“Aero Car” 3d printed, peewee powered plane build

Looking Good ! Do you not have any RC trans/receiver stuff ?? Some more will chime in soon that no more about it than I do

Thank you get back, I appreciate it a lot
I got side lined with a different project that a friend and I are looking at printing and selling, completely unrelated to anything rc, I’ve been having todo a little bit of tuning on the printer to get the specific filament we are using to print correctly but I digress on that. On to the fun.
Unfortunately I do not possess any Rc equipment anymore as I’ve been out of the hobby since around 2014-15.
I am looking at an Ar410 4 channel receiver, and hs82mg servos but I think those servos might be a bit large for the fuselage which doesn’t have too much wiggle room at this scale.
I would definitely appreciate any feedback from you guys regarding electronics. I’m also considering using an external 1/8-1/4 “perfect” brand external fuel tank for some extra flying time, I am also curious about exhaust throttles for the engine.
Anyway, this is the mk6 fuselage, without the firewall as I was more curious how my structural members would print. But at least this will give a better idea at the size of the fuselage.
https://i.servimg.com/u/f12/20/57/41/32/img_3611.jpg
https://i.servimg.com/u/f12/20/57/41/32/img_3610.jpg

The outside skin of the fuselage still needs some refinement as you can visibly see where the internal structure is inside the fuselage.
The mk6 fuselage was printed with a .4mm wall thickness, and with only one wall which is definitely the main factor for those seams showing up. I will most likely increase the wall thickness to .8mm to allow for 2 walls to be printed instead of just 1.
One downside, it will double the weight of the fuselage itself. With the current wall thickness this fuselage weighs 18g. With 2 walls it will be close to the 40g mark. Not to bad, and for the final version will be printed with lightweight pla which weighs less and has as much strength.
I’m also curious about the 3d printed Horseshoe plates that were available here sometime back. I understand they were a limited run but is it possible for them to come back at some point? I’d love to print my own but my printer isn’t set up for the type of material used to make them. I’d love to implement one into this model

I would like to take a moment to give proper appreciation to the gentleman that I aquired the engine for this build from.
I don’t really have a lot of money to freely spend at the end of the day, so a couple of weeks ago I started searching eBay for a cheaper .020 engine but resolved to build the engine from parts over time. After a little bit of digging I found a seller that had an original .020 piston, brand new in package. The packaging is damaged so I don’t feel horrible for opening the package. Anyway, after purchasing the piston I messaged the seller. I told him that because I can’t afford to buy a peewee up front I had opted to start collecting parts and build a new engine over the next month or so. I asked him to let me know if he comes across any cylinders and he mentioned he had a box of various rc and 1/2a stuff, then sent me a few photos of an engine from a skycopter. I asked him how much he was asking and if he could hold it for me until I could pay, and he told me not to worry about it, it had already been sent along with the piston I ordered.
I am still in shock, I honestly can’t thank this awesome person enough. But thank you so much for helping me out tremendously. Your engine will get a lot of good use and love from myself and the aero car. Happy flying friend

I have to admit to knowing nothing about 3D printing but I find it fascinating that you can print that hollow fuselage with such thin walls.
Well done. I hope it works well for you.

Rod.

KyleRManeti95 wrote:
What would you guys suggest for electronics? I’ve been out of the rc game for 10+years now so I have no clue what to look for.
Thank you so much, I can’t wait to share more with you guys.

Hi Kyle, Look for a system that has a receiver that will operate at a voltage HIGHER than the old standard of 6VDC. In this way; you'll have more choices for a more modern and lighter-weight battery technology such as LiFe (lithium iron) LiPo etc. to power the receiver.

Not sure what you have in mind for control-surfaces..





A V-tail is going to be tricky to set-up. You may want to look into "mixing" dual-servos for the elevators, where you don't have a conventional rudder to work with.



I'm sure you know this.. but be sure to orient the Pee Wee's fuel-tank with fill/vents facing "UP"... and position the fuel pick-up (inside the tank) at the bottom (6 o-clock) position.

These are just some observations.. I am by no means an expert on RC aircraft.

You're doing an amazing job so far! We're all fascinated by the 3D printing technology. Thanks for sharing this project with us!

WE have a friend on here that does a lot with very small R/C Let me see if I can conjure him up ..

Heck yea, that would be very highly appreciated friend. I’m curious to hear back from others with 3d printed cox powered airplanes to see how they hold up. I feel printing with 1 wall will likely be sufficient but 2 walls would make it a lot stronger.

I met a guy at a flyin when I was working at Hodges Hobbies ( Might have been a SEFF ? ) whose father designed the Aero Car. He still had a flying one.

Hi Kyle, Your drawing of the Aero Car to be printed looks very interesting!!…. A nice size too….. .020 is my favorite go to engine for small R/C these days….. Wonderful you were able to acquire a Sky Copter engine…… You were asking about the printed back plates in your thread….. I think the Sky Copter engine back plate is just as viable…… Here’s a photo of mine that powers my Ken Willard Pageboy……The back plate has been cut down then   drilled to mount in the same screw pattern as a PeeWee…..The throttle on this one is homemade….



Another PeeWee .020 R/C is this Ace Littlest Stick….. This engine came with the factory  throttle ring…. These engines come up sometimes on ebay….Both the Stick and Pageboy have fuel tanks made from party balloons……A video showing its operation…..Please keep us updated on your project  

That’s really neat badbill, I have never seen one of these airplanes in person but that must have been quite the experience.
I personally love the styling of these old free flight airplanes, there’s just something about the design that I love the most I believe. When I was a teenager I acquired an idea old Quaker model airplane with I believe around an 80” wingspan, I never flew it unfortunately.
I’ve also been trying to find this plane elsewhere online and I can only find the outer zone posting.

Thank you rdw. I can’t wait to actually see the finished airplane, I think it’s going to be the absolute perfect size for the peewee.
As for the back plate, I would love to have a 3d printed back plate for the model but I have also modified the skycopter backplate. I removed the fins on the back, and used a 3d printed peewee backplate as a template to drill the new mounting holes.
I would also love to implement in your throttle ring, im a bit limited on tools weirdly enough so I can’t really make anything like that at home. At least not yet.
A couple of other things that I’ve been contemplating on adding into the model. First I would like to reduce how much I assemble/reassemble the model so I’m thinking about using a Zepsis magnetic switch, as my main on/off method which can be found here.
https://www.soaringusa.com/Magnetic-Switches/Zepsus-Magnetic-Switch-F3K.html
I would also implement a way to ignite the glow plug for a short amount of time from the airplane itself, primarily to reduce the amount of the things I bring with to the park. I do have a drivers license, but no car so I skate board around town. There is a park about a block away that would be super easy to transport the airplane to.
I have not looked into any filament yet for the model, but I will begin searching sometime in the next few weeks.
What servos are you guys using in your peewee powered machines?

Those littlest sticks are the coolest, someday I will have an .010 screaming around the park and terrorizing the neighbors lol

“What servos are you guys using in your peewee powered machines? “

General rule of thumb for sport flying, I use servos that have a torque rating (listed as grams of force in their specs) that is at least twice that of the weight of the plane ready to fly….

Okay gotcha, thank you for sharing that with me. I’ll figure out a more accurate total weight here soon. I’m also trying to decide what battery would be best? I’m not looking to fly all afternoon lol.
I’ve been attempting to print out the newest mk7 fuselage which prints with 2 walls instead of just one. This new version requires 37g of filament, but should be roughly half of that once I print the final version in Lw Pla. I also ran into a pretty substantial nozzle clog that required me to basically disassemble the hot end. I just finished putting everything back together and plan on printing the mk7 fuselage tonight.

Hey guys, I’m back with another quick update.
More work has been done to finalize the stabilizer. For some reason I am running into an issue with hollowing out the stabilizer. It is a fairly thin part and I would like to hollow out or create a shell in the cad software to create a .8mm wall thickness. This I cannot do. I can get the software to create a hollow body with a .4 wall and thinner but nothing thicker. I’ve decided to leave the model solid to achieve the same result with the slicing software. I should be able to print the complete stabilizer parts with maybe 10% infill so the model will be mostly hollow.
Here are a couple of photos of the stabilizer. I currently have each side printing in two pieces. The first is the tips, and the second is the rest of the stabilizer with rudders printed at the start of the print cycle. I have also added in an elevator. Do you think this is to big? Or just right?

Another couple of items to address. The landing gear has been mostly sorted. The way I am planning on attacking this, is to print a couple of portions of the fuselage separately that will after as mounting blocks for the landing gear wire to slip into, once in place I will slide printed “keys” in place to hold the wire in its place. I also plan on gluing these “keys” in and the mounting blocks will be glued into the fuselage upon completion.
The fuel tank and receiver have also been added to the model. The fuel tank is a bridal 1/4oz wedge tank that I modeled. The receiver is an AR400 that someone else modeled.
I am still sorting out the electronics hatch and battery placement.
I am also still dealing with some pretty stupid printer issues, so wish me luck with tuning tomorrow. Hopefully I can get everything working correctly.
Anyway. That is all for now. Thank you for following along

Hey Kyle.  You're doing a great job ironing out all the potential issues.  There's been a few people on the forum that have dabbled in printing parts, but I don't seem to recall anyone printing an entire plane.  I really hope this works out for you.

Unfortunately there hasn't been a lot of comment on this thread from other forum members, probably because this is pretty new technology to most of us.  Don't think that others aren't interested, we are, but we're prtobably just trying to get our heads around the whole concept.

Rod.

I’m interested is this project, I have a 3D printer myself, but have not used it yet. Keep up the good work

Looking good man , the elevator is in proportion with the plane as best i can tell , have you thought of the servo mounts ?

My encouragement for your project too Kyle….. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for specialized parts to complete projects with being able to print them….I had access to a lab in my last job with printers and drawing software and learned it a bit and made a few things….A very interesting process!!

Thank you RDW, i definitely agree. There are a lot definitely a lot opportunity in specialized parts. Eventually I hope to have a 12x14 shed with around 30-40 printers running at the same time. I’ll get there, it’s just going to take a little while. I wish I had access to more equipment like you used to have. I used to go to school for precision machining and have worked at a handful of factories. Currently I use a cad program called onshape which is completely free, I’ve loved it a lot so far, there is definitely a sharp learning curve but it’s worth figuring out if you have the patience

Well, it’s been a few days since my last post and there are a few things that I a considering/dealing with.
First, I am having issues with my 3d printer, it is an Ender 3 pro. I’m not sure exactly what the root of the issue is. Basically with models that have more that one wall, or infill pattern I run into extrusion issues. Everything prints fine on my models up until a certain point where I start to experience intermittent extruder gear skipping. I say intermittent because it only happens for a few layers, stops skipping then starts again. I have tried multiple types of filament and they all give the same result. Although, as I type this out I realize maybe the issue is with the retraction settings I am using for the printer. For those not familiar with 3d printers, retraction causes the extruder to reverse direction at a set speed and distance between layer changes/other features. I will test this theory tonight when I get home from work.
Second, dealing with the above issue has caused me to start printing models in “vase” model, where the uploaded 3d model is completely solid when placed into the slicing software which will slice the model and make it so only the outer wall gets printed. The result is an extremely light model with .4 wall thickness, or what ever your wall thickness settings are set at. I have been doing a lot of testing with this print mode on some prototype parts that I’m working on for a friend. I’ll attach a photo of that shows the final version of the prototype. Basic description, case that holds “cigarette” tips, papers and a lighter. As you can see, printing in case model yields good results and leads my to my third point.
Third, after designing the lighter case and utilizing case mode I have started to redesign the airplane. I feel that a lot of the external geometry of the previous version looks good, but it has a lot of random faces on it that I’d love to smooth and simplify the model.
I started this process by making a sketch, loosely following the profile of the fuselage. I say loosely because the majority of the new profile is constructed by placing points at intersecting locations of the previous fuselage. From there, once I have a few points placed down I am able to create a flexible line that follows those points with a smooth curve. The result produces a fuselage with smoother lines and less faces. I still have more profile work todo to the fuselage when looked at from the front direction. I am planning on designing some features to the fuselage, that when printed in case mode, should result  in some internal geometry to add some strength to the over all model.

I do need some help for this next part however. The tail boom with the previous design was a mostly solid body that prints in two halves, which will be glued together later on. I would like to implement a carbon fiber rod into the tail boom to allow me to print a thinner wall, and rely more on the strength of the carbon fiber rod. I am currently looking at cf rods with an od of 3mm, I’d of 2mm or .5mm wall thickness. I do have room in the design to go for a slightly larger rod, but what would you guys suggest? Will the 3mm rod be strong enough or should I enlarge it a smidge? What do you think of the new fuselage so far?
Thank you all for reading, I appreciate any feedback you can offer.