3 meter HDPE sailing dinghy

Boat is more than interesting. Looks good too. Have some of the smaller bits and pieces been 3D printed?

The boat is merely good looking and very well done, the backgrounds in the pictures are spectacular.

 

No 3d printed parts, all machined from different thickness pieces of plastic and then welded together.
I am looking forward to acquire a semi industrial 3d printer to make some interesting parts but so far it´s all machined in a very basic cnc router and a little bit of laser cut for stainless steel parts.

 

Your boat looks cool but it will be hot in the sun, will that sun heat warp it?
I have repaired small plastic parts using a soldering iron.

I repaired some gouges and cracks on my plastic black HDPE Ram truck bedliner. At first I tried soldering and adding more plastic using a black HDPE oil jug cut into strips.
But was messy and hard to make it look good. I also tried a heat gun, but it is too broad application of heat, meaning you could deform or melt too large an area of plastic.

But I found if I use a propane torch and hold the plastic strip in the torch, they melt and drip onto the bedliner and it is so hot it instantly fuses to the plastic. You have to sometimes blow out a burning flame. It really worked well using the torch and drip method. You can also prime the plastic to be dripped on with a quick swipe of the torch.

Using the drip method, you can easily build up thick layers of plastic. It sort of looks like melted candle wax. Keep a hose nearby in case you screw up. But it is not hard to drip plastic onto HDPE to get a good bond. Advantage is the whole piece does not get so hot in that area to deform and melt.

 

From the pics this was welded with a commercial machine on Virgin material, guessing there is a low probability of it coming apart.

Dont doubt the heat will effect the black material but it is a homogenous build with the exception of the accessories that appear to be fastened with a well thought out method.

I'll say it again, project looks like it turned out amazing.