Transcript:
Oah wunderbar! First crash test. I finally finished my first 3D printed plane and boy, Let me tell you it. Doesn’’t only look good. It even flies great. Stick around when I show you the whole process from setting up your printer over the assembly with superglue to the first flight. Guten Tag everybody! I’’m Stefan. And welcome to CNC Kitchen 3D printed planes are not just something that just kind of works no 3DLabPrint’s planes that everyone can print on their own. 3D printer do really fly awesomely, and they look like a piece of art. If you have watched my last two episodes of this series, you know that I printed the Messerschmitt BF-109 H. And did some thorough investigations beforehand on how to optimally adjust the print settings and which glue works the best to fit the individual pieces of the print together. If you haven’’t seen them, then take a look at the links in the description. The Messerschmitt is one of 3DLabPrint’s. RC airplanes that they are selling online. If you purchase a model in their shop, you won’’t be getting the finished airplane, but rather getting the 3D models G code file and manual to 3D print one yourself. In this video, we are going to cover the whole process from printing the parts, gluing them together, installing the electronics and finally getting the beauty up into the air. At first we’’ll start with printing process. There are three ways you can get the GCode for your printer. First use the pre-sliced GCode that comes with the models, but that is made for the original Prusa MK2. Then, if you own Simplify3D you can use the included factory files, adjust some minor settings like bed size and retraction and slice the models this way And last, but not least there is the possibility to create a very specific printing profile in CURA for slicing the complicated models. If you just want to print the plane and have a printer with a bed size, similar or bigger than the original Prusa Mk2. The most simple way is to use the pre-sliced GCode. Even though these are specifically for the MK2, they should work on most other printers with some minor changes. I used them for my CR-10s, for example. The only thing you have to change are the retraction values. If you also have a direct extruder, you probably don’’t have to change anything. If you have a Bowden style extruder, then you need to increase these a little in my case to 45mm and the speed to 4000mm/min. Adjust your values as needed. Just use a text editor and open the G-code file Scroll down until you see “G1 E-0.8000 F1800” for the first time highlight in and select search and replace. Enter “G1 E-4.5000 F4000” in the replace field and select replace all. After a couple of thousand replacements, your GCode file should be good to go to run on your printer. Adjust the hotend and bed temperature if needed in the GCode file or directly on your printer’s display. After you printed the first parts weigh them and see if the mass matches the values in the manual and check if layer adhesion is good. If not, adjust the extrusion factor at your printer, Keep in mind that these weights are for PLA parts. If you use another material, the values might be way off. This method worked great when I printed my Messerschmitt on the CR-10s, but as soon as you need replacement parts and don’’t want to print a whole set of parts, You need to slice the models yourself. Since the Simplify3D files are included, I won’t go into them in more details and I’ll rater show you how you can set up the latest version of CURA to get your parts sliced. Please follow along carefully. Otherwise, the internal structure, for example, might not be sliced. First I created a new profile for my CR-10S. Then I changed the layer height to 0.25mm and the wall thickness to 04mm, which means only one perimter Top and bottom layer thickness, as well as infill ratio is also set to zero. Adjust the temperatures to you. Optimum values. Next we activate the advanced retraction settings and set them, according to the values the printer needs. I also reduced the print speed, a little and deactivated cooling. The flow setting is also not visibly be default and needs to be activated and adjusted. Combing needs to be deactivated. If you have bed adhesion problems, then a small brim can be added, but this is usually only necessary for the wing sections. Next we deactivate all mesh fixing options. At last, we activate the slicing tolerance and surface mode settings and set them to exclusive and normal. This should now allow you to slice your airplane structure in CURA. This, lets you slice all the wing and fuselage parts. For the control surfaces, just turn the bottom surfaces on and set the thickness to 2mm. For the motor mounts and spinner increase the wall thickness to 08mm and also turn on the top layers. Keep in mind that if you only print single parts without the fan on the part quality will suffer so in such a case, it might be a good idea to slightly. Turn the fan on. Always test your parts before use them by bending them a little. And if they feel to weak play around with the settings, a little, I printed all of the parts in Formfutura’s Premium PLA and I think PLA is still the go-to material for such a project due to its print quality and stiffness. A crucial thing in successfully printing one of these airplanes is a flat and very level printbed and a very good bed adhesion. I used the stock glass bed on my CR-10, which was very flat and on which I applied. Aprintapro’s Aprintafix spray, which lets PLA stick to glass beds so amazingly, when it’s hot and nicely releases it when it cools down again. Before you start any of the prints for the wing, make sure that these pieces stick to your bed. If they release at the end, it will make the glueing process very hard in the next step. I unfortunately had my CR-10S fail on me during these prints and the bed not heating anymore after a while due to a bad connector, which made me have to level the parts later manually by sanding. For the Messerschmitt printing, all of the parts took 5 separate print jobs and a good 60 hours with the wing jobs being the longest and around a good half roll of filament. After I finished all of the parts, I continued with the assembly. By the way, all of the steps from printing to the first flight are nicely explained in short Youtube timelapse videos by 3DLabPrint and linked in the manual. This is the reason why I don’’t go into all of the details. At first, I sanded all of the parts flat that the glue has its maximum strength. This is actually something very important because most glues, especially CA glue are not made for filling gaps and are the strongest if they are only bridging a very small gap of around 1/10 of a millimeter. I’’ll show you in a bit. How you can still use superglue. If you want to fill bigger voids. In order to glue the parts together, I used medium viscosity, CA glue and the suitable accelerator. I assembled the parts outside because the fumes of the superglue and the accelerator can be quite nasty. I started with the wing half’s by firstly, cleaning the seam with some isoproplanol. Then I applied the glue on one side, put the pieces together and made sure that they aligned properly. Then I applied the CA accelerator, which makes the glue cure instantly. After that, I glued the wing-halfs together and continued with the fuselage. I already said that I had issues with the wing sections coming loose during printing because the heatbed failed, which resulted in some quite severe gaps even after smoothing and the initial gluing. Since these gaps, don’’t contribute to the strength of the parts, they need to be filled. I could have used 2-part-epoxy, but this doesn’t nicely flow into the seams. Instead, I used a combination of superglue and fine sand or in my case. Glass beads. This allows you to even bridge bigger gaps because the fine particles act as fillers and reduce the glue gap to a minimum again, which makes the connection strong again. So I just filled the gap with CA and then sprinkled some of the small glass beads, ontop. Interestingly, the glue hardens almost instantly after that, but leaves you with a really nice, thick bond. Before I continued, I drilled the holes of the control surfaces, a little bigger that the pushrods later can move easily. The cutout in the rudder and the fuselage is simply done with a soldering iron. The movable hinges are realized using a hinge sheet, which is basically a piece of thick long fiber paper. You cut it to the proper size and then just glue it into place between the control surfaces and the plane. I made sure that the gap is big enough to leave space for moving and tried not to wet the hinge portion of the paper with too much glue because this would have stiffened the connection. Next there are the electronics. You have to make sure that you have the properly sized servos that fit into their designated cutouts. For the pushrods, I used 16mm welding rod, which was a little too thick, which made it quite hard to bend. Next time I would probably go for 12mm Wire. I centered the servos mounted the horns and bent a Z-shape into the end of the pushrods threaded them through one of the holes of the servo horns and marked the appropriate length and made a 90° bend for the horns of the control surface. This is easy for the ailerons, but can be a little tricky for the elevator and rudder. I used the metal piece from some electric terminals to secure the pushrods into place. I again made sure that the servos and the control surfaces are in their neutral position and then glued the servos into place. The ESC can be placed below the battery compartment, which has dedicated vents for cooling. For the motor, I selected the appropriate motor. Mount screwed the motor on it and then secured the mount into place with three additional screws from the side. The receiver is conveniently held into place by a clip, but I used some additional double-sided tape to prevent it form falling out. I used some foam to cushion my 2200mAh 3 cell battery and just slit it into the designated compartment where it holds nice and snuggly. At last, I wrapped two rubber bands around a rib in the fuselage, which will later be used to hold the wing into place. Two because of redundancy that if one snaps, not the whole wing comes off And that’’s, basically it for the assembly. The only thing that still needs to be done is to adjust the travel of the control surfaces in your remote. And it is also recommended to use a high amount of expo for the first flight that the plane is not as touchy. I was horribly scared of the first flight because I put quite a lot of work into this project and my flying skills Were quite a bit rusty, so I practiced a little before with one of my old foam planes. I waited for an almost calm day and then just went for it. I made sure that the CG was in the proper location and actually even a bit nose heavy. Then I put it into full throttle, Started it with a slight angle into the air and boy. Did it fly well. It required only slight trimming to get it perfectly diving through the air. Landing was a bit rough and my spinner suffered a little, but the rest was still in perfect shape, Unfortunately. I had the stupid idea to fix a crappy camera to one of the wings for some in-flight footage, which ended in the plane crashing directly after launch on the second flight. Interestingly, the major damage was the parts breaking at the glued seams. So this step didn’t went perfect, but it absorbed enough energy that the rest of the plane was mostly unharmed and gluing. It back together was easy. So this was my experience with my first 3D printed plane. The Messerschmitt from 3dlabprint is a beauty on display and in the air and I regret this project, Not a single bit. I should have reprinted The wing sections that warped during printing because that made assembly a little messy, but everything else went smooth. Using a transparent filament was a good choice because makes the internal structure Pop-out quite nicely. Though I probably wouldn’’t recommend this particular plane to any beginner because it is not that easy to fly. And if you crash it’’s gonna end in tears. If you have some experience with RC planes, then what are you waiting for? It’’s definitely worth it. Let me know if you already printed one of these planes and how it went for you. Please don’’t, forget to leave a like and consider supporting my work on Patreon. Take a looks at the description to find more details on the plane and consider watching the previous two parts of this series. Thanks for watching auf wiedersehen. And I see you in the next one.