Contest to find best 3D printed hull design

This will be the first ever full-scale rescue boat to be delivered by 3D printing and the most innovative design will win S$30,000.

“This is a great competition for any shipbuilder, shipyard, manufacturing company or design business interested in submitting their designs with the possibility of winning a significant amount of money to develop their idea using additive manufacturing techniques,” said Hussain Quraishi, innovation lead at LR’s Digital Innovation Hub in Singapore.

“We’re particularly looking for entries which embrace the freedom that additive manufacturing allows to develop new novel hull designs,” he added.

The competition is the first part of a three-phase project to build and qualify a 3D printed rescue boat hull with autonomous sensors. It is launched by NAMIC in partnership with LR, the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, ST Electronics, Autodesk, and AML3D and supported by Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF) and the Maritime Port Authority of Singapore (MPA).

The winning design will be part of a research exercise with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, embedding sensors and integrating autonomous navigation systems provided by ST Electronics. This incubation and design appraisal phase is expected to last around a year, after which it will be manufactured by AML3D and qualified by LR.