3D printing basic planes?

Captain_baba

New member
Following the directions to post here to start.

My 9yo son has gotten into RC building and flying with a passion in the last year. It's rekindled an interest of mine from childhood, and it's been really fun to watch him learn to build and fly his own planes. He's built a few of the flitetest builds and a few of his own, mostly umx scale or smaller, often with scavenged parts from other projects.

A friend just lent us a 3d printer recently (QIDI X-Max 3D) which we've been playing with, and my son is super interested in printing plane parts or even a whole plane, if anyone has good recommendations for places to start? I saw this post, which might be a fun one https://forum.flitetest.com/index.php?threads/3d-lab-print-cub-my-first-3d-printed-plane.74882/ - he also wants to try something with a 30mm edf - i saw the f-35 post, which looked pretty great, other (slower?) ideas welcome.

Also, excited to try to make it to Flitefest '25 this year...
 

Mr Man

Elite member
Following the directions to post here to start.

My 9yo son has gotten into RC building and flying with a passion in the last year. It's rekindled an interest of mine from childhood, and it's been really fun to watch him learn to build and fly his own planes. He's built a few of the flitetest builds and a few of his own, mostly umx scale or smaller, often with scavenged parts from other projects.

A friend just lent us a 3d printer recently (QIDI X-Max 3D) which we've been playing with, and my son is super interested in printing plane parts or even a whole plane, if anyone has good recommendations for places to start? I saw this post, which might be a fun one https://forum.flitetest.com/index.php?threads/3d-lab-print-cub-my-first-3d-printed-plane.74882/ - he also wants to try something with a 30mm edf - i saw the f-35 post, which looked pretty great, other (slower?) ideas welcome.

Also, excited to try to make it to Flitefest '25 this year...
3d printing in lw filament can be very tricky, but I 3d print all of my firewall’s/control horns.
 

LitterBug

Techno Nut
Moderator
Welcome to the collective! We are all flight addicts and encourage everyone to share their knowledge and what they are working on. If you can make it to FliteFest, you will not regret it!

Flite Test has built a few of the Eclipson planes and they are very well designed. I've printed a few myself but have yet to maiden them. They have a new really cool looking "Inferno" ducted fan model that I am thinking of picking up. https://www.eclipson-airplanes.com/ Flite Test recently did an episode on it.


Cheers!
LitterBug
 

Piotrsko

Master member
Not trying to ruin the vibes, but, printing a fan housing or a fairing is a whole lot easier than designing and printing a entire plane that flies.

I suggest you build them standard foamboard, learn how they work and fail, then when you grok airplane-ness, print one. You'll be suprised at the hidden engineering
 

Mr Man

Elite member
Not trying to ruin the vibes, but, printing a fan housing or a fairing is a whole lot easier than designing and printing a entire plane that flies.

I suggest you build them standard foamboard, learn how they work and fail, then when you grok airplane-ness, print one. You'll be suprised at the hidden engineering
Well said.
 

clolsonus

Well-known member
Not trying to ruin the vibes, but, printing a fan housing or a fairing is a whole lot easier than designing and printing a entire plane that flies.

I suggest you build them standard foamboard, learn how they work and fail, then when you grok airplane-ness, print one. You'll be suprised at the hidden engineering
I recently got an inexpensive black friday 3d printer deal and immediately got bored scrolling through the online 3d model sites. For me it's way more fun to try to build my own stuff, but I've never really done 3d cad work before and have always been afraid of it. So as a personal learning exercise over the holidays, I have been trying to draw up a replacement tiny tutor fuselage and tail that could be 3d printed. This has been really challenging and fascinating. I've run into a lot of dead ends and had to go back and rethink how I was approaching things. But I'm making slow, steady progress and have been learning a /lot/ !!! For me it's about wading into the mess and overcoming the learning hurdles so I can play with the toys ... :)
Side note: I've been printing from my spool of LW-PLA using default PLA settings and things have been coming out pretty well. I tried messing with some of the flow/temp/speed settings and just made it worse. I get a bit of stringing, but easily cleaned up, and not too much missed areas ... and I've been printing my own models so haven't worried much about the gcode and doing the entire layer in one long line ... the default settings have been mostly working for me here for whatever that's worth.
 

Mr Man

Elite member
Following the directions to post here to start.

My 9yo son has gotten into RC building and flying with a passion in the last year. It's rekindled an interest of mine from childhood, and it's been really fun to watch him learn to build and fly his own planes. He's built a few of the flitetest builds and a few of his own, mostly umx scale or smaller, often with scavenged parts from other projects.

A friend just lent us a 3d printer recently (QIDI X-Max 3D) which we've been playing with, and my son is super interested in printing plane parts or even a whole plane, if anyone has good recommendations for places to start? I saw this post, which might be a fun one https://forum.flitetest.com/index.php?threads/3d-lab-print-cub-my-first-3d-printed-plane.74882/ - he also wants to try something with a 30mm edf - i saw the f-35 post, which looked pretty great, other (slower?) ideas welcome.

Also, excited to try to make it to Flitefest '25 this year...
What planes has he made?
 

ColoFlyer

Active member
I saw this post, which might be a fun one https://forum.flitetest.com/index.php?threads/3d-lab-print-cub-my-first-3d-printed-plane.74882/ - he also wants to try something with a 30mm edf - i saw the f-35 post, which looked pretty great, other (slower?) ideas welcome.
The 3D Lab Print Cub is a great place to start. The best part is that it is free. It is also a simple plane to assemble, and easy to fly. But printing with LW-Pla is not always easy and there is alot of tricky slicer settings.
I suggest you play around with the printer first and learn the basics of it's operation and print some fun stuff.
Also you will need to decide what slicer you will use and learn how to use it to not only print PLA or PETG, but also LW-Pla.
Maybe build a FT plane and print a firewall, landing gear, and control horns. check out thingiverse.com Lots of fun stuff. On thingiverse, type in flitetest in the search to see what comes up.

Once you get the hang of it you will be off and Flying.
 

Captain_baba

New member
What planes has he made?
kits/plans: FT Flyer, FT nutball, FT RV-12iS (pre-cut), he'll be working on an FT tiny tutor when we get home next week
scratch: a number of balsa and small foam scratch builds using a scavenged 2 channel 2 motor setup (similar to the EZ Power pack), his own design of a slow-stick using foamboard, dowels and a pack A, and early on an attempt at a 182 clone that he used as a test bed for testing a lot of things but which never flew. He's also been making a bunch of paper and balsa/foam planes to attach to a powerup 4.0

In addition to these he's been flying and when needed repairing a little 400mm p-51, a 700mm cub, and a umx turbo timber we got from another pilot.

We've printed some engine mounts on the 3D printer, and a bunch of random fun stuff not related to flying (like articulating dragons and other little animals for his sister) to get the hang of the printer. He's currently focused on making 3d components for an RC truck of his, since that's a bit easier, and the weather has been bad for flying lately anyway.
 
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Captain_baba

New member
The 3D Lab Print Cub is a great place to start. The best part is that it is free. It is also a simple plane to assemble, and easy to fly. But printing with LW-Pla is not always easy and there is alot of tricky slicer settings.
I suggest you play around with the printer first and learn the basics of it's operation and print some fun stuff.
Also you will need to decide what slicer you will use and learn how to use it to not only print PLA or PETG, but also LW-Pla.
Maybe build a FT plane and print a firewall, landing gear, and control horns. check out thingiverse.com Lots of fun stuff. On thingiverse, type in flitetest in the search to see what comes up.

Once you get the hang of it you will be off and Flying.
that sounds good to me, we've been doing lots of small prints to figure things out, but I'll need to buy some PETG and LW-PLA and start playing with those too. We've just gotten some PLA+ because he wants to make some tough components for an RC truck.

He likes cubs in any case, and easy / simple is better. He likes slow flying and STOL in particular, so he'll probably want to figure out how to add sizeable flaps to it (and any design he works on!)
 

Captain_baba

New member
If you’re looking for components go to thingiverse.com and search what you’re looking for, there’s great designs there.
yeah, this is where we've been getting a bunch of fun things to print. we've been using tinkercad for design to keep things super simple for now.
 

Captain_baba

New member
Not trying to ruin the vibes, but, printing a fan housing or a fairing is a whole lot easier than designing and printing a entire plane that flies.

I suggest you build them standard foamboard, learn how they work and fail, then when you grok airplane-ness, print one. You'll be suprised at the hidden engineering
whole-heartedly agree. see responses to Mr Man as well. He's been learning a lot about the dynamics of flight from building a bunch from foam and some balsa, but even so I expect we'll work up to 3d printing whole planes. We're having fun making smaller stuff for now.
 

ColoFlyer

Active member
He likes cubs in any case, and easy / simple is better. He likes slow flying and STOL in particular, so he'll probably want to figure out how to add sizeable flaps to it (and any design he works on!)
Here is a link to the 3DLabPrint Cub that you can download for free, just have to make a free account.
Once you download the files and user guide, you can pick up some LW-PLA and try slicing and printing some of the wing parts to see how they come out. If they come out good, then you can continue printing the rest of the plane then follow the video for assembly.
This plane flies so well that flaps are not really necessary, just build and fly. But if he really wants flaps, then just program the ailerons into flaperons to get the same effect.


 

AIRFORGE

Make It Fly!
Moderator
Is it okay for me to post the files for this on the forum here?
If you mean the plans for the 3DLabPrint Piper J3 Cub, a link is OK, but in the user guide it states:
"Please, use these files only for your own purpose, do not redistribute or publish. Thank you very much."