12/11/2025 - Design and cut the chasi and bladder

This is my second time doing a hovercraft, the school provides the machines, materials and all I need, so I dont need any funding.

The first part of this journey starting designing the chasi, and therefore the bladder, the foam we are using is the one from dolarama (2 bucks a sheet of foam) and its 2cm thick, sou after some very "constructive" conversation with my teamater (they wanted to do a gearbox and a cluch mechanism" the chasi and the bladder were designed! and after a bit of time we had them cutted in the laser machine too! the blader is made out of camping tarp a light material that our teacher bought a lot last season so thats why we are using it

bladder prototype

Chasi prototype

12/12/2025 - Cutted the chasi and bladder + desing and print the duct

Today was such a fun day, because I got to use the laser machine at my school, I cutted the foam, and the bladder made out of camping tarp, the laser process was easy but tedious (it took a bit of time) to do all that.

And once that was cutted, I joined then with one of the most strong glues in the entire universe, tape, so once together we that the holes in the bladder were way to big, so 30 minutes later, and another trip to the laser machine, bladder V2 was ready (and it looks awesome)

And to end the day, I started designing the duct, in order to get more drag therefore making it better, this is just V1 of the design, so it might get updated, and 3 hours later, it was printed and ready to be assembled

Duct printed V1

Bladder and chasi assembled

Chasi and esc

12/14/2025 - Redesigning the duct

Weeeeeell turns out that the previous version of the duct was way to short, the motor didnt fit inside it, so its fine for version 2 of the duct, which is gonna align with the hole for the air to flow and its gonna be awesome, so 2 hours later and some "problems" (we didn't know which color we wanted the duct to be) duct V2 was exported sliced and printed in my friends bambu lab a1 mini!

the final color was red for the duct, and blue for the air chamber that conects

render

12/15/2025 - design the mount for the motor + design props

Todays work was just designing stuffff, back at my house with my computer that actually can handle fusion 360, i spend 3 to 4 hours designing the motor mount, it's a relative simple design that took ages to bring the concept to life, I figured I wanted the motor to be easy removed from the stand, so with the measure of some m3 screws and some music the mount was doneeeee, that was just pt1 of the day, since the other part went to making the prop, i reused the model that i did for a drone prop a while ago, just imported the stl, and changed the size of the hole to make it fit the shaft of this new motor, after some trial and error, and some wrong measuremnts the prop was done too

prop

motor stand

1/28/2026 10:37 AM - First testing! + retaping the blader + primitive stearing

after mounting every component togethr (esc, motor, batery, transmitter) and putting the hardware together, it was time for the first testing, the first testing, went gud just that, the hovercraft, was not hovering, so that was a problem, and turns out i didnt leave any space in the blader so i can inflate, so after a tediuos 30 minutes removing the tape, i measured it correctly this time making sure it was centered, and once we thought war was over, we still wanted to add a primite stearing before calling it a day, so we grabbed a piece of foam, and tape it to the servo, that was previously taped to the top of the duct (everything in this proyect is yanky hehe)

picturessss of how the hovercraft is goinggg

1/28/2026 10:52 AM - Design Finn McMissile + print it + asseble it

Weeell u guys remember how in the previos jornal i talked about how our primitive stearing, weell turns out if its absolute sh*t, so, they made me design (because im the only one that knows how to use fusion) a fin for the hovercraft, what we thinking was something slim, that would allow air to start strong, and end up at the end very compressed, and after talking to the physics teacher, and about 2 hours rant later, about aerodynamics, we sketch in a paper the idea for the fin, and it was just a matter of time untill i could fully designed it in fusion 360, and after the design process was done, the hardest part arrived, what should we name it????? weeeeeeeeeeeeeell the answer was obious FINNNNN MC MIISIILEEEE (the electronics teacher hated the name)

It was time to print it, i knew that the piece needed to the as light as possible, so for my needs i use 5 percent lightning infill, and honestly i thought the print was gonna fail, because hooooly is was hollow, but my centauri carbon handled it like a champ.

And after the printing was done, we just mounted it to the hovercraft, gluing it with hot glue to the servo and taping plus hot gluing the servo to the top of the duct.

finnn mcmissiiileeee has succesfully been assembleddd!!!

1/28/2026 11:05 AM - Problems start arriving

SO once we thought the hovercraft was reeady, ready for everything, turns out it wasnt, the freaking bladder was uneven at the ends, since the design of the chasi was a rectangle with a circular edge, it was really difficult to tape the bladder pecisely on both sides, so this is the point where out hero, lets call him Sam, arrived, Sam was also doing his hovercraft, and i noticed he has a really really nice taped blader, so i asked him if he could give us a hand with the taping proces that we were strugling, and so he did the new taping was perfect, everything symetrical we test it and in fact, it was perfect, perfect until my friend (thats was driving the hovercraft) decided it would be a gud idea to crash the hovercraft, and the prop broke, so we replace it, and by mistake we place it in the other direction, and to our surprise, what we thought was a mmistake, turned out being the most important thing of out whole proyect, the hovercraft suddenly became more powerful, more fact, and therefore more uncontrolable, but thats a problem we will solve later

this is a close up the image in the journal entry below, this is SAMS prisitne taping

1/28/2026 11:17 AM - Trying weight plates + FIRST CRASHHH!

since the hovercraft wasvery fast and uncontrolable, we as a team decided to add weeeeightplateeeeess so the hovercraft could be easier to drive, so the teacher gave us a sheet of aluminum and told us "cut it to your deside" so we ended up cutting little squares of 8 by 5 ishhhh we cutted 35 hehe, our first instict was to tape it to the top of the duct exactly where the servo is, so we went ahead and do that, test it, and ...

PUM CRASH all the weightplates fly away from its intended spot the prop gave up and decided to end it all, chipping the top of the duct, the motor stand that was supposed to hold the motor in place decided to let go to is was so bad even the foam that was glued to the motor was ripped out of the chasi (u can tell it is dollarama stuff), EVERYTHING WAS BROKEN, everything but our faith in the proyect (this proyect is worth 30 percent of out electronics mark)

1/28/2026 11:26 AM - redesign the motor mount + thing so the weightplates can sit

after the fatal crash yesterday, i went ahead and design a little plate for the motor, so there is more contact surface and the glue actually works, plus a little rack for the weightplates to sit on, this one was the easy part, since i worked with the duct i had already designed

And after a bit of effort, time and prayers (my friend decided to print the weightplate thing in his ender 3 so we did a little prayer before the print started so it could go through) the thing was doneeeee, and then in the spot we decide to test in again once the prop was changed, the motor was glued and the thing to hold the weightplates was asasebled and we changed FINNNN MCMISILEEEE because it also suffered from damage from the crash

1/28/2026 11:39 AM - Another crashhh

One day before the proyect was due, all looked in shape, bladder inflating correctly stearing was hard but achievable, propeller strong, and overall it worked, so we diceided to just get used to the controllers, not do anything STUPID, and then second after i said that, i head a big PAMMMMM, they had crash it again

this one was less severe than the othe onee just because the propeller didnt blow up this time, but the motor stand did so after some hot hot glue, and superglue and every type of glue known to mankind, it was up and ready to go, the chasi internally was broken in half, but we didnt have time to cut the chasi again, because the proyect was due the next day, so we just add more foam that would act as a support, more glue and called it a day

1/28/2026 12:12 PM - The testing day!

Today was the day, everything would be defined, the day our hovercraft would be jusged by the teacaher, and in base of his opinion it was decided if we fail or not the course, so with full trust of our blood sweat and tears, we have the controler to the most expericned out of all (thats the friend that crashed twice into the wall) and surprisingly WE MADE IT we passed the circuit the teacher had made, ofc we didnt ran it full power because we needed precision over speed, and after we consolidated our victory i took a video on how the hovercraft worked!! one of the most demaning proyects ive worked on was finally completed!!!!!!!

WhatsApp Video 2026-01-28 at 11.30.26

1/28/2026 12:18 PM - Linked the repo

For the review, i forgot to linked the repo and i already submited it here is the repo link thank u for your undertanding

https://github.com/pipejosh/hovercraft

2/3/2026 - set up the repo!

last time i submited i forgot to link the github repo, so now i set it up plus i made it prettyyy i add the pictures and the reddit post linked to the video of the hovercraft working

3/28/2026 - housekeeping

today was organizing the repo mostly tweaking the images, sorting all into folders and overall making it look better.

Beside this I also created the assembly instruciton in canva.