Meet Zippercraft, MakerFaire’s fastest 3D Printed Paddle Boat

[Brian]

When I arrived at MakerFaire on Saturday a rumour had been quickly making its rounds. ‘Have you seen the Zippercraft yet? It’s crushing it’s competition at the Moat Paddle Boat Races.’ Which was organised by _Ocean State Maker Mill​, s_o I quickly manoeuvred over there to see what the fuss was all about.

The Moat Paddle Boat Races are a new addition to this years 10th edition of the Bay Area MakerFaire. The concept is simple, contestants have to design a 3D Printed boat, which is no larger than 8” and is propelled by elastic bands. The speed of 3D Printing allowed boat designers to test their creations in the water on Friday and Saturday and make those much needed design improvements.

Sunday was the big raceday, each of the contestants went head to head in a best-of-3 knock-out race. The boat to make it to the other end of the 15 feet race track scored a point.

Throughout the weekend I saw about 35 different boat designs, from really elaborate MIT backed creations, to the tiniest of boats and even a couple boats sporting the early signs of sponsorship.

I watched and felt the excitement build with each race, finally we made it to the finally where Carol raced her Zippercraft against Dave. Both boats had a similar propulsion system, one in which a small propellor is fitted at the rear of the boat connected to a long and thick string of elastic bands, which were wound up a stunning 160 times. All of this power was released in just a few seconds the 3D Printed boats shot across the water.

In the end Zippercraft proved to be too fast to beat, so I met up with Carol to find out how she came up with the winning design, taking home a sweet prize a brand new SeeMeCNC 3D Printer. Surprisingly enough Carol had never 3D Printed before and didn’t own a 3D Printer herself, she used 3D Hubs to find David and his Five Angle Hub to print the designs. 'Helped by David I went through 4 different iterations in less then 2 weeks’, Carol explains. ‘On the first design the propellor was backwards, I couldn’t have won this race if I didn’t meet David’. I’ve not just found a way to 3D Print, I’ve actually made a friend here in San Francisco.

I’m already looking forward to seeing next set of creations at upcoming Maker Faires.

[Filemon]

Haha this is cool!

[Nikki]

This is great! Congratulations @cfishy! Nice printing work @!

[Arnoldas]

3D Printing : Fast and furious!

[cfishy]

What a fun even! I couldn’t have made it without my local hubs. Also wanna thank Wayno’s hub in San Francisco for printing Zippercraft overnight! Thanks @sylvain_5

[fiveangle]

Thx Nikki ! The morning of the race, @cfishy got the crazy notion for me to use use Zippercraft Prototype #2 and enter it just for fun, yet after some minor hacking at the Dremel booth and elastic optimizing, I was the 2nd fastest. So much fun.

Thanks to 3dhubs for putting makers together and to SeeMeCNC for sponsoring the race !

[Nikki]

Haha! That is brilliant - awesome SF community vibes buzzing around The Bay!

[Brian]

Indeed it was a lot of fun, nice to meet the both of you in person!

[groutw]

Congrats @cfishy! Glad I could help with the final print!

Here’s a photo in “dry-dock” before setting sail