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The Big Idea: 3-D Printing Superyachts
In 2019, the University of Maine built a 25-foot boat from the world’s largest 3-D-polymer printer. It took just 72 hours to complete and, up close, looked as if miles of spaghetti had been neatly layered to finish the hull. Last year, for the U.S. Marine Corps, the university built two heavier 25-footers in even less time. These vessels, while rough, are proof that 3-D printing, otherwise known as “additive manufacturing,” is poised to disrupt yacht building, along with so many other industries.
“We’re already seeing exponential applications of this technology,” says Marnix Hoekstra, co-creative director at Vripack Yacht Design. “The first 3-D-printed boats are being sold, and the offerings will only grow in both size and complexity.”
Designers like Vripack are using 3-D printers to create custom parts such as handrails and scuppers. “We premanufacture them to scale, so the client can see and touch them,” Hoekstra says. Besides 3-D printing’s benefit of zero material waste, designers can create circular staircases or curving consoles that aren’t possible via conventional techniques. Superyacht builders including Feadship and Sanlorenzo already use 3-D printers to fabricate complex parts.
Some European start-ups are not only building parts, but entire boats. Moi Composites printed its wildly curved 20-foot MAMBO to demonstrate the capabilities of continuous-fiber manufacturing (CFM) digital technology, says CEO Gabriele Natalo. “We wanted to show we could do virtually any shape without a mold,” he says, adding that the design “would’ve been impossible using normal methods.”
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Superyacht designer Greg Marshall, who has been working with 3-D printing for 15 years, is piecing together components of a 30-foot vessel to understand how such building processes could work. “Multi-material printers will let you print complex components like wiring and piping right into the hull, saving time, weight, and space,” he says. The boat will require 80 percent less material than a conventional build, so even the cost of using high-priced titanium would be a “non-event” compared to aluminum or steel. But creating even a 30-footer, which now looks like “Mr. Potato Head,” according to Marshall, is a complex jigsaw puzzle that will take time to complete. Printing superyachts is “inevitable,” says the designer, though it might be another decade or two before the technology is ready for the size and complexity of such high-volume vessels.
Jozeph Forakis, creator of the 289- foot concept Pegasus, thinks the tech might be ready sooner, pointing to the March launch of Relativity Space’s second 3-D-printed rocket, Terran R, as proof. “If they’ve done this in just a few years, you can see how fast it’s moving,” he says. Pegasus, meanwhile, has a 3-D-printable triangulated exoskeleton that’s significantly lighter and tougher than a conventional hull. “When I announced Pegasus, I was being deliberately conservative by saying it could be launched by 2030,” says Forakis. “Now I’d say it could be even sooner with developments in 3-D printing, A.I., and other areas. This process will change everything.”
