I'm Printing My Bimini!
 

I picked up a new-to-me 2005 Centurion SV230 this year and it didn't come with a bimini. While shopping for one, it suddenly dawned on me that I should just print one. Yes, print one with a 3D printer.

I chose to copy Sewlong's patented Folding Canopy Top. It's a great design. All of the black ABS plastic pieces you see were printed with a Stratasys Dimension 3D printer. The tubing is 1" aluminum. I'll be using Sunbrella for the canvas. Here are pics of my progress so far.

Pic 1: CAD model of my design.
Pic 2: Several of the printed parts waiting to be assembled.
Pic 3: The sides assembled
Pic 4: Close-up of the rear support with Centurion logo

Very impressive.

Could you make another?

I guess I should have stated this up front, but I design these 3D printers and we are allowed to print stuff for our own use. However, I can't print stuff for others. Besides, the actual cost would be significantly more than what Sewlong sells these biminis for.

Cool, what material are the parts "printed" with? I know the older SLA models were some kind polymer and not very strong.

Before you mentioned that you got to print this stuff for free I thought you were crazy because of how expensive 3d printing is. If I got to print stuff for free I'd have those machines locked up 24/7 haha.

Yeah, we get to print a lot of cool stuff!

Jack, the parts are printed with ABS plastic. The same plastic that most cell phones and such are made from. It works like an ultra precise hot glue gun that builds up layers.

ABS is a pretty good plastic and should hold up for that...

The engineers I work with have been trying to get one of those printers for years - we normally just "print" up a billet part instead...;)

Very cool Chad!!

Tuneman,

What company do you work for? I've been given the project of researching one of the new extruding 3d printers to do mock ups for our company.
I've been looking at Cubify, and Makerbot printers but it looks like yours can make much larger parts than any of those. And it also looks like you are holding pretty tight tolerances. What CAD system are you using? Solidworks?

For professional printing, you need to look at Stratasys (http://www.stratasys.com) . Those printers you mentioned are for do-it-yourselfers and hobyists. I work for Stratasys and we can print up to .005" thin layers. Yes, we use Solidworks.

That looks great! What tower does your enzo have? I hate the one that came with mine. When I called centurion with my serial # they said it did not come with a Bimini so it must be something the last owner put on and not very well. Nothing is even where it mounts to the tower. It was on my list to mess with this winter but summer came fast and ballast upgrade was more important. Please continue to post updates.

Fantastic.. absolutely amazing.

Well, I'm happy to report the bimini was a success over the 4th holiday! More pics for ya:

Additional parts. Note that EVERYTHING that is black on the bimini (except the canvas) was printed:
http://www.wakeskishop.com/bimini/more_parts.jpg

The completed assembly, minus the canvas:
http://www.wakeskishop.com/bimini/no_canvas.jpg

I don't have the final sunbrella material yet and figured it would be smart to sew up an inexpensive sheet first to make certain it's going to work. A twin size bed sheet was the perfect width. All I did was sew pockets on the ends and cut a hole for the pylon. Voila:
http://www.wakeskishop.com/bimini/canvas_01.jpg

Two quick release pins and we've got the folded position:
http://www.wakeskishop.com/bimini/folded.jpg

On the water:
http://www.wakeskishop.com/bimini/final_bimini.jpg

Only thing left to do is sew up the Sunbrella and matching boot.

Then it's onto a printed wind block, printed heater, printed HLCD tower speakers, ... stay tuned.

Tuneman: PM sent

Dude that is absolutely awesome!!

Here's some bad pics(only ones I took) of my printed folding wind block. Works great and drops right in place.

I didn't want to screw channel into my gelcoat, so the wind block hooks around the top and under the windshield. The first pic is the wind block half assembled. The second pic is while I was fitting it (the bottom piece is missing). Added weather stripping along the edges and put her to use in the last pic.

Awesome work!

That is incredible. My bother in law has worked at Solidworks for years I always thought the technology and power of viewing 3-D design software was cool but being able to then print 3-D parts is mind blowing. I never really understood the long term potential of this stuff 10 years ago. I'll have to ask him whats next. In 10 more years our kids will probably have these printers in their rooms. That's just awesome.

That wind dam is awesome! Wish I could buy one like that, but at least it gave me an idea where I don't have to screw guide channels on each side.

now take all the money you saved and buy some glass cleaner! :D

Damn Chad!!! That's awesome! What's next??? Are you going to print a hydrofoil???

Spring is almost here and I've got the itch to start creating again! Lots of printing plans.

Tower speakers will be the biggest print job and working on that. Currently working on my heaters. Gonna make two of these. One for driver/observer and one for the back of the boat. I made one of these several years ago with great success (before I could print stuff). Bent up sheet metal for the box of that one and it cost me $200 total after buying 2 hot tubes and a Y-fitting from skidim.com.

For these, spark free and quiet 4" blower fan was $20, heater core was $25, switch was $20. Gotta get tubing, hose, and Y-fitting still. Looking at just over $100. I'm cheap:)

CAD models of the core and hot tube almost done. Printing soon...

Nice!

Feel like printing me a bimini? LOL.

You funny...

Printed a 'test' hot tube, just to make certain everything will work correctly. Works perfectly:) The texture from the print turned out to be pretty cool.

Very cool! Does it always have that texture when you print it or is that something you can change about the process?

I don't know about his 3d printer but in general the higher resolution you use, the less texture you get. So sometimes you do test prints at a low resolution (which prints a lot faster). If you can do 3d design you can order 3d printed parts online, and places (like shapeways) have options such as "smoothing" where they run it through some sorts of beads on a vibrator thing to smooth out the texture.

How big is your 3D printer?

FUSED DEPOSITION MODELING IS COOOOOL! Seems like everyone thinks of 3D printing as one big group, but its actually a specific type of additive manufacturing where you add a bonding agent (like glue) to a powder. Looks like you used FDM for the ABS parts you made, its pretty wicked stuff! Great to watch and really opens the doors up for rapid prototyping. I took a class last semester on all of it.

Heres a part i did....its a 1/12th scale wakeboat, I just got creative with the curves and it came out pretty cool.
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4...A40F0A1701.jpg

http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4...A40B8391E8.jpg

http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k4...A4044EA467.jpg

Used solidworks to model the hull and a Stratasys Dimension 1200es (i think) that we have on campus. Pretty cool stuff!

The bonding agent to powder process is not FDM. The powder process is a 3D Systems Corp process that makes nice colored prototypes, but are not for end use parts. FDM is essentially a super precise hot glue gun that builds up thin layers of plastic.

I used FDM for the hot tube and printed it with .010" thick layers. I can print down to 0.005" layers, but it takes a lot more time to print. We do have smoothing processes, but I kinda liked how it turned out.

PureWakesurfing1, the largest single part I can print is 3 feet by 2 feet by 3 feet tall. Beyond that, I can divide up the part and glue it together afterward.

Correct, seems that I wasn't clear enough in my post. I wanted to point out that "3D printing" refers to the "Powder Process" not FDM. At least, this is what my Computer Aided Manufacturing Textbook tells me.

regardless, its all pretty sweet stuff and I love what you are doing with it!

Beautiful work on this. I'm looking forward to seeing your finished speaker cans. What wall thickness did you find worked well for the tubing on the bimini?

That work looks awesome. I am just about to get into 3d printing and doing research. need it for my next project and wonder what sets the uber expensive stratasys printers apart from things like this makerbot, besides size of objects it can print. . both print in ABS to thousands of an inch it seems.
https://www.inventables.com/technolo...tor-3d-printer

edit: nevermind, just saw your comment about printing in .005" thickness

More progress. Printed the core box out of Ultem. Ready for assembly!

Very impressive.

The hidden hot tube...

Let me get this straight...

Not only do you get to make this stuff for your personal use... but you also get to come on here and rub our faces in it too???

I hate you! :):)

Ok, here comes more rubbing.:)

I'm slowly redoing my ballast and building it all in. Using 14 aerator pumps. Tsunami 1200s, to be specific. However, they have a proprietary 1-1/8" thread, of which I'm sure many of you are aware. Fly High makes an adapter to 3/4" to fit their bags, but I don't want the restriction. So, I printed my own adapters. Tsunami to 1.5" pipe:

Connector printable files
 

I am looking at building a Bimini top for my boat and ran across your top build. I was wondering if you have the STL files for printing the connectors still? If so is there a chance I could get a copy of them to help me build my top?

Thanks in advance.