Invention Story
The Clean Machine is an electric paddleboat with an electric scooper on the front that picks up waste. What makes the boat so special is that the electric engines are connected to turbine generators, so when the engines spin, so do the turbines, and the power is fed back into the engines. Basically, the boat is self-powered.
Looking for a boat
I really liked Simon’s idea of a vessel to collect waste material from the water surface using a paddle wheel with some ...
Scooper design
The main element in Simon’s invention is the scooper. The scooper is used to pick up floating waste near the water surface ...
Much of the design work completed.
After some brainstorming, including with my daughter and fellow maker Isabel, much of the design work is ...
The making of the ship hull
Now that the design looks under control, I first printed the hull of the ship on my 3D printer. The ship will ...
The Conveyor
The heart of Simon’s invention is the scooper. As explained before I implemented the idea in the model using a combination ...
The scooper-conveyor in action
For the conveyor belt I cut a strip of rubber from a discarded inner tube and joined the ends together using ...
The paddle wheels
I liked Simon’s idea of a paddle wheel to power to boat. It reminded me of the river boats navigating the Mississippi ...
All hands on deck!
As I did for the hull, I had to split the deck in two pieces to fit the 3D printer capacity. In the computer design I ...
Finishing touch to the deck
To make the deck more authentic, I 3D printed small posts that will follow the periphery of the deck; I will ...
The making of the canopy
I designed the canopy protecting the captain and his control desk using again the sculpting function in Fusion 360 ...
The electronic board
To provide animation to the model I designed an electronic circuit to control the lighting (above the captain, also ...
Adding some decorative elements
I wanted to add a few decorative elements that were in line with Simon's drawing. I made on the 3D printer a ...
Final assembly making the pedestal
The project is almost complete. I assembled the electronics below the deck, including the little speaker ...
With such ingenious ideas and great drawings, we are looking forward to seeing more inventions from this future inventor!