I tried making an rc hovercraft way back by repurposing cheap rc car parts and a cardboard frame. Not quite powerful enough. Now that I've got a so far unused 3d printer sitting on a shelf I might give this another try. Great video.

use a garbage bag or something dont use starlite filament its to thick

Using starlite filament? :D

Your design is so perfect! Everything just fits and it makes me so happy. Can you do a video in the future where you show us your workflow when designing something like this?

You could make a 3 rudder design where the middle rudder pivots and the outer two rudders are simply attached to the middle rudder and set backwards a bit making a diamond formation which will allow full range of rotation your original single rudder has.

Probably nothing you haven't heard before - amazing design, great print, great idea and amazing execution - 10/10 - simply awesome!

Your projects never disappoint. Love the research you put in and explain to us. Nice job Tom!

Great job Tom, every time I watch one of your videos It makes me want to improve upon my own rc projects just that much more! Very nice build.

Just made mine. Love it. I found a 70mm EDF on Thingyverse which i scaled to 7mm on the Z and 75mm on X and Y. Works great! Cheers Tom. Great design!

Super impressive Tom. Love how you go through the troubleshooting throughout the video and you also take the time to add some graphics (turbulence, air vectors, etc)... keep it up!

That servo and motor mount using one bolt is a truly beautiful thing! An engenius design! I love it!

This is legit, I'm super impressed with how well it worked on the first go around. Also was really glad to see it all in a single video, I like the multi part videos as well, but sometimes they feel cut a little too short :) Excellent work on this!

Dual rudder for sure- Your hovercraft is working perfectly if it is hard to control (that was an interesting rudder hack and yes throttle=steering)! As a long time hovercraft enthusiast it takes practice and some nerve to pilot and even with many years experience things can get dicey ;)

@Seth Keesing Actually read the comment

I love the detailed explanations of your design features and decisions. You really do an excellent job. I wish I could like it more than once!!

Your videos are great! Soft Urethane/Silicone tooling or investment casting would be alternate methods of producing this part as a monolithic piece. Arguably you could use fiberglass/carbon composites as well, but that's not quite the spirit of the challenge. Your modified rudder is brilliant! Y'know what'd be cool? Another servo controlling the intake.

I watch many RC plane channels and multi rotor channels and yours is right at the top of my list. You and FliteTest are the best. Keep up the great work you are doing.

Peter siprol too

I hope you have PeterSripol on your list also.

TissuePaper the Swedish guy? yeah I miss him

David Bischof Flite Test dropped significantly on my list when they lost the European. I really enjoyed his stuff

for extensive tail rudder testing, you might want to make a removable base for the rudder. then, when you want to introduce pivot points or whatever, you simply print a new rudder base instead of the whole chasis

That's some impressive engineering on the chassis, good job man! Especially with how simple assembly is!

Very good, Tom! Your modified rudder WAS a big improvement! Dual rudders would be great but that's a major alteration so I think you did a very good job. Having a 3d printer definitely helps too!! Thanks man!

This is an absolute brilliant design! Thanks for sharing!

yet another great project, well documented, explained and really good to watch! Looking at the printing section I can suggest a couple changes to improve your print and reduce stringing, I also have a few CR10s: give it a coast distance of about 0.10 - 0.20 - depending on temp. increase retraction speed.

I love how you approach everything as an engineer! Congrats! Keep it up!

This is awesome! Really great design! What about adding a flap to redirect more airflow either to the bag or to use as forward thrust? You could tie that servo to the throttle channel

Great design, always amazed by you work, Keep up the great videos :)

Nice little project, looks to work great! Are your design files for something like this public? (Probably stated in the description, thanks again!)

The quality of your content is far above a lot of 3d printing/rc/experimental channels I see. Keep it up!

Another well thought out design. I always enjoy your work.  Thanks for sharing.

Neat build! It looks like it goes pretty well. Thanks for sharing!

Awesome work, nicely designed!

Very impressive Sir. I was wowed at how you thought of mounting the servo and turbine together.

Oh, very nice! Looking forward to trying this one out! Thanks Tom!

Clever design! Nice iterations & great result!

Great job !! I'm amazed how you got the steering authority problem solved ! I think there can be room for improvement by implementing rudder by wire. Can a gyro sensing yaw rate can be used to drive the rudder by a closed loop with yaw rate as primary input ?

That's really cool. I wonder if speed and manoeuvring could be improved by making the big rudder hollow so air flows thru it; and mounting it the other way around.

Absolutely brilliant!!

Wow, that's some nice engineering done there. Love it

This is your best video yet. Some really nice design features. I especially like how the fan and servo mount on a single bolt.

Nice first attempt. Can't wait to see version #2. Hopefully it will have the dual rudder design.

Nice design. It worked sooo good. Id love to build one.

Tom, what filament did you using for this? I like it all! Thanks again for sharing!

That's awesome, dude! Really, really nice work and design! 😀

Looks great! I hope you try version 2 over water :)

This is a realy great build. Im as impressed by the simplicity as much as its strangeness. The whole thing runs on a single motor and a servo. Toy companies would kill for such a cheep build.

Awesome video, design and build! I was thinking maybe you could create a reversible design by creating another duct on the front side of the propeller? Also using reversible esc.

Love your design... I am amazed your designs are so well put together on the first print! Such an elegant single motor design! Here is a recent design which Andy Shen put together and I whipped up from Thingiverse files. Requires an FC and some TX curves but its an absolute hoot to drive, steering response is immediate! http://www.shendrones.com/hovercraft

Wow! How do you design things SO NICELY!!! GREAT JOB

Very nice. I've ordered a 3d printer so binge watching a lot of videos to get ideas and I love this. At first I'm going to build wired control things like cranes and maybe a digger but I'll get onto RC items at some point

I do so enjoy your videos and the explanations you give for the various decisions you make. Keep up the great work.

well done Tom! instead of duplicating the rudder you could triple it: keep the servo in place. create two vertical axles for therudders, equidistant from the servo (on the right and left of the servo) and connect the two rudders to the central rudder bracket and you're done. If you do not want to have three rudders you can remove the central one keeping, off course the servo's bracket

Tom, each time i see you've uploaded a new video - i drop everything and watch it. you are a brilliant guy and I thank you for sharing. i am not only learning a lot from you, but i do this with a smile as well. keep up the good work. waiting for your next video s to come.

Yay for design without supports! I find the challenge of designing for 3d printing absolutely amazing.

I remember having one of those when I was a kid, it had two fans from memory, one was the main power and the other was mounted on the top for the curtain.

Awesome engineering and design. Two things that bug me - it cant hold position and if you use it on water it'll probably not last / get wet - I had a toy that was super complex but if the battery died it'd float and the electronics were on the topish. Neat!

This is amazing. I may even buy a 3d printer to build my own. Great video.. Thanks.

Very cool video! I would love to make one myself

Hey Tom, I have a question. A group of friends and I are building a hovercraft, and we went with a design similar to yours. We've be having problems with getting enough airflow to the skirt, and was wondering how you got air to flow both into the skirt and use air as propulsion.

Very nice! Impressive problem solving

Awesome design! Can't wait to see what's next.

Absolutely brilliant and very nicely constructed!

Nice one Tom, always enjoyable to watch

Hey, was just thinking why not tripple aerofoils on the rear, you could keep the servo in it's current position, and link the outer foils...just a thought! Great video, enjoy your channel!

Richard McDonnell Double rudders would be pretty easy, just need to drill two holes for pivots, and use the servo horns to connect linkages

Fantastic work!

Great Build fun to watch. The wedge will reduce straight line speed what about using a air foil design for the rudder and the induced lift to make it turn

Nice work mate, i like the second rudder. It improves syerring abiliry. I have one with 3 lever rudder set up and its harder to control than your 2nd rudder. Keep up the research, its very interesting. Thanks.

Tom, one of my favorite projects so far.

Awesome build Tom. Even I should be able to build this. Perhaps you can provide a part list of the stuff you use like servo props , motors those kind of things

Damn, i like it

Nice, 69 likes.

Excellent! Make the fan housing vector and add a gyro :)

Tom, this is amazing! Well done mate!

darkkevind neat but not really amazing is it

The tilt to port (12:30) is compounded by engine torque. Also, at 15:45 you need to consider rudder stall.

wish you had explained us the physics behind hovercrafts!!! BTW loved it!

Your videos are so well made. Your explanation is not only informative but preemptively assumes all arguments.

Awesome build!

Nice job Tom, congrats !

You can also make your first type of ruder wider (but keep the turning point) so it will cover more of the vent.

Very well done I love your stuff you’re an interesting young man

Cool project. I liked how you designed the cable paths

Great job as usual Tom

Very cool project. Now I want to build my own Hovercraft. 👍👍

Nice design Tom and as always brilliant attention to detail. Two things tho Would the original rudder have worked better if the mounting hole was further forward rather than the middle? You need to dump the cable ties and get out the hot glue gun for cable management. ;-)

Well done, Sir Tom!

This is great ! but it bother me that when you throttle up the hovercraft bank on the side. why don't you angle the structure that hold the motor in the same way you did on the paraglider project ? (contra-rotating fins) I'm curious to see if that help... also, does it work on water?

Nice work Tom, you should put a single axis gyro on board to help smooth out the steering.

You just solved my skirt problem. It's been doing my head in on my homemade foam hovercraft. I love your design. Mine has a foam box at the bottom of the propeller (not ducted) and ported evenly and 2 cells are more than enough. My mates 4 cell li po broke the moter mount but it works not quite as well as your design and now I'm rambling lol

Neat design. Great way to clean the floor. Thanks for the video and the cat tax. ^^

Wow, that was awesome. I'm curious how it would do if you waterproofed it and run it over water.

Awesome. Very well thought out.

Dec. 14, 2018---Thank you for a very interesting and useful video. Getting back into modeling, but once I saw zombie/apocalypse dioramas, I was hooked. Not going back to aircraft/armor for a long time. Been looking at 3D printers for about 5 years and they simply didn't produce the quality I wanted, but then found out about the Anycubic Proton resin printer and that's what I'm going to buy next year, asap. Meaning coming out of retirement for a few months and going back to driving truck for a few months just to make sure I got enough to support my new habit. As for my dioramas, found out there's a lot of stuff not available as kits or as resin aftermarket stuff. A couple of furniture kits either plastic or resin, but they seem stuck in the 1930's to 1950's time frame. How about carousel rides? The kind with the long arms and buckets for people to sit in? Which brings me to hovercraft....think there's only 2 available as kits & resin aftermarket and both are 1/72nd scale. But now, there's no doubt I can make several different sizes whether for 1 to 4 man machines. Saw a video earlier this year where a guy made a 1/35th scale locomotive which is used to move freight cars in some switching yard. It was done in sections of course, but looks outstanding. So why not a full size military hovercraft, along with the smaller ones I want? And why not swamp and john boats too?With the thousands of free printing and CAD programs, think the only limitation is your own imagination.

Wow! This is fantastic!

There are few things more satisfying to watch than a bin bag skirt hovercraft rise up from the ground the first time you tried it out. I even clapped a little bit I think :) Well done mate!

Having watched this, I am seriously wondering if it is possible to make a quad/sextcopter drone using only 3D printing, something with enough up-force to lift a camera. What would be the cost of that?

I've always found the dual motor hovercrafts easier to control.

Exceptionally well done mate. A very creditable job of design, construction and the problem solving was done exquisitely. Very, very impressed, thank you for sharing, 11x👍🏻👏

I really like your red and blue color scheme for 3d printing, keep up the cool stuff man

Awesome job!

If the red skirt had inner parallel lines with the outside lines, you might be able to use a continuous length of cycle inner tube to make the skirt. The down draught concentrating the thrust around the edges of the craft.

First video I see from U . Very smart and realistic the way you analyze the problems. I did a hovercrafts and most of the issues I had you mention then and fixed them properly. Very clever. I mean I've seen aerospace engineers attacking the problems like amateurs. Pretty good video

i would love to see this applied to an atv frame

this is so cool!! keep up the good work

awesome design love it would be awesome with the 3d swamp boat that i have done

Awesome! I love the rudder Innovation that worked out well

Great video. Would it be possible to use a Becker flap rudder ? This would give you the same turn control as your wedge rudder but not hinder speed when going straight.