3D Printed Propeller & Testing

Experimental Boat Build – 3D Printing a propeller

This page is about building and testing a home made electric outboard, check out the main project index for the rest.

There are some YouTubes video about this which shows the build and test.

I decided to make a propulsion device for the boat, which is planned to be electric. I also wanted to see if I could make hard-wearing functional 3D printed plastic parts, so I had a go at designing a propeller in Autodesk123D Design, as well as the other mounting parts:

Here are two 3D printed versions, one has been Acetone vapour smoothed. Also an auto windscreen wiper motor with the worm gear assembly cut off, and some bearings that came from a hot tub motor:

Here it is propped on the boat and ready for testing:

I’m using a 12V 70Ah leisure battery to power it as current draw is about 15A