To print out an object you need an STL file. You can create your own or download one from Thingiverse, or even scan one if you have a 3D scanner (WANT!)
Once you’ve got an STL file, you’ll need to get it to the right size. Watch the video to learn how. To do this you’ll need Blender, the open source 3D creative software. It’s great and it’s free!
I’ll be making more videos like this to walk you through the process of slicing the STL file with Skeinforge and sending the gcode from ReplicatorG to the MakerBot.
So I was printing some tweezers I downloaded from Thingiverse the other day, and they turned out really nicely because it was basically one big outline with very few starts/stops of the extruder. Playing with them, seeing how strong they were, and also looking at the cool profile they made got me thinking: Wow, this sort of looks like the profile of a wing! That idea got into my head, and I decided that I absolutely needed to try and 3D print wings of some sort.
Unfortunately I’m barely a n00b at 3D modeling, and I don’t know the first thing about wing design, so I hit up the Thingiverse Community to see if anyone had any models or experience. It turns out that a few of our members are avid RC plane hobbyists and were quick to post a few wing designs here and here. Their passion about this technology was really refreshing, and it was cool to collaborate digitally on a physical object.
The wings themselves turned out really nice. The grains are all in the direction of flow, and they are really smooth. If they don’t outright work, it would be a very simple 5 minute sanding job to get them absolutely perfect. I havent weighted them, but they are strong and light-weight. They are 70mm long, but I’m going to try and print ones that are 120-130mm next (current max build height) The only problem I have is that I don’t have access to any sort of wind-tunnel or RC plane to test them on. Does anyone want samples to play with?
