1/72 scale 3D printed prototypes and proposed projects

[lostcosmonauts]

Hi folks,

Just registered with this forum to make better use of some of the info and pictures you share. Am partway into translating some of the 3 view drawings and plans available on old planes into 1/72 scale printed models. Here are the current slate in various states of progress. Clockwise from top:

- RAE concept for mach 2 interceptor (The design with engines in the fuselage)
- DH108 Swallow (I realise this was made and flown but I'm counting it as suitable for sharing as it was meant to be a precursor to the tailless Comet airliner concept)
- Vickers Type 582 blown flap strike aircraft
- RAE concept for Mach 2 interceptor (The design with engines in nacelles)
- Miles M.52
- Convair XP-92C

 

[PlanesPictures]

Very nice. What printer was used?

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Very nice. What printer was used?

Creality Ender 3 Pro at 0.2mm layer heights. Designs prepared in Fusion 360 then sliced in Cura 4.4

 

[pedrospe]

Very nice. What printer was used?

Creality Ender 3 Pro at 0.2mm layer heights. Designs prepared in Fusion 360 then sliced in Cura 4.4

Pretty cool !!! thanks for sharing your work.

 

[riggerrob]

Beauty!

 

[allysonca]

1/32 would be grand...... but nice non the less.

 

[VTOLicious]

Very nice. What printer was used?

Creality Ender 3 Pro at 0.2mm layer heights. Designs prepared in Fusion 360 then sliced in Cura 4.4

Can you show some detailed pics how the raw parts look like when they come out of the printer?

 

[VTOLicious]

I have some experience with 3d printed parts as well.
I use the services of Shapeways for my hobby projects, mainly rc models / drones.
At that scale "Versatile Plastic" is sufficient in terms of mechanical strength, accuracy, weight, surface finish, and available at reasonable cost (e.g. the depicted part is 90x40mm, €9 before VAT).
Shapeways offers other materials as well, at higher cost however.

*btw, the density of "Versatile Plastic" is 950kg/m³, when printed

 

[lostcosmonauts]

1/32 would be grand...... but nice non the less.

Easy enough, just needs to print at a bit over 200% - that's the beauty of this tech

 

[lostcosmonauts]

I have some experience with 3d printed parts as well.
I use the services of Shapeways for my hobby projects, mainly rc models / drones.
At that scale "Versatile Plastic" is sufficient in terms of mechanical strength, accuracy, weight, surface finish, and available at reasonable cost (e.g. the depicted part is 90x40mm, €9 before VAT).
Shapeways offers other materials as well, at higher cost however.

*btw, the density of "Versatile Plastic" is 950kg/m³, when printed

Nylon 12 is a pretty decent material. For simple modelling purposes I'm using a PLA (polylactic acid) which behaves a lot like polythene. My background is in polymer science and materials so even the chemistry and physical properties is fascinating

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Very nice. What printer was used?

Creality Ender 3 Pro at 0.2mm layer heights. Designs prepared in Fusion 360 then sliced in Cura 4.4

Can you show some detailed pics how the raw parts look like when they come out of the printer?

Sure thing, here are 3 of these designs straight off the printer. I've since changed the orientation so that the M.52 prints better

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Here is the painted up and decaled DH108 Swallow and 2 RAE designs from their 1952 report on possible Mach 2 interceptors

 

[riggerrob]

Creality Ender 3 is limited to about 230 mm X 230 mm X 200 mm.
Anything bigger needs to be broken down into separate, smaller pieces and glued together after printing.

Creatity Ender CR 10 can print bigger (300 X 300 X 400 mm), but costs about twice as much.

A variety of companies make even bigger printers, but cost rises rapidly with print bed size.

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Another couple to add to the stable:
- Vickers type 582 3D printed at 1/72 scale
- DeHavilland DH110 converted from an old Novo Sea Vixen FAW2 kit with reshaped canopy and tail and 3D printed booms, nose and rear fuselage lengthening plug

 

[steelpillow]

What materials do you use to print and then glue the pieces?

Do you have to take care in alignment, to avoid contour lines?

 

[lostcosmonauts]

What materials do you use to print and then glue the pieces?

Do you have to take care in alignment, to avoid contour lines?

They are all printed in PLA (polylactic acid) which in material terms behaves a lot like a polythene - it is sandable, pretty robust and fairly innocuous when you are printing or working with it. I've glued with a few different isocyanate superglues, PVA and the like but on these just using UHU universal adhesive. The isocyanates are by far the best adhesion and permanence but I prefer working with the UHU stuff

Yes, I try and orient the print so that the layers are minimised but sometimes, like the booms, they're pretty unavoidable so I just take care filling and sanding the surface pre-painting

 

[PlanesPictures]

Some time ago I was playing with 3D printing, too but I wasn't satisfied with result. I attach picture from my last test on 3D-printer Zortrax Inkspire. Lines and fine details are now printable in very high quality. To understand how it is worked it is possible to play with free software Z-suite Beta. I'm rebuilding my older model VA559 for this printer in scale 1/48 and then I will to do Boeing 818

 

[steelpillow]

What about transparencies? Can they be vac-formed over a PLA mould, or does the PLA get too too soft? Presumably one can make a PLA master and cast the mould from that, old-school.

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Some time ago I was playing with 3D printing, too but I wasn't satisfied with result. I attach picture from my last test on 3D-printer Zortrax Inkspire. Lines and fine details are now printable in very high quality. To understand how it is worked it is possible to play with free software Z-suite Beta. I'm rebuilding my older model VA559 for this printer in scale 1/48 and then I will to do Boeing 818

Yes, the resin printers do give a far better quality of finish but at the expense of dealing with the HSE issues of the resin, handling, washing the item and post cure. As I'm mainly printing these off at home I haven't bought a resin machine yet but I do like the look of the Anycubic Photon and the Elegoo Mars that do this very economically. The Elegoo machine is almost as cheap as the printer I already have

 

[lostcosmonauts]

What about transparencies? Can they be vac-formed over a PLA mould, or does the PLA get too too soft? Presumably one can make a PLA master and cast the mould from that, old-school.

The thermoplastics have quite a broad softening range so I don't think they'd do for repeated vac forming (you could get away with one or two but probably not a run of them. You could certainly do as you say and make a PLA master, a silicone negative and then a polyurethane tool for vac forming. That'd probably work very nicely. Otherwise you could use a resin printer as @PlanesPictures is doing and run off the tool straight away as the cured Tg would be high enough to vac form from

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Some time ago I was playing with 3D printing, too but I wasn't satisfied with result. I attach picture from my last test on 3D-printer Zortrax Inkspire. Lines and fine details are now printable in very high quality. To understand how it is worked it is possible to play with free software Z-suite Beta. I'm rebuilding my older model VA559 for this printer in scale 1/48 and then I will to do Boeing 818

Looks very smart - the 559 is certainly on my to-do list (eventually)

 

[NW_Cdn]

Would you be willing to share the STLs? I’d love to try print some of them. I have an older printer, a Wanhao Duplicator i3 v2 with some upgrades.

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Work-in -progress for two more proposals against the F.155 requirement. Fairly Large and the DeHavilland DH117. Both will eventually be 3D printed at 1/72 scale

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Would you be willing to share the STLs? I’d love to try print some of them. I have an older printer, a Wanhao Duplicator i3 v2 with some upgrades.

Hi there, sorry but I'd eventually like to be able to start a micro business selling resin printed versions of these so I'd rather not lose control of the files. My apologies.

 

[GTX]

1/32 would be grand...... but nice non the less.

As would 1/48

 

[lostcosmonauts]

1/32 would be grand...... but nice non the less.

As would 1/48

That's the nice thing about 3D printing rather than injection or resin moulding. Design model in 1/72 so for 1/144 just print at 50% scale, 1/48 print at 150%, 1/32 print at 225% - just need to adjust a bit to make sure the parts fit inside the printable space but doing multiple scales from the same file is striaghtforward

 

[Hobbes]

For solid models, that's true. I usually make the model hollow, and then each scale requires adjustments to wall thickness.

 

[NW_Cdn]

Would you be willing to share the STLs? I’d love to try print some of them. I have an older printer, a Wanhao Duplicator i3 v2 with some upgrades.

Hi there, sorry but I'd eventually like to be able to start a micro business selling resin printed versions of these so I'd rather not lose control of the files. My apologies.

Fair enough. There’s certainly lots of abuse of shared STLs out there. Thanks for responding.

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Would you be willing to share the STLs? I’d love to try print some of them. I have an older printer, a Wanhao Duplicator i3 v2 with some upgrades.

Hi there, sorry but I'd eventually like to be able to start a micro business selling resin printed versions of these so I'd rather not lose control of the files. My apologies.

Fair enough. There’s certainly lots of abuse of shared STLs out there. Thanks for responding.

Thanks for understanding - I had a bad experience with sharing a project on instructables only to see it reused commercially and without credit.

My printer is tied up at the moment making PPE visors but once the need eases am happy to run some off and mail you them if you like?

 

[riggerrob]

Miss-used .stl files is the same reason the kit-boat industry is stalled on the concept of e-mailing CNC cut files. They could substantially reduce shipping cost if a customer could just take CNC cut files to his local CNC shop, but Chesapeake Light Craft fears that some one will drown in a boat made from a corrupted, fourth-generation, pirated copy of a CLC cut file, and they might get slapped by a nasty law suit. Even if Chesapeake had not direct contact with the pirated soft-ware, personal-injury lawyers can still make their life miserable!
Guess how I know?

Burt Rutan had a similar problem with a Long-Eze crash caused by a deleted layer of fiberglass. The missing layer of cloth allowed a vertical stabilizer to fall off and the subsequent crash killed both the pilot (second owner) and passenger. Victims' families sued Rutan claiming poor design. A jury concluded that Rutan was innocent because of the builder's ommission, but he still found the law-suit so exhausting that he stopped selling plans for amateur-built airplanes.

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Miss-used .stl files is the same reason the kit-boat industry is stalled on the concept of e-mailing CNC cut files. They could substantially reduce shipping cost if a customer could just take CNC cut files to his local CNC shop, but Chesapeake Light Craft fears that some one will drown in a boat made from a corrupted, fourth-generation, pirated copy of a CLC cut file, and they might get slapped by a nasty law suit. Even if Chesapeake had not direct contact with the pirated soft-ware, personal-injury lawyers can still make their life miserable!
Guess how I know?

Burt Rutan had a similar problem with a Long-Eze crash caused by a deleted layer of fiberglass. The missing layer of cloth allowed a vertical stabilizer to fall off and the subsequent crash killed both the pilot (second owner) and passenger. Victims' families sued Rutan claiming poor design. A jury concluded that Rutan was innocent because of the builder's ommission, but he still found the law-suit so exhausting that he stopped selling plans for amateur-built airplanes.

The whole field is still figuring itself out. Distributed production has a heck of a lot of potential but still many issues like this to work through.

Anyhow... no-one is likely to try and home build the Saunders Roe P.187 (other than a certain Tracy family who repainted it green and called it Thunderbird 2) so I think I can safely share images of the work in progress without fear of anyone taking their life into their hands and attempting to make 1:1 replica. Fuselage took some figuring out but seems to be working now, engine intakes are still requiring some time and brain power

 

[merriman]

Miss-used .stl files is the same reason the kit-boat industry is stalled on the concept of e-mailing CNC cut files. They could substantially reduce shipping cost if a customer could just take CNC cut files to his local CNC shop, but Chesapeake Light Craft fears that some one will drown in a boat made from a corrupted, fourth-generation, pirated copy of a CLC cut file, and they might get slapped by a nasty law suit. Even if Chesapeake had not direct contact with the pirated soft-ware, personal-injury lawyers can still make their life miserable!
Guess how I know?

Burt Rutan had a similar problem with a Long-Eze crash caused by a deleted layer of fiberglass. The missing layer of cloth allowed a vertical stabilizer to fall off and the subsequent crash killed both the pilot (second owner) and passenger. Victims' families sued Rutan claiming poor design. A jury concluded that Rutan was innocent because of the builder's ommission, but he still found the law-suit so exhausting that he stopped selling plans for amateur-built airplanes.

The whole field is still figuring itself out. Distributed production has a heck of a lot of potential but still many issues like this to work through.

Anyhow... no-one is likely to try and home build the Saunders Roe P.187 (other than a certain Tracy family who repainted it green and called it Thunderbird 2) so I think I can safely share images of the work in progress without fear of anyone taking their life into their hands and attempting to make 1:1 replica. Fuselage took some figuring out but seems to be working now, engine intakes are still requiring some time and brain power

Don't be too confident. Model builders (and that sub-set of guys who let the robots do all the fun stuff) beware. If your pockets are deep enough, a litigation crook … err …. lawyer will sue your pants off if some idiot swallows a model part, no matter how tenuous the connection between it and you.

Shakespeare was right!

Imagine all the great things that will happen if creative people did not have to hide from tort law practicing, suit wearing, thieves.

As for fools who hurt themselves in the process of using someone's ideas or product -- it's on them! Helps cull the herd.

Darwin rules. Anyway... that's the way it should be.

Secure from Rant.

David

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Managed to get another chunk of the Fairey Large done - excuse the odd colours, I'm trying to fit prints around other tasks. Looks like it'd have been a handsome aircraft.

Intended as a test print but came out nicely enough that despite a couple of things to improve I'll prime, paint and decal it anyway

 

[zanenobbs]

Wow! These look great! Would landing gear be a feasible addition?

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Wow! These look great! Would landing gear be a feasible addition?

Yes, too fine detail to really work with the FDM printing but am revising these models for resin printing which should easily cope with addition of interior detail, control surfaces and landing gear

 

[riggerrob]

F+W N.20.1 glider .... is that a second cockpit at mid-wing?

 

[lostcosmonauts]

F+W N.20.1 glider .... is that a second cockpit at mid-wing?

Did you mean to post this in @zanenobbs's thread https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/th...ture-in-to-jet-aviation-the-f-w-n-20-1.33991/ ?

 

[zanenobbs]

F+W N.20.1 glider .... is that a second cockpit at mid-wing?

Yes, it's a seat for an observer.

 

[Hobbes]

Yes, too fine detail to really work with the FDM printing but am revising these models for resin printing which should easily cope with addition of interior detail, control surfaces and landing gear

For the resin printer I'm familiar with (Shapeways FUD material), 1/72 landing gear would be quite fragile, I don't think it'd be able to carry the weight of the aircraft.

 

[lostcosmonauts]

Yes, too fine detail to really work with the FDM printing but am revising these models for resin printing which should easily cope with addition of interior detail, control surfaces and landing gear

For the resin printer I'm familiar with (Shapeways FUD material), 1/72 landing gear would be quite fragile, I don't think it'd be able to carry the weight of the aircraft.

It depends a lot on the printing technology, resin choice, extent of cure/crosslink density and any filler/reinforcement - materially and with the right design choices I think I can probably make something work. Needn't all be done in one print so can lightweight the airframe and print the wheels, struts and doors in one element in a more sturdy resin system to try and beef up their load bearing capacity. Worst comes to worst I can always do undercarriage in SLS metal so it is in titanium or steel and the rest in resin