Some 3D Prints

[Ted]

Hello,

Bellow are some 3D prints I made on my home made 3D printer.
















All the parts were printed at 0.25mm layer thickness. The white parts are printed with ABS plastic which is the same stuff Lego is made from. The other parts are printed in PLA, this is an organic biodegradable plastic. I also included a shot of some printing in action.

All these parts are knobs and ornaments, however, many small pieces can be printed for direct aviation use. One added advantage to making these parts with 3D printer is that you can customize the parts to your own preferences. If you want a knob to be bigger you can just print a bigger knob, or if you want a custom ergonomic flight stick grip you can print that too. The customization is endless! This makes 3D printers great for MakerPlane, all sorts of custom parts can be just a print away.

[John Nicol]

Hey Ted,

Just love this! The skull is awesome. It has given me some ideas also that cockpits can really be individually customized a lot easier with this technology as well. Pimping your ride!

The other great use of 3D printers for MakerPlane in the aircraft I think will be printing out boxes and enclosures for avionics and parts, cable clamps, conduits, brackets and lots of other things like that. In the workshop we can print clamps, tools, holders etc.

The technology is improving all the time of course and the costs are dropping. It would be great to see EAA chapters starting to get into it as well. I think it would really elp attract kids into aviation, not just as pilots, but also the engineering disciplines too.

John

[jeff54il]

Great stuff Ted.

Let me know if you need some geometry and/or STL files - I'm using a fully supported copy SolidWorks 2013.

Jeffrey

[jeff54il]

The fingers look quite real
Jeffrey

[Ted]

You're a funny guy. HAHA

[jeff54il]

Hi Ted

Funny peculiar - not funny HAHA.
Seriously Ted, your nice 3D printed parts have got me thinking (for a change ).
In general the 3D printed parts are not generally useful for structural components due to the nature of the polymers. But, and this is a big but, on your machine you can make molds in which we can cast fiberglass or carbon structural parts.
I've been stuck for some time on the design of the joint between the wing main spar and the fuseleage - the main problem being designing it to be both strong and easy to make at home. Quite a serious problem !!!

And now along comes a handy fella (named Ted) who can make molds at home

So Ted, I have some questions:
1. How big is your work table on your machine? i.e. What are the dimensions of the biggest part you can make? Of course one can join parts together but I would guess that this would not be practical if we had to join more than (say) 3 parts.
2. If we need a mold that is (say) 30cm x 30cm x 10cm, what sort of dimensional accuracy could you achieve? 1%? 2%? 5%?
3. In order for the mold to maintain dimensional integrity, it would need a wall-thickness of (say) 5mm - just a guess at this time. How long would it take to make the mold? Imagine a mold consisting of a 5mm shell on a hollow dough-nut with an OD of 30cm and cross-sectional diameter of 10cm.
4. How much would such a mold cost?
5. Did you make your machine from plans or did you design it yourself?
6. Same question regarding the electronics and software in your machine.
7. How much did your machine cost you?

Regards

[HLC]

Why can't my pictures be loaded? I can only read everyone's text exchanges.

[John Nicol]

Why can't my pictures be loaded? I can only read everyone's text exchanges.

Looks like they might have been using an online image storage that has disappeared.