needle and put it in the top and bottom around 3mm from the rounded edge” in order to mount the control surfaces.

Step 5 has you putting it all together, by following the pictures, with Huber’s instructions for extending the motor’s wires, which can be “run to the ESC through the cable duct.” And in order to seal the two main parts, you can “glue around the internal cable duct and the screws.”

Finally, in Step 6, Huber shows us that this also works great for FPV (first person viewing), stating: “I put in my small FPV setup and drive around like I’m sitting on it.”

So, if you are into model boats, or have a thing for swamp boats (we know you are out there!) this well described project may just be the thing for you!  Have you printed out one of these boats?  Let us know in the 3D Printed Swamp Boat forum on 3DPB.com.