3D Printing a RC Boat to Cleanup the Oceans?

I spent over a month designing a trash sweeping rc boat that can be 3d printed with an entry level 3d printer. This remote control boat can pick up garbage and plastic in oceans and rivers and is fun to drive around in sport mode. Full build tutorial plus my experience using this plastic cleanup boat on a couple missions. Could this help clean up the oceans? DIY RC Boat, 3d printed rc boat, cool 3d print projects, water cleanup boat, environmental builds, clean plastic out of water, ocean cleanup boat, plastic cleanup boat.

Instagram: @drewbuildsstuff

Products Used: Coming Soon (In the $10 plans above for now...)

[DrewBuildsStuff]

My videos tend to do a little better if they get more likes so I’d appreciate that very much! 👍 Also curious for the future: would you prefer 1. The current Youtube placed ads (5ish ads through the video), or 2. Less youtube ads (one at beginning and one at end) and an integrated sponsorship somewhere in the video (60-90 seconds)?

[rebeccazuckman]

Not only are you Talented with Building and using both sides of your brain,
You’re also a good person that cares about our planet…
I cannot wait to see what else YOUR CREATIVE MIND WILL COME UP WITH….
Very, wry talented in many ways. Love it 🥰

[ianr]

Couple of things that could be improved, from a fellow RC enthusiast who also owns multiple 3D printers:
3D prints are not watertight. You WILL have water leaking into your boat if you leave it in the water long enough. It'd be ideal if you sealed the hull using resin or something similar.

The net will propably tangle up into the propellers, so I'd move that to the front of the boat and have it run through the middle all the way to the end of the boat. That way your props stay clear of any possible tangles.

Print this with ABS, ASA or some other high temperature filament instead of PLA. PLA gets soft at quite low temperatures, it easily deforms under direct sunlight and it's also very brittle, so your spars are quite prone to breaking.

Do yourself a favor and get some heatset inserts, it's much stronger than screwing directly into plastic. Just be careful not to get the ones that have vertical ribbing, but the ones that are diagonal. The vertical ones are mainly used for wood, and they're very bad when used with 3D prints.

Shift the center of mass forward. On a couple of shots it looked like your boat was super close to taking in water through the rear hatch because it was sitting so low. Move the batteries forward, or move the net forward. This way your boat won't end up being a submarine.

[jonas]

The plastic which has been collected by the boat could be used to create filament for the 3d printer

[awesomecronk]

Slick boat! I do have a suggestion though: Right now the flat-back hulls drag a large pocket of water around behind them in a low-pressure zone. If you make the keel of each hull narrow back around the motors you would reduce the size of the pocket and also reduce the drag and turbulence it creates.

[theorangebaron]

To explain the mixes… or try to at least.
Each joystick has two axis of movement, each axis represents a channel. We have two joysticks, so we have 4 channels. The switches can also function as channels. Each joystick or switch channel will directly correspond with a channel on the receiver. If we want to control two channels with the output of one channel, we use a mix. In this case, channel 2 was mixed so the receiver would output the same signal to channel 2 and channel 5. Channel 3 is commonly known as the roll(for planes) or yaw channel(boats and cars). We mix channel 3 to so when it is to the right, it outputs a signal to the right motor(the one connected to ch 5), and when the stick is to the left, it sends a signal to ch2.

Not sure if this clarified a bunch, but I gave it a shot :)

Also great video! Quickly becoming one of my fav creators, got hooked on the ebike trailer build!
Z

[LateShow]

This guy is becoming the new king of random

[schrodingersdogjack]

Great job! Thanks for doing something to Keep America Beautiful! I saw someone on YouTube take recyclable plastic bottles, cut off the top and bottom, put the bottle through a homemade cutter of the same thickness as their 3D printer nozzle, and turning the bottle into one long strip. And finally, pass the strip through a heated tube that reshapes the strip into cord that can now be used as stock to use for more projects... like making a boat that picks up plastic bottles!

[realworldtrekkers]

I think your video has the clearest description of a project build that I have seen in a long time. The concept is a great one and could definitely be developed further. Great stuff!

[minerwilly]

Finally a video about building an RC boat where somebody actually speaks and gives an explanation of what's going on.

I was starting to think that everybody in the RC boat community was completely mute.

[christinechadsey]

Drew - I just wish I knew more about electronics to understand some of what you talks about but I absolutely love seeing your videos and seeing the unique things you come up with.

[NateYaquinto]

Combine this with a solar panel, autonomous mission software, and a camera with image recognition software trained to spot trash. This would also make for a cool fish finder drone if you put a sonar scanner on the bottom

[PeaceChanel]

Thank You Drew for All that you are doing for our Planet Earth....
Peace.. Shalom.. Salam.. Namaste
🙏🏻 😊 ✌ ☮ ❤ 🕊

[BenRyherd]

If you do a V2 I think it would make a lot of sense to use 2 Liter bottles for the pontoons, probably 4 of them. They're already water tight, about the right size, lighter than PLA hulls while being less likely to break transporting the boat or being in the hot sun and you'd be recycling them which would cut down significantly on the amount of printed plastic in the hulls which would both be more eco friendly and would be less of a project for anyone looking to duplicate. Downsides would be that you'd have to make your propellers external to the bottles and you'd have to store the electronics somewhere other than the hulls.

Also in the interest of doing more without wasting as much, you can get replacement nets for pool skimmers and then you wouldn't be throwing away the frame and pole to get the nets. You could probably also use mesh laundry bags for the net which would be cheaper still (they're like 2 or 3 bucks at walmart).

[dans-designs]

Nice, for the pool skimmer you could add image recognition and pathfinding so it can find the leaves itself!

[robertowens]

This is a wonderful invention I love it, keep the environment clean bravo thank you for showing us

[ManuRomein]

Wow drew, this is amazing and it is just so satisfying to see everything fit in place

[prpman]

Great job and thanks for the clean up.

[_BlueCollarGamer]

this was awesome!!! the only thing id like to suggest would be... MAYBE you could 3D print some sort of basket or cage like piece to protect the props. I think this could help a ton because seeing as this boat was made to help clean... the chances of running over some improperly discarded fishing line are rather high id imagine! I think this would be a good mod to help protect your project and would also be good for folks to have who download your files and print their own to help protect THEIR project.

[The_Texas_Welder]

that sounds like an awesome and fun solution to a bad problem