I’ve seen a menagerie of people flying around RC planes they printed out. I’ve recently re-entered the RC flying hobby and figured I would give it a go.
Version 1:
Cause this can’t end badly.
It did.
This build was based on the designs from Craycle, specifically their Ranger V2 model.
https://craycle.com/product/ranger-v2-sport-800-mm-fpv-trainer-stl-file/
The body and wings were printed from silk PLA (this was not a good idea). For some reason, a bunch of RC plane suppliers list their print settings for CURA slicer, which has a bunch of weird settings I haven’t come across in the slicers I usually use (Orcaslicer and Prusaslicer), so I had a large amount of test prints that went right into the bin before I got the settings tuned.
The issue with Silk PLA is that while it’s pretty looking, it’s weaker and more brittle than regular PLA. It makes really nice-looking toys and models but isn’t well suited for anything else, like wings…
So why did I do it? I have no idea. The thought that Silk PLA was too weak did not cross my mind until the thing was in pieces on the ground.
So what went wrong? Well, for one, I’ve never flowed outside of a sim, so my first flight being a super fragile untested plane made out of the wrong materials probably wasn’t a good start, but a big part of it was the landing gear.
Craycle uses bend wire for the landing gear, and I could not find the stuff anywhere that wouldn’t cost me $50 in shipping for $5 worth of wire. So I designed my own in Fusion;
And holy smokes. They were bad. The plane could not even move forward without nose-planting. Rather than waiting to redesign the landing gear I had my Dad hand launch the plane, which went straight up in the air, nosedived and exploded.
V2 is currently being printed out.
