Inspired by Iwo's Ducted cooling fan: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5756

The idea was to use a PC cooling fan and some printed ducting to make a printable hovercraft. Initially I choose a classic hovercraft design, fan at the back mainly for thrust with some air split from the flow and directed through some ducting to the skirt. Unfortunatly I couldnt get anywhere near enough air down the ducts supplying the skirt.

Then after a discussion with a friend I came up with the current design. This has a single fan supplying only the skirt (I'll think about thrust when ive made this work), the geometry is such that the air passes almost straight into the skirt from the fan. This new design is able to achieve much higher air flow into the skirt area, though it still cannot provide enough pressure for the skirt to inflate and induce a hover-gap between it and the ground.

I feel like I'm reaching the limit of what I can reasonably expect a cooling fan to do and will probably redesign this for use with a proper outrunner motor at some point. So I have posted this prototype design here so that others may try to make it work.

This design is fully parametric and I have supplied the Inventor file. Note: This was designed with an Educational copy of Inventor which imposes its own limitations upon how the design may be used.

1. Print
2. Remove a PC cooling fan from its supports
3. Glue the cooling fan into the duct
4. Supply with 12v (i just plug it into the PSU on my pc when i need to test it)

Tip: I printed this with only 1 extra shell, with 2 extra shells the outer ring was printed hollow, and ended up as 2 individual cylinders which warped more easily.