Over Christmas I visited my family, and got to play a game of Battleship with my niece. It was just as much fun as I remembered when I was nine!

Unfortunately, they’d lost one of the destroyers, so we had to play with just four ships.

I offered to make a replacement with my 3D printer. I took measurements on the one that remained, and modeled it in Fusion 360.

This blog post was supposed to be all about how to modify a model to avoid the use of auto-generated support material. I’d assumed that the support material would be too difficult to remove, would leave an unacceptable finish on the bottom, and that the pins would be too fragile and would break off with the rest of the support material.

Since this thing is so small, I decided to print it that way first, just to prove my point.

Unfortunately, I was able to clean it up in less than 5 minutes; the pins came out nice and strong; and the finish on the bottom is just fine. Sorry this article is so short and boring. Sometimes you just need to trust the technology and stop thinking so much!

Click here for the Fusion 360 Model file.

Happy Holidays everyone!