3D printing boat parts
What do you do if you have some parts on your boat that you are afraid to lose? You buy a copy (or two) of course. But what if the parts is made of aluminium and very custom to the boat?
A bit complicated you say? No way!
The mast of Oleander has a railing that keeps the sliders of the main sail in so that when you hoist it, it comes up (or later on down) smoothly. But in order to put the sail on or off the boom, you’ll need a hole in the railing so you can put these sliders in. Afterwards you need to keep these stuck in position so you need a piece of metal that you can screw in the mast, that’ll make that happen. (Note the crappy way I did it before since I couldn’t find the magic part initially.)
Since the previous owner of the boat was in the habit of keeping multiple spare parts on the boat, I wanted to follow in his footsteps. So I found a 3D printing shop that was able to copy my metal part in two copies. They are of a hard plastic, but since this part is not load-baring, it should work just fine!
One of the copies has been doing duty now for a year and is quite happily fullfilling its designated task in life.
