Hovercraft’s which are also known as air-cushion vehicles or AVC can travel  over land, water, mud or ice and other surfaces. Unlike all the other vehicles we know, a Hovercraft does not touch the ground to get the lift, it uses blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull that is slightly above atmospheric pressure.

The thus generated air cushion makes the vehicle levitate in air making the journey smoother than any other vehicle.

Surprisingly the first ever reference of such vehicle was done in 1716 by a Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg and the air cushion design which is symbolic to these vehicles was patented by a British shipbuilder John Isaac Thornycroft in the year 1870.

If you look up on the internet you will find a lot of DIY hovercraft projects which can be made with little to no experience and believe me it’s an extremely fascinating vehicle to make.

Jan Bürstner is a Hovercraft enthusiast and was working on one such DIY project when he got inspired to make an Open Source 3D Printed Hovercraft.

He designed all the parts of the hovercraft himself using the Autodesk’s Inventor 2013 software and has uploaded the same on Thingiverse. This allows anyone with a 3D printed to download the STL and create their own motorised hovercraft design.

The current model of the 3D printed Hovercraft is the 3rd iteration and probably the most versatile model.
In the earlier version of the Hovercraft Mr. Bürstner, experienced issues like the inability to control them outside of turning around their own axis, the inability to carry weight. The other major issue he faced was that the Vehicle was unable to recover from damages to the propeller caused by small pebbles. This was solved by adding a rubber base which could be a cycle tube attached to the base.

Jan Bürstner, printed the HoverCraft using a MakerbotReplicator printer with 15% infill on his two-shelled parts at a speed of 75 mm/s.

According to him all the parts of the design takes around three days to print and use two motors while a single thrust motor helps control the direction of the craft. 2800 mAhLipo batteries are used to power the motor that runs the propeller to make the air cushion and the thrust.

The HoverCraft can also be fitted with LED lights as well as a small action camera to capture the ride.