3D Printing

Just watched some videos from 3DPrintlabs. I wonder if it would be worth having a go. 3D printers vary a lot in price from a PRUSA i3 at £600+ and a Creality Ender 3 at £200 on eBay. Most of the videos of the printers working are speeded up, I suppose to prevent the watcher from falling asleep or expiring from sheer boredom. With a layer thickness of 0.4mm, it takes over 60 passes to grow the piece being made about an inch, so as entertainment, watching a part being printed doesn't score very highly. What has got me onto this theme is the Freewing MIG 15. None of the sections would be all that big, and several parts could be printed at the same time, so it wouldn't take more than a week to have enough bits to glue up a nice new shiny MIG, or even a Sabre. Observations, comments etc.anyone?

I have a Ender 3 Pro with all the upgrades. I have printed various scale parts for helicopters, friends plus various non rc parts. I even printed a 90mm edf complete which did take a few days. There are many 3D files on the internet even one for a Mig . If you want to know more I’ll be up Cashmore tomorrow.

I've been looking at 3D printers for some time, recently I decided to sell all my I/C powered models, with some loot to play with, I had a look at what printers were on offer. I found one on eBay, did a deal, so soon I'll be able to find out if a downloaded file will actually produce a flying model. I really do hope so!

Brian wrote: I've been looking at 3D printers for some time, recently I decided to sell all my I/C powered models, with some loot to play with, I had a look at what printers were on offer. I found one on eBay, did a deal, so soon I'll be able to find out if a downloaded file will actually produce a flying model. I really do hope so!

Depending on your printing bed size you be ok. Be careful on what filament you use. You will need a good strong one which will not attract moisture. Also you will have to adjust your infill settings in your slicer software to make wings etc strong . There are a lot of videos to watch. The edf fan was printed using carbon fibre but did wear out a few print nozzles.

Thanks Alan, that EDF looks impressive, does it give lots of thrust? Bet it sounds good with all those blades. I'll be using PLA to start with, all the models in the videos were made from it. The printer is a Prusa i3 Mk3, a genuine one, not a Chinese clone. These are used by 3DLabprint for their own models, so the parts will fit the bed OK. I'll be using their files and I understand that everything is geared to the Prusa machine, with luck there'll be no need to tweak the software settings or add expensive mods to the printer.

This is a sobering video. The fragility of the model is a bit worrying. The landing was a bit firm, hardly merited the damage.
The big Mig from 3DLabprint takes 85 hours to print and 55 hours to assemble.



I hope to print one of the small warbirds on offer, as a "first go". All take 1Kg of filament or a bit less, and fortunately use the same battery as the Freewing MIG 15. 3530-1100kV motor, 30A ESC and 9" X 6" prop.plus 3 X 9g servos, fortunately all found in the amazing box of goodies that I inadvertently referred to as "junk".