3d printable Rc Plane version 2- 2022

After Creating my first version of the RC plane, there was a lot of design concepts I wanted to improve on compared to the first version. The version 2 RC aircraft is 1/3rd the weight and requires around a 1/3rd of the time to print when compared to V1, and has only a 15cm shorter wingspan. This has to be one of my favorite design based projects I have done up to now!

Design Concepts considered beforehand

Aircraft Has to be leightweight

After version 1, I realized that I needed to make V2 lighter to make the 3d printed aircraft fly easier. First thing I did was Make the walls of the aircraft 1/2 as thick, meaning each wall is 2 layers thick instead of 4. The supports that helped support the electronics has been simplified, while still being strong enough to support the weight. The wing also got redesigned, with a new support structure that relies on the strength of the carbon rods instead of the printing material.

Reasonable aircraft size

I have decided to reduce the overall size of the aircraft by about 20%. I did this as i didn't feel quite ready to design an aircraft with a super large wingspan, and instead i decided to keep working within the sub 100cm wingspan. The V2 aircraft has a wingspan of 750 mm or 75 cm. The fuselage is also slightly smaller than its predecessor, by around 10 cm. the main challenge I think I will run into is not having enough room to fit all of the electronics properly.

What I learned after designing

Thinner walls = reduced print time

Designing the fuselage and wing to be 2 layers thick at the walls had good results for saving weight, but also helped reduce print time more than I expected. Aircraft version 1 took just over 50 hours to print the fuselage. It only takes 15 hours to print the fuselage for version 2, saving me over 2/3rds of printing time!

Small fuselage has its drawbacks

Considering the overall wingspan of the aircraft has been reduced by about 15 cm, and the fuselage by around 12 cm, It would make sense that the room inside of the fuselage would be smaller. The servo motors that control the horizontal and vertical flaps only have a few mm of clearance between the control rod arms and the fuselage. There is also a lot of wires to try and contain inside the fuselage, along with a pretty sizeable battery. I believe i can increase the internal space of the fuselage and keep the wing the same, and I believe I will attempt to do this for the next iteration. Rapid prototyping is fun!

Wing Carbon rod structure is effective

The first aircraft utilized a cross pattern that spanned the length of the wing, and the outer wall was 4 layers thick. Version 1 also used carbon rods. For version 2 of the wing, I decided to put most of the forces on the Carbon rods. The outer wall was reduced down to 2 layers and the carbon rods were attached to the top and bottom of the wing, with the rod running down the middle. After supergluing together the parts, I can say that this design method works for smaller aircraft.

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What Would I do Better Next time

Fuselage electronics integration

When i started designing this aircraft I had the electronics kit in mind. Unfortunately I had to compromise with the location of the battery and there is very little wiggle room inside the aircraft. For the next project I would like to design the electronics unit before the aircraft, allowing as much tolerance between the electronics and the fuselage as I want. Hopefully this solves the issue of not enough room

Wing attachment method

The design for the V2 wing is simplified compared to the V1 model, however I keep running into the dilemma of gluing the wing to the fuselage compared to using some attachment method such as a screw or bracket. this will be crucial going forward if I want to venture into mid wing or even low mounted wing designs.

Keep lowering total print time

I was able to shave off more than half of the print time when compared to my first model. The total print time for this aircraft is right around 60 hours in total. For the next aircraft I will keep the size pretty similar however i want the total print time under 50 hours for everything. And this will include a slightly larger fuselage.