Printarella1

Three metres of boat, 28 kg, no mould.

Photo: NUGAE Srl

It was not meant to be a boat. It was the test of something new, and it floats.

The piece

Printarella1 is a three metre hull 3D printed in CoreLight3D®, the NUGAE material. It weighs 28 kg and took about 30 hours to print. No mould, no plug, no lamination: it comes off the machine and goes into the water.

It could have been even lighter. These figures are not a limit of the technology, they are the first result of a test.

The hull seen from the deck, with the printing layers in full view — The deck. Photo: NUGAE Srl

The Printarella1 hull at three quarters on the stone lakefront — Three quarter view. Photo: NUGAE Srl

Facts

Length: 3 metres
Weight: 28 kg
Print time: About 30 hours
Material: CoreLight3D® by NUGAE
Internal structure: Ribs generated automatically by the new NU-Slice plugin
Hull design: Francesco Belvisi

Why we printed it

Printarella1 started as the test of a new plugin for NU-Slice, our slicing software: it generates the internal ribs of a part on its own, the structure that gives it stiffness.

The starting point was a hull design Francesco Belvisi had drawn several years ago and left in a drawer. Making it printable took five minutes: the plugin built the internal structure, generated the toolpaths and handed the job to the robot.

Five minutes to prepare a three metre boat. That is the result we care about, more than the boat itself.

Five minutes to make a design printable after years in a drawer.

Launching Printarella1 on Lake Como, with someone on board paddling — Photo: NUGAE Srl

Three metres, carried by two

Standing against the lakefront wall it is easy to read the size: three metres of hull. Two people are enough to move it, and on the water you can even paddle it standing up, like a SUP.

The Printarella1 hull standing against the lakefront wall — Three metres. Photo: NUGAE Srl

Two people lifting the hull to carry it to the water — Carried by two. Photo: NUGAE Srl

Printarella1 on the water, paddled standing up

UL-LFAM, not LFAM

At 28 kg for a three metre hull we are on a different plane from traditional large format printing, which prints solid and produces heavy parts that take a long time to make. That difference is what our acronym stands for: UL-LFAM, Ultra Light Large Format Additive Manufacturing.

The result does not come from one machine, but from four things developed together: the robot, the patented extruder, NU-Slice and CoreLight3D®.