36" Northern Pike - 3D Printed Cuda Clone (It Flies & STL's are Posted!)

[Bergi74]

Hi Localfiend,
iam just printing the 36 inch version on my Cr-10 and it took me quite a while do get a acceptable Cura profile.
Thanks for the link to the Me109, his Curaprofile worked for me!
I also got an Anycubic Photon. Is there a way, to "cut" the model open, so you can print the 27 inch version on a DLP Printer.
Plane cut on meshmixer won´t work, the Slicer makes the whole thing solid.
Hollowing does works, but the "top and bottom" layer won´t go away...
If you got any ideas it would be most appreciated and a big thanks for putting the Models online for free!!!

Greetings Chris

 

[adamjcooney]

Edit---

I figured it out. Combination of layer height, extruder temp, extrusion multiplier and retraction made a big difference. No more stringing (lower temp and more retract) and perfect radius thin walls ( higher multiplier and layer height)
Localfiend,
Love the design. Printing was going well until both parts seem to be having the same issue in the same place. I'm using you Factory files in Simplify3D.

Printing using PLA. I would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks,
AJC

 

[rockyboy]

I don't have any tips for you, I'm still in the process of tweaking settings to work with crappy PLA too.

The white PLA on the nose piece was Matteforge Matte PLA - worked perfectly on the factory settings from from Dale, but it was unfortunately the end of my roll. The only stuff I have left on hand is two rolls of Maker Geeks PLA - which is complete crap. I numbered the print attempts as I keep trying to tweak settings and get something usable out of this stuff, but at the end of the day I think these will all be throw away pieces.

The moral of the story kids - don't buy cheap filament for printing airplanes.

 

[Ranger_107]

is there a way i could print it a bit smaller? my 3d printer has a 8 inch build space?

 

[rockyboy]

is there a way i could print it a bit smaller? my 3d printer has a 8 inch build space?

Most slicer software I've used (Cura / Repetier / Simplify3D) all have a scaling function so you could print everything at 80% for example. The challenge will be sizing the print so you can still get a servos to fit. But if you have an 8x8 build plate, you should be fine printing at the normal 100% size

 

[whackflyer]

you should be fine printing at the normal 100% size

If his printer is capable of the Z height required.

 

[rockyboy]

If his printer is capable of the Z height required.

True - the tallest part I've seen in the files so far is 170mm which fits comfortably inside an 8x8x8 with room to spare.

 

[whackflyer]

I'm not sure how tall some of the wing and elevon sections are but I think they'd be pushing it. Some of the wing sections are really large

 

[Ranger_107]

how heavy is the entire build? how much PLA would I need to print it?

 

[whackflyer]

how heavy is the entire build? how much PLA would I need to print it?

About 3/4 of a spool. Reserve a whole spool for it tho because you'll probably have some print failures.

 

[Ranger_107]

how heavy would that be? 1KG, 2KG,?

 

[whackflyer]

how heavy would that be? 1KG, 2KG,?

Mine is 610g with 9g servos and pushrod hardware in it. No other electronics.

 

[Ranger_107]

so I should reserve a 1kg ish roll for it?

 

[whackflyer]

so I should reserve a 1kg ish roll for it?

That's probably a good estimate. Your may want some different color on it too.

 

[rockyboy]

Looks like the 13th and 14th prints might be keepers! Just ignore that band of low extrusion in the middle of fuselage part 3 - I'm guessing the filament wasn't wrapped around the spool correctly and was doubled up and fighting the extruder for a couple layers in there. But it still feels plenty strong so I'm going to give it a whirl. So it's taken me almost half the roll of this %!#$ Maker Geeks PLA to get the settings working for it, but I've got two more rolls of it to burn after this so I should be able to get a plane or two out of it.

 

[Wildthing]

so I should reserve a 1kg ish roll for it?

1kg roll will print almost any plane out there

 

[rockyboy]

If I remember right, the 36" version of the Pike prints in less than half a roll - somewhere back around page 6 or so in this thread Dale took all of the pieces and put them on the bed at once in Simplify 3D to get a read out on the amount of filament used.

I've almost got a whole set of usable fuselage prints now - starting to glue a couple together!

 

[rockyboy]

I haven't posted for a couple days, but here's the building / printing progress.

After getting the fuselage together, next I got an OKish print on the wing root sections. Lots of clean-up with a knife and sharp chisel to get the tongue and groove slots cleared out.

Glued together a couple of the wing sections once they were aligned. Servo wiring goes through the channel in the wing very nicely. Using a carbon fiber arrow shaft for the spar.

Installing the wiring for the motor.

Glued together the wing sections and added the motor mount & firewall. Bag of failed prints in the background.

I had so many failed prints with this crappy Maker Geeks PLA that what should have been a 2/3 of a roll project actually ran the roll empty. But I have a couple rolls of this nasty stuff on hand - including a neat translucent green that looks pretty good on this project (except for the print blobs and zits I'm still trying to tweak out in the settings). Oh yeah - and somehow the top and bottom aren't lining up on these wing sections? I figure I'll print out a tiny extension rather than try to hack off the excess.

The light does shine through nicely Not glued in place yet, but you can see the slightly uneven alignment of the parts that shows up every once in a while. I blame my PLA & printing skill, not the design - but a flat steel file does wonders to adjust alignment issues

Next on the print bed are wing tips & then the vertical stabilizers & elevons.

 

[rockyboy]

Got the wiring extensions all figured out and the fuselage glued on today, and wingtips printed but not installed yet.

 

[rockyboy]

Hatch finished and wing tips on.

Not sure how things ended up miss-aligned, but the leading and trailing edge lines ended up about 2mm different in length? Could be when I was messing around with layer printing controls I accidentally shorted some piece or another. Anyway, to fix it I printed a 2mm spacer and thought it looked neat like this rather than concealed at the wing tip.

Elevons printing next.