3D Printing

I've ordered some flexible cyano from HobbyKing, perhaps it'll be able to cope with the flexing of the P-47s sections. I saw an advert for an Eclipson Blackwing, a fairly simple electric powered flying wing. The program for the model comes with an assembly drawing and a table of settings for the printer. It took a while to learn the routine for loading the files into the slicer program, but it does become easier. The photos show the centre section of the wing, the two sections are held together by a dovetail joint, and superglue. I don't think it will pull apart in flight.The program for the model is very comprehensive, it gives various propellers and a spinner to print, although it does caution that the prop must be very well balanced.

Brian wrote: it gives various propellers and a spinner to print, although it does caution that the prop must be very well balanced.

Brian, after all this hard work may I suggest "buying" an APC-e prop, approx £2.89 not incl P+P At least you know the prop won't let you down.:lol:
You seem to have really got into this 3D printing malarky. I may have some small projects for you once you've mastered the dark art.

Looking good Brian! Clever stuff. How long does it take to print something? Presumably an ‘over night’ job?

3D printing is very much a "press a button and go find something else to do." The article showing two parts of the new flying wing's centre section, finally turned out at thirteen hours forty something minutes. That was my fault, the printing speed can be adjusted over a wide range. When starting a print, the layers are thin (0.013mm) and the extruder is hot at 230 degrees C, the bed is hot too, 60 degrees C. The centre section took a long while because I'd omitted to increase the printing speed after the initial layers had been established. At the moment, another wing section is printing, the projected time is 7 hours 37 minutes. I'm not bothering to make any samples for testing, this one's going to fly........I hope!

I think it might be interesting to print a prop Phil, there's quite a choice of diameters and pitches. I haven't looked at the prop program, but from the names of the files it seems that it a hub-and-blade arrangement. To be honest, I don't know if I'll ever be able to design something that can be printed. I've been struggling with the P-47 design. I can get an image of the parts into "3-D" mode, but so far I haven't been able to make any alterations to the joint areas. The flying wing by Eclipson has a much stronger joining arrangement, with lots of surface area for the glue to hang on to.

Recently I bought an upgrade kit for the printer, part of the kit contents was a reel of black PET-G. I used the leftovers to print the props and hubs.
The assembled propeller will be 10" X 4.7" CCW. There is a spinner for the hub, I didn't find the data for it until I'd started the print. There are three or four props of differing diameters and pitches in the program. I'll print some of each type when I print the spinner