Pictures of Yacht Building Process

CNC-cutting...

As I said, here is a teaser. This week we started to cut out the basic hull shape from foam with the help of this robot. It took just three days. Next week will be fine cutting of the filler we are now applying over the foam.

And after that the deck will go through the same process before getting the finishing coat that we will make the mold on.

The boat is a 40-foot, 40 knot commuter.

At least they know it'll float.

I think they are not yet up and running really? Anyway, we are going with the most experienced company in this field; http://www.macromould.se/fras_index.htm

They have 5-axis robots and are building boat plugs for several scandinavian brands.

There is a dedicated program running the machine and we are producing the surfaces in a program called Rhino. The cellfoam (40 kg/m3) is glued to a plywood frame and is then cutted down to 8 mm below the final surface. The filler is then applied about 12 thick on top of that and is then cutted down to a surface within 0,1 mm limits.

I´ll post all of it in a separate thread later on for those interested to follow this.

This is the boat we are now producing molds for; http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6024&postcount=53

In addition to these renderings I have drawn a number of frames (picture) and detail drawings in 1/1 which are used to make the Rhino surfaces. They are manually transfered, but still within a mm accuracy in most places.

Yes, it is Freehand, a postscript vector program.

After the profile is made, I do some vertical helplines to be able to make the overhead drawing as I did on Bling a couple of days ago; http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11258&postcount=7

When I have this, I do the same by turning the deck plan 90 degrees and let helplines cross over helplines from the sideview where I can fill in the frames.

This way I make coordinates which is easy to put together by hand and adjust curves so they look good. I only have to do half the frame which I mirror, just as I do half the deck lines which are mirrored. Off course I can magnify almost unlimited on the screen to see if it looks good and fit to the coordinates.

I also do all the frames on top of each other to be able to see the flow of curves.

Pretty simple actually, but unfortunately I have not saved any drawing half finished to show you. I always remove the helplines as soon as I have used them, to clear the view...

Here is a drawing with guidelines put in. You have to make frames corresponding to the different positions along the yacht.

This is the most easy part since the passengers are always about the same height. Floor to ceiling is maybe 190 cm on a small boat and up to 240 cm on a 50 meter yacht. Sometimes a certain deck is made higher on larger yachts.

Anyway, together with the deck itself you can say that 250 cm is enough on normal yachts, so I make a grid of lines, let´s say 2.5 cm above each other. Then a 50 m yacht is 50 cm long, a 30 m is 30 cm. With a calculator you can enter any multiple to make the drawing fit in if you like to work on a A4 format on the screen.

For concepts A4 is OK, for construction you better make it larger, but it is easy to enlarge it later and then apply a thinner stroke width.