I finally found a little time to spend on my Micro Hawk passion. After getting the fuselage built up in 3D software - I sliced it into smaller pieces to fit in my little Tevo Michelangelo printer (150x150x150mm print area). The first test print of the rear fuse at 1mm thickness was a spectacular success and really strong. Next is to thin it down a little more and see how it prints and check strength etc, but Wow! am I happy so far.

Straight off the printer, supports removed but without any cleanup or sanding.

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Nice work !

Can you calculate an approx. weight of all the printed parts ?

Thanks

That looks great!

You are an artist!!


I too would love to know the final weight

Likely to be problematic as a 'wild' guess.

He said he was going to thin it down.... so if it ends up as a framework with thinner areas elsewhere, all unitized, it shouldn't weigh too much.


I recently printed a jet tailcone that weighed 8g. It's thickness is 2mm and I know I can pare down quite a bit of weight.

Yes, printed at 0.8mm gave the front end piece a weight of 5g.

With the firecracker I plan to stick up this tailcone it will be fine with whatever the final weight is.

All the electronics and lipo are going to be smaller and lighter than last time so I have room to wiggle.

Prints came out great and really strong so I will see how thin I can go (0.8mm at the moment). Not too sure how thin I can go while having the printer maintain accuracy etc.
The middle fuse feels heavy and unbelievably rigid so there's room to shave off weight there for a start.

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The old Wattage Corsair plastic fuselage was probably no thicker than 0.8mm. Not known as a great model, but was actually a noble attempt at making a plastic fuselage. Actually was a strong and durable material, except in lower temps which plastics in general are subject to. Your fuselage shape may have some rigidity benefits over the Corsair structure, that was basically round at the forward fuse.

If this sucks - I'll try vacforming over a casting of the fuse from the 3D print.

Interesting thought. I could see using the Guillow's half shell plastic parts method, and seaming them with glue along the fuselage centerline.

Yes - that would be the method I would use.

Nitro, you should look at Lynxmans micro C-130 printed at .28mm with a .4mm nozzle (yes, it works). It would be hard to build it out of balsa or foam much lighter than the print.

Thanks for the heads up Lom! Well done.

I am new to 3D printers - always relied on Shapeways to do the work for me

Lynxman's settings will make a difference to the print result so I'll run a section through the Printer and see how my little Tevo performs.