In the FDM process a thermoplastic filament (which can be heated and deformed) is heated to its melting point and deposited layer by layer to form a solid 3D body. Some scale projects which would take you 400-500 of hours to painstakingly design and build with balsa and fiberglass would take just 100 hours to design and a couple of hours to assemble if 3D printed.įused Deposition Modelling (FDM) or Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is a type of additive manufacturing technology used by most desktop 3D printers you see out in the market. If you have some experience with 3D modelling, you could even take scale renders of warbirds and iconic looking aircrafts and build them. This instructable will take you through the process I went through, problems I faced and solutions I tried out to overcome those problems so that when you wish to design your own 3D printed aircraft, you don't have to go through multiple failed prints and have to constantly tweak settings to get the right print and can focus more on the design, aerodynamics and aesthetics of your aircraft.ģD printing makes manufacturing complex geometries significantly easier provided that you know the limitations of your machine and slicer. My printed aircraft turned out to be twice the anticipated weight and had a terribly high wing loading which made it fast as rocket.įor this reason I decided to do my research and figure out why my slicer was not able to print the parts and find a way to design an aircraft which is lightweight, strong and can be sliced with any slicer out in the market. I figured that I might as well print the aircraft files I found online with conventional infills (hex, triangle, line, 3D gyroids etc.), a feature available with almost any slicer software out there. I managed to find plans online and was intrigued by the immense amount of detail given to the internal structure, unfortunately, I did not have access to a paid slicer software capable of slicing such complex internal structures and the free slicer I was using was capable of slicing only the external skin/structure.
About two years or so ago, videos about 3D printed R/C aircrafts popped up on my suggested YouTube feed and since then I've wanted to build one of my own.
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