Harbor Tugboat - Bathtub Boat

This model was designed first and foremost around play, which means it must be seaworthy.  One of my other models, the anchor handling tug is a great play toy, but required some specific balance to make the ship seaworthy.  This tugboat on the other hand is naturally stable with simple print settings. The hull has a flat landing on the bottom which allows the tug to sit stable on a floor or surface to aid in playing when water is not present.

This tug boat is modeled loosely after an 86 ft tug with twin z-drive propulsion.  You would typically find a tugboat like this escorting large vessels into a port and helping to dock them. While the tugboats are small, they have a large amount of power and large propellers for a boat their size.

This model is split into 3 sections in order to be easily printed with no supports with the shown bed orientation.

All sections were printed using a 0.4 mm nozzle with 0.20 mm layer heights and 10-15% infill.

Once printed all sections were glued together with CA glue.

A final coat of clear coat spray paint will aid in keeping the boat watertight even if there are slight flaws in the extrusion.  All pictures shown were printed using PLA+.  

I have included a custom G-code file for the superstructure that includes a few lines of custom G-code to optimize the print.  Due to the small size of some of the features on the roof of the tugboat, the print will warp because the extruded filament does not have time to sufficiently cool between the layers.  The included G-code for the superstructure has an M220 S15 command to slow the print speed to 15% for the top several layers, followed by a return to M220 S100 as the print is finishing. This command acts just like adjusting the knob on the Prusa MK3s.

A guide to adding custom G-code can be found at the following link.

https://help.prusa3d.com/article/insert-pause-or-custom-g-code-at-layer_120490