Why Our Catamaran Now Has a 23kg 3D Printer | Performance Upgrades

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Author: Shayne and Anna

Key Topic: Adding a 23kg 3D printer to our weight-conscious catamaran is a strategic trade-off: the tool’s onboard manufacturing capability enables us to create custom, performance-enhancing parts like rudder winglets and solve unique marine challenges, ultimately providing more value than the weight it adds.

It seems counterintuitive: we’re working tirelessly to lighten our 8-tonne catamaran, yet we just added a 23kg Bambu Lab X1 Carbon 3D printer. The answer lies in capability versus weight – sometimes adding the right tool creates more value than the weight it costs.

The Weight Paradox: Light Boat, Heavy Tool

Paikea is already relatively light at 8 tonnes compared to modern catamarans, but her slim performance hulls mean every kilogram matters for comfortable liveaboard cruising. “With Paikea as a lighter ship,” we explain, “we could then carry more food, add to our sail inventory, have a fridge AND a freezer, add more solar, carry more water toys – basically, it would give us more options.”

So why the 3D printer? Because its manufacturing capability allows us to create optimized parts that would be impossible through other means, ultimately improving performance and solving persistent problems.

Project 1: Rudder Winglets for Enhanced Performance

Our first major project demonstrates the printer’s value: custom rudder winglets.

What Winglets Do

“These stop the loss of energy from one side to the other,” Shayne explains. “When the rudder is turned, we create high pressure and low pressure. The water wants to escape around the bottom of the rudder from high to low pressure – the winglets prevent this.”

The Performance Benefits

  • Reduced Tip Vortices: Minimizes energy-wasting swirls at rudder tips
  • Effective Rudder Lengthening: “This is like gluing this to the bottom of the rudder and making the rudder that much longer without the penalty of having a deeper rudder”
  • Pitch Damping: As the boat hobby-horses, the winglets’ changing angle of attack helps stabilize the stern
  • Maintain Shallow Draft: All the benefits of longer rudders without actual depth increase

The Manufacturing Advantage: Printed Cores

The 3D printed winglets aren’t final parts – they’re sophisticated cores for composite construction. “This will be lightly sanded and then I’ll wrap the glass around it,” similar to how we built our rudders with foam cores.

This approach allows for:

  • Complex geometries impossible with hand-shaped foam
  • Rapid prototyping and iteration
  • Precise fitting and alignment features
  • Lightweight internal structures

Additional Projects in the Pipeline

The printer is already busy with other marine challenges:

Starlink Mounts: Custom brackets that fit our specific mounting requirements
Winch Button Receptacles: Replacing broken ABS parts with carbon-reinforced versions
Future Custom Hardware: Any specialized fitting we might need

“We’ve got carbon-filled PLA, carbon-filled nylons,” Shayne notes, “so there are some fairly structural – for 3D printing world – materials we can use.”

As part of our Youngbarnacles Membership have 3D print files you can download to try on your own boat. These include the drainage fitting for our Carbon Fiber Stanchion Sockets and the molds for our Composite Flush Hatches.

The Weight Justification

Yes, the printer weighs 23kg. But consider what it replaces:

  • Custom metal fabrication tools
  • Multiple specialized hand tools
  • The time and cost of outsourcing custom parts
  • The weight of carrying spares for every possible breakdown

More importantly, it enables performance improvements that directly support our weight-reduction goals elsewhere on the boat.

Picture of our 3d printed winglets that will attach to our rudders on Paikea. This printed section will essentially the the plastic core which we will laminate with epoxy resin and eglass cloth.

The winglets will be designed to be completely adjustable so we can play with placement on the rudder.

Conclusion: Capability Over Convention

The 3D printer represents a shift in how we approach boat maintenance and improvement. Instead of being limited by off-the-shelf solutions, we can now design and manufacture exactly what we need, when we need it.

As we continue our interior refit to replace heavy timber with lightweight composites, having this manufacturing capability onboard ensures we can create perfect custom solutions for the unique challenges of living and sailing on a performance catamaran.

Sometimes the right tool is worth its weight – even when you’re counting every kilogram.

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