3DBenchy: why everyone prints this little boat
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Almost everyone who has a 3D printer has printed it: a small boat with a cabin, chimney and portholes. The 3DBenchy is considered the most printed 3D model in the world. This is no coincidence, but a well-thought-out test for your printer.
Where does the Benchy come from?
The Benchy comes from the Swedish company Creative Tools. It was designed by Daniel Norée and Paulo Kiefe and published on 9 April 2015. In July 2015, a version for multi-colour and multi-material printing was added.
The name is a play on “benchmark”, meaning a comparison test. Creative Tools itself called it a “torture test” for 3D printers. The idea: a model that prints quickly, needs no supports and yet contains many typical difficulties at once.
A few key figures at original scale:
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Length | 60 mm |
| Width | 31 mm |
| Height to chimney | 48 mm |
| Volume | 15.55 cm³ |
| Print time | usually under 2 hours according to the manufacturer |
What the boat tests
Each part of the Benchy tests something different:
- Hull: the curved surfaces show how even the surface turns out and whether patterns such as ghosting appear.
- Bow: the underside of the bow projects flat to the front. This is an overhang that needs good cooling.
- Cabin: the top edges of the windows and door are bridges, and the cabin roof is another overhang.
- Chimney and anchor hole: round holes and cylinders show whether circles really come out round.
- Sharp edges and thin parts: here you can see stringing, blobs and problems with retraction.
- Lettering: at the stern there is a small nameplate, and on the underside an engraving. This tests fine details and the first layer.
- Symmetry and dimensions: if the boat is crooked or warped, something is wrong with the axes or the adhesion.
From test model to dispute
For a long time the Benchy was under the CC BY-ND licence. You were free to print and share it, but not to publish modified versions. For years this bothered hardly anyone, and remixes were everywhere anyway.
In March 2024, the NTI Group took over the company Creative Tools and with it the rights to the Benchy. In January 2025, the Printables platform removed Benchy remixes after a third party reported them. The community was outraged. NTI stated that it had not taken any steps itself. Shortly afterwards, on 14 February 2025, NTI, Norée and Kiefe announced that the Benchy is now in the public domain. Since then you may modify, remix and redistribute it as you like. What licences otherwise mean is covered in Licences for 3D models.
Records and curiosities
The speed Benchy
The community has its own competition: the #SpeedBoatRace. The aim is to print a Benchy as fast as possible. The rules prescribe layer height and line width, among other things, but the result does not have to look good.
The times have fallen sharply over the years. In January 2024, Tom’s Hardware reported on a modified bed slinger that managed a Benchy in 2 minutes and 9 seconds. In May 2026, Jan Roetz printed a Benchy in 59 seconds with his home-built “Minuteman”, after earlier personal bests of under 2 minutes and 74 seconds. These are community records, not officially certified ones. More in 3D printing records.
The tiny Benchy
In 2020, researchers at Leiden University printed a Benchy that is only 30 micrometres long, about a third of the thickness of a hair. It was printed using two-photon polymerisation, in which a laser cures resin in a drop only at the focal point. The boat was part of a study on microswimmers, meaning tiny particles that move through liquids. The results appeared in the journal Soft Matter.
How to evaluate your Benchy
A Benchy is only as useful as the way you look at it. Here is how to go about it:
- Change only one thing. If you print several Benchys for comparison, change only one setting per print.
- Measure rather than estimate. With callipers, check length, width and height against the target values. If all dimensions deviate in the same direction, it is worth looking at the calibration.
- Check the first layer. Is the engraving on the underside easy to read? If the edge at the bottom is wider than the rest, you have elephant’s foot.
- Look at the overhangs. If the bow sags at the bottom or the cabin roof is rough, cooling is lacking or the temperature is too high.
- Look for strings and blobs. Strings between the chimney and cabin point to stringing.
- Check the surface with light. Hold the boat at an angle against a lamp. Ripples next to edges show ghosting, offset layers show a layer shift.
A perfect Benchy, by the way, does not mean that everything prints perfectly. It does not test large surfaces, warping or the dimensional accuracy of fits. For targeted troubleshooting there are dedicated test models.
Continue with: Calibrating your printer and Fixing stringing.