3D Printing Planes

[jhitesma]

Progress on the wing continues.



Need to pick up some glue today when I'm out and about. I still need to print the canopy and right aileron, left wing is printing as I type so that's still about 14 more hours of printing itself. The ailerons go quick though, about 50 minutes per section. Canopy I don't know yet. Still debating how to print it due to the support needed.

Plus I'm going to redo the winglets in black along with the canopy - but I haven't had time to test my black filament and calibrate it yet. So I need to do that too still.

I suspect that living where I am I'll get a lot of cracks about flying a mexican flag. But I can just point out that there's no eagle in the middle so it's actually italian. Of course the real reason for the colors is that they're what I had on hand. And I don't have large spools of them so I didn't want to do the whole wing in the same one. I considered doing the center in PETG since I have clear PETG - but I think the stiffness of PLA is needed there.

The center is an easier print in that it has more thickness, for me it was 2 layers with a touch of infill in a few isolated places. The nose I printed with support even though support probably wasn't necessary. I usually have a hard time removing PLA supports but these can off by themselves almost. The new support updates in the prusa version of slic3r seems to be helping. I had to print the main center in two parts but found someone who had already done that and put some thought into it chopping it into 3 parts for easiest printing without support. Support may have made a few details a little cleaner...but I'm happy with how it came out. Biggest complaint is that I used a 3mm brim due to how thin the parts are. And while that helped hold things in place it's kind of a pain to remove on the mating surfaces like that. My seam isn't going to be super clean.

Printing some of the left (green) wing parts placed differently on the platter to see if they do better or worse with the other edge against the build plate.

 

[Joker 53150]

For areas where the parts are mated together I've read about people using the cheap 3D printing pens, and using that to fill in the gap. Not a bad idea!

 

[GremlinRC]

I've had a bit of a change of heart. Just couldn't get excited about the P-47. I will of course probably do it later but in the meantime I began working on a spitfire and got the main fuse sections printed. I have this idea on my head about doing the flightsurfaces in black and possibly integrating an LED lighting system maybe red on the left white in the middle and blue on the right to represent the RAF.

Cheers
Dave.

 

[Joker 53150]

So here's some food for thought regarding printing the very thin panels used on these planes... How big of a factor is print speed in getting a clean print without the extra stringing?

I ask, because of the quality I'm seeing in a print that is currently underway. I'm making a pilot for one of my planes, and for the first time I've dialed the print speed back from 60mm/s down to 50mm/s. With a slice thickness of .15mm it's really doing a great job on some very fine details, better than expected. The wing panel I printed a while back as a test was ok, but if going a bit slower will provide better results I've got no problem doing that - especially on the transparent sections where you can see the structure.

I'll have to do a test-print to see what happens!

 

[jhitesma]

Dialing back speed is pretty much imperative. Not just for print quality but for strength. I usually print at 60-90 but turned it down to a max of 30 for my wing sections. They're super strong. I can pinch them so the top and bottom surfaces touch and they come back. I've dropped them on a hard tile floor several times working on them and so far they've held up great.

I've made great progress over the long weekend.



The nose isn't actually glued on yet, leaving it for last for easier access while wiring. I was impatient and wanted to see it together before fishing servo wires. Besides, it's translucent - fishing wires should be easy.

I also haven't been able to print the canopy yet. Even though the nose supports came off with basically no effort the canopy supports are massive and fighting me tooth and nail. I'm going to try the canopy again with some different settings.

The winglets aren't glued on yet. I have these two in black and one done in white. Debating if I want one black one white, or both black, or both white. Going to print up the other one in white and see how it looks with both white before I decide.




Glue seam on the fuselage isn't bad on the top...bottom is kind of ugly. Bit of sanding should fix those both up.

The LHS only had foam safe CA/kicker so that's what I used. But not happy with the way it turned white when activated since it shows up well on this wing.



But overall I'm super happy with how it's coming out. I have the ailerons printed but haven't glued them together and made hinges for them yet.

Weight on all the printed parts is at 374g but no motor, esc, rx, servos, linkages or battery yet. Designer gives a dry (no battery) weight of 468g and a flying weight of 670g. So I've got just under 100g to kit it out and match the designers specs. Depending on which ESC I use that shouldn't be too hard. Was hoping to get to maiden it today...but wife has to work so not much chance of me going flying. Going to take my daughter fishing and then finish building tonight when I get home.

 

[Joker 53150]

30mm/s? I can see a lot of overnight printing in my future! Actually, I kind of like doing that, it's like Christmas morning when I was a kid not knowing what to expect! Letting it run for 12-18 hours unattended doesn't worry me too much since I've added the mosfet board.

I think I'll do a little test printing with a small "torture test" piece to see how the speed works for me.

 

[GremlinRC]

I found 40mm/sec is now giving be very nice results. A lot slower than I would like, but at least I can be sure that I'm not gonna have something go bad and waste hours of printing. I'd love to be able to leave the printer running overnight, but I would never leave anything with a heating element running overnight. Might consider moving it to the workshop, though it gets quite cold down there at night.

@Jason: Nice work. I know the colours are green white and red, but from the pics it looks like green white and orange, which is our Irish flag There's a very old irish saying which goes back hundreds of years, "May your lipos always be charged and may your 2.4g lock remain solid" ;-) Joking aside, wishing you lots of luck with the maiden!

Cheers
Dave.

 

[LitterBug]

I've been running 30mm/sec and getting good results when printing the 3DlabPrint EasyMax001. 16 hours per wing half, 8 hours for fuselage, and another 8ish for tail and control surfaces. May not be fast, but if it makes it through the first 30 minutes fine, I pretty much either go to bed, or leave for work. Otherwise I would be OCD watching it print.... LOL. Thinking about setting up a camera on it so I can monitor it remote and post some fun time-lapse build video.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[jhitesma]

@Jason: Nice work. I know the colours are green white and red, but from the pics it looks like green white and orange, which is our Irish flag There's a very old irish saying which goes back hundreds of years, "May your lipos always be charged and may your 2.4g lock remain solid" ;-) Joking aside, wishing you lots of luck with the maiden!

I don't trust my printer unattended either. It's a low risk, and I probably do riskier things daily. But it still bugs me. I don't leave our dishwasher, washing machine or dryer running when we're not here either. And I only use a crock pot on weekends and other days when I'll be there to oversee it. So my big projects on the 3D printer take a LONG time to complete and a I HATE turning back the speed.

But...it really does help. 40 is probably fine but 30 was a nice even 50% reduction from my default 60 so there we go.

I knew it was reminding me of some other flag. Yes, that red is very orange - it looks red on the spool, but once extruded it definitely takes on an orangish hue.

Have it mostly wired up. Servo wires are just barely long enough to reach a lemon featherlite RX in the middle. Just wired up the ESC...and realized I had it backwards...then after fixing it realized it was right the first time. So...stopping for dinner now

I don't want to mess that up since once it's wired I'm going to glue the motor mount in and redoing any of it will be a LOT harder once that's on. Still doable - the original design was a one piece design..but this is a lot easier to work with.

 

[Tench745]

The sailor in me is screaming; your port side is supposed to show red. Looking Great jhitesma. Wishing I had the cash and time for a 3D printer.

 

[Joker 53150]

I did some test prints with the white filament already loaded in my printer, and pictures don't really show it, but here's what I did:

A little "martian" figure was found on Thingiverse and I printed it three times. Once at .15mm layers at 60mm/s, once at .15mm layers at 30mm/s, and a final time at .1mm layers at 30mm/s. Without a doubt the .1mm is the best looking with crisper edges and a smoother surface to the curved top. Between the two prints at .15mm layers, 30 mm/s speed was better than 60mm/s in the finer details, although only marginally. Still, if time isn't an issue I'll simply slow the print speed down and reap the reward.

How does this translate to printing the thin-walls on the planes? I'm not sure yet, that's the next step to test for my printer. But it gives me food for thought.

 

[Joker 53150]

Slightly off-topic, but not TOO far off... My 1/4 scale Pietenpol needs a pilot and I found a good candidate on Thingiverse. It apparently started off as a regular full-body scan, but somebody modified it with headphones and the microphone (it needs a wire between the mic and headset). Figuring this would be a good test to see what I've learned about printing in two weeks I gave it a shot.

Here is the end result, slightly too small overall. It needs to be about 1cm wider and maybe 3cm taller to fit properly into the plane, so I'll re-do it. For now, it's a solid proof-of-concept. Note that I had the support structures turned on, but only on between the bed and overhangs, so the bottoms of the headset fell off. I have the pieces and can easily fix them. It also appears there are a couple bands of error across the nose, possibly from the headset bottoms not printing correctly? But check out the folds in the shirt! This will look very nice when painted!




Also check out how well the headset band printed, with only very minor stringing between the band and the "hair". MUCH better than expected!








So now that I know what to expect with this print I'm re-doing it in a slightly bigger size. Layers are still .15mm, print speed is down to either 30 or 40mm/s (I can't recall which). More support structure is being used, but at a smaller percentage so it's easier to remove. No base layer is being used to save weight, plus this white filament from AIO Robotics is a beast to remove from the bed and that should help. Bed temp is dropped from 55 to 50*C, and temp remains 205*. It's about an hour in to the print and it's 8% done, so this one should finish as I'm gearing up for lunch tomorrow. Hopefully all that extra support structure doesn't mess up the space between the headset strap and the head, my biggest worry about this print now.

 

[roversgonemad]

Can you shave his head and call him Bixler?

 

[LitterBug]

The sailor in me is screaming; your port side is supposed to show red. Looking Great jhitesma. Wishing I had the cash and time for a 3D printer.

Maybe he plans on spending a bunch of time inverted.....

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[Joker 53150]

Can you shave his head and call him Bixler?

Ha! Well, I guess it could be painted with only a suggestion of hair. My daughter wants to paint one and I'll do the other, it should make for a fun project.

 

[jhitesma]

The sailor in me is screaming; your port side is supposed to show red. Looking Great jhitesma. Wishing I had the cash and time for a 3D printer.

Yeah...but in the air "Red on the right" is easier for me to remember due to the two R's even if it's still backwards. If nothing else maybe it will help mess with people who expect it to be oriented correctly

Still having a hard time getting the canopy to print. It's acting like it's overextruding - but everything else I print in the black comes out fine. I tried using meshmixer to generate supports instead...and it was a little better..but still not usable. So still not sure what I'm going to do to get that last bit to print.

 

[jhitesma]

That pilot figure would be a good excuse to melt some ABS and use an acetone vapor bath when you're done. Dimensions aren't super critical and the smoothing would make it look a lot better before paint...ABS tends to print easily...as long as you can get it to stick to the bed and not warp

 

[Joker 53150]

I'm thinking a quick shot of primer followed by the paint will hide most of the layer lines. Some of the generic "Apple Barrel" paints from WalMart have fairly thick pigment that should fill some voids. The first small one will be done like that as an experiment.

The bigger piece should be done printing by now and will be waiting for me when I get home from work. It was a 13-ish hour print and was looking very good this morning. Dialing back on the support structure helped, and hopefully won't interfere with the headset band too much.

 

[GremlinRC]

So what cement is everyone gonna use or using to glue it all together? I read that loctite 401 and kicker is a good choice? Anyone got any better idea? I did some tests on some failed parts with el-cheapo cyano and kicker and the results were pretty good. When testing to destruction, the layers failed before the cyano joint did.

Cheers
Dave.

 

[jhitesma]

GremlinRC - I used Zap foam safe CA/Kicker because that was the only kicker they had in stock at my LHS. It seems to be working, though I'd have prefered a slightly thicker CA and it did leave some white residue when I applied the kicker. (this foam save CA requires kicker to cure properly apparently.) We'll see how it holds up in flight. The only spot I'm really nervous about is the joint in the middle of the ailerons - that seems weak.

But I've held it by the end of each wing, and bashed the wingtips against things a few times already and it's holding up quite well despite a few hits that sounded like things should have broken.

I'm almost ready to toss it in the air:





I just need to install some control rods - and ran out of linkage stoppers. Don't really want to bother doing it without so on hold to finish for a few days while I wait on the postman.

However I'm really not big on the ailerons. I used 3M tape as suggested...but it's not sticking well enough to make me feel safe, and it's really thick so it makes the ailerons very stiff. So I want to come up with something better for attaching the ailerons. Not sure what I'll try yet.