MakerBot Industries

Printable Parametric Pirate Ship by MakerBlock

SuperAmi’s parametric pirate hook reminded me that I’ve been wanting a printable pirate ship for a while.  My first attempt, designed in Sketchup, leaves a lot to be desired.  This time, I wanted something of which I could really be proud.  My designs use just cubes, cylinders, union, difference, intersection, translate, rotate, scale, and modules.  Since I’ve documented the sum total of all of my OpenSCAD knowledge in this blog, if you’ve followed along with tutorial series you should be able to design your own pirate ship too!  Thingiverse has a lot of rocket ships and space ships, but very few ship ships.  I’d like your help in changing this.

The challenge for you is as follows:

• Design a pirate ship using OpenSCAD.
• Upload an STL and OpenSCAD design file to Thingiverse.
• Tag your design with “openscad pirate ship“.  Please also tag your design with “pirate ship” and “OpenSCAD,” to make it easier for others to find your designs in the future.

Eternal glory, the admiration of the citizens of Thingiverse, and 9,000 internet points await:

• The first person to print an OpenSCAD pirate ship and post a picture of their print to Thingiverse
• The first person to upload an OpenSCAD pirate ship
• Any person who uploads an OpenSCAD pirate ship with additional details such as cannons, bowsprit, plank, rowboats, portholes
• The first person to design, upload as a single STL, and print an OpenSCAD pirate ship inside an OpenSCAD Klein bottle

OpenSCAD Pirate Ship by MakerBlock

A printable OpenSCAD pirate ship. While it will definitely require support for the bow, the rest of the model should not. The OpenSCAD code isn't commented at all, so it may be difficult to follow. There are two main parameters - "shipscale" and "th." The first parameter "shipscale" is the size the entire ship is based on. It roughly corresponds to the overall height of the model. The second parameter "th" refers to the thickness of many of the features. The STL below has the thickness set to 0.6mm. It should probably be about 1mm or so for optimal printability. This ship features three masts with three sails each, a rudder, deck, captain's quarters, bow, and crow's nest. As an FYI, this pirate ship was made with just "cubes" and "cylinders."

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