American Magic Update With Creaform 3D Scanners

The design team for the New York Yacht Club’s American Magic, the US Challenger for the 36^th Americas Cup, is continuing to drive innovations to its 75-foot monohull in final push before the race in Auckland, New Zealand, in March 2021.

NYYC American Magic, 36th America’s Cup – © Sailing Energy / American Magic

Using Creaform’s handheld 3D scanners for the final changes on the PATRIOT’s product development process

American Magic’s competing monohull, widely known as the PATRIOT, is a sailing masterpiece. Designed with aerospace technology from Airbus, the PATRIOT rises up on hydrofoils and flies across the water when it reaches a certain speed. A large-scale, fully foiling monohull is a sailing world first.

Robyn Lesh, part of the PATRIOT’s design team and responsible for 3D scanning and 3D printing technologies has been using Creaform’s metrology-grade technologies to make extremely precise tweaks on a wide variety of the monohull’s intricate components, including the HandySCAN 3D, MaxSHOT 3D, MetraSCAN 3D and HandyPROBE CMM. The devil is definitely in the details as the monohull’s speed, handling and weight can be tremendously impact by even the smallest part, which in turn can be an advantage—or disadvantage on race day.

3D scanners to design even the smallest parts—that can make a big difference!

Take a bobstay fairing, for example. The PATRIOT’s bobstay fairings were made with a mold, but with hand shaping. It didn’t fit the CAD model, Robyn and the team needed to make a part to fit into the fairing’s cavity.

Instead of a conventional, manual process, she 3D scanned the part, made the changes to the CAD model and then sent it to the 3D printer for production. While different design iterations were made to get the perfect fit, the team literally save hundreds of work hours—for that one component. “It would be hard to imagine doing this without 3D scanning and printing,” she said. The same can be said for many of the monohull’s other parts and assemblies.

An ingenious and efficient design and testing workflow

As Robyn mention, competitors of the America’s Cup campaign can raise more money, but they cannot buy more time. Nevertheless, the American Magic team  feels as though cutting-edge technologies, like Creaform’s 3D scanning solutions and 3D printing, actually help them “buy” more design and training time.

How did the American Magic team win more time?

Creaform’s 3D scanners  and another partner’s 3D printers are located on site, where the monohull is being developed and also where the team is training. This means that the team can train on any given day with the PATRIOT in the water. If something breaks, an issue arises, or a new idea to increase performance comes to mind, the design team has the technology and possibility to scan various parts, make fixes, and then 3D print the new components—all in a day.

The team can then go back out into the water and test the changes. Robyn is adamant: with the time savings that Creaform’s metrology solutions offer, the American Magic team has more time to sail, learn and innovate before the big race.

Watch more about Robyn’s work with Creaform’s 3D scanners and get inspired by the American Magic’s team innovative mindset!

Continue the journey: Read the next article here.