Files are now available on Thangs.com so that you can build your own boat.
Minecraft is the best-selling video game in the world and has been popular for over a decade. You can get all sorts of weird and wonderful Minecraft merchandise, but if you want a radio controlled boat from the game, I’m afraid that you’re out of luck… until now. I spotted the gap in the market and decided to fill it by designing and building my own 3D printed Minecraft boat complete with skipper Steve at the wheel (well, oars).
The hull is made up of two main parts to reduce supports and comes in at 350 mm long (about 1:7 scale). All of the visible hull parts were printed in wood PLA to remain true to the original. All of the ‘wood’ parts were printed on a Creality CR-10 with 0.6 mm nozzle and 0.36 mm layer height for a total print time of about 60 hours.
Wood PLA tends to create stringing when printed, but that was easily tidied up with a bit of sanding and elbow grease. Wood PLA is hygroscopic, so not the best choice for a boat hull without further treatment. Two coats of polyester resin were applied to the outside of the hull to fix this and bring out a nice sheen. Below the deck is where all the action happens. There is a 370 brushed motor, ESC, servo (to control the rudder), 6 channel receiver, 3 cell LiPo battery and some other electronics that I’ll touch on later.
With the boat ready to hit the water, we needed a skipper. An articulated Steve was printed in PLA on a Creality Ender 3 at 0.2 mm layer height for a total print time of about 40 hours. Steve has a servo installed in his waist and right shoulder to allow him to be moved – this is important to help him fish later on. As well as the skipper of the boat, Steve also acts as a mount for a mechanism to row the oars. The mechanism is based around a 6 volt motor and metal gearbox with a 40:1 gear ratio. This is coupled with a further 2:1 reduction ratio to spin the oars at about 70 rpm – only about half as fast as the oars move in-game. The oars are printed in wood PLA and are driven by rotating ball and socket joints and their movement is constrained by oarlocks.
The boat clocks a scale speed of 25.5 KMH which is only a few kilometres shy of the in-game speed. More speed was unable to be achieved because of the poor hydrodynamics of the front of the hull (regardless of adding more power). This was also confirmed via computational fluid dynamic modelling.
Fishing! My favourite past time in the game. Fish, treasure and junk items were printed in PLA with neodymium magnets added mid-print. A fishing rod was printed from wood PLA and a float with magnets added on the end of music wire. The IRL pilot of the boat can use the boat to line up a floating item, then use Steve’s motion to catch it and then head to shore or get creative and release it using Steve’s motion.