When in possession of the world’s largest 3D printer, it’s a no brainer to aim high. Bagging three “Guinness World Records” at once, the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures & Composites Center manufactured the largest solid 3D-printed object and biggest 3D-printed boat. Weighing in at over 2 tonnes, “3Dirigo” is the 7.6 m patrol boat resulting from a naval engineering partnership with Navatek. “Dirigo” is Latin for “I direct” and the state of Maine’s motto, appropriately alluding to the Polar Star that guides mariners.

The enormous and quick printer can manufacture something as big as 30.5 x 6.7 m that is up to 3 m tall, with a throughput of more than 200 kg/h. For the 3Dirigo, the whole boatbuilding process only took 72 hours but can be watched in about 1/10,000th of that time here.