Rob,

I am very interested. Let us know what you find out.

I was poking around and found a model for a 40' shipping container. Since I want my harry design to fit in one of those (disassembled), I went through the order process to get a price.

I picked a scale of "1", which made it 11.693" long (I would have thought that would have been 2.5% scale, but who knows what that means). The model came out to 66.73 in^3 which converts to 1093 cc There is a link from the Autocad123D site to several printers, and when I picked i.materialize, I got a price of $145.60 in polyamide. That's less than half the price per cc that I was expecting, but it is also more cc than I would have expected. The walls must be 5mm thick.

If we used these numbers, with 2mm wall thickness for the visionarry dimensions rob shows below, the 12" model might only run in the neighborhood of $70. That is getting to an interesting price range.

- Gardner

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 6:39 AM, Rob Denney <harryproa@gmail.com> wrote:

 

Surface area of a 600mm/2' long Visionarry schooner, both hulls, cockpit, beams, rudders, no rig, no internal furniture is 422,685 sq mm, which is 4,227 sq centimetres  .  Pretty sure that 1mm would be sufficient in ABS type plastic, so 427 cu centimetres/$600.  1ft would be 105,669, so about $150   

Would be great to have a removable deck with all the fitout and maybe some people to give it a sense of scale.  Be even greater to put a rig and rc gear on it and take it for a sail.  

I have a mate who knows about this sort of thing, have asked him if he is interested, will let you know.

There is no problem with my intellectual property.  First off, the hull shapes etc are nothing special, secondly, anyone who really wants to rip me off could do so from the web page and by asking me questions where my enthusiasm for spreading the proa word overcomes any reticence about sharing so I can make some money.  Not sure I would want to work with/for someone who would do that kind of thing anyway.

There is a problem with my computer skills, which are not a whole lot better than Gardner's.  Good enough to put a full size boat together, not sure how I would go with a model.  Only one way to find out, I suppose.  

If my mate is interested, he will also clean up my drawings, which would be handy.  If not, then I suggest we ask as many printers as we can find and see what they can offer.  I will send a correct rhino of a hull to anyone who wants to check out prices, etc and see what comes back.  

I am also interested in plastic moulds or plugs for foils,  and plastic mast/rudder bearings if anyone does an UHMWPE equivalent.  

Any other suggestions/questions, let me know.  

rob