A team of engineers from the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre at the University of Sheffield have just put the finishing touches on their 3D printed Flying Wing with electric ducted fan engines — a mini electric jet so to speak.
Earlier this year they had created a completely 3D printed fixed wing UAV, which the new Flying Wing is based off of. Designed specifically for the FDM process, they were able to optimize the design so that all parts could be printed out in 24 hours flat using ABS plastic.
The new design also almost exclusively uses FDM technology — however the wings are molded carbon fibre… using a 3D printed mold of course! The original glider weighed 2kg, and with the upgrades to the design, the Flying Wing weighs 3.5kg, with speed capabilities of around 45mph.
To save weight, neither plane has landing or take off gear, so the team had to create a slingshot catapult in order to launch the UAV’s. Also created using FDM components, it’s capable of launching the planes at 12m/s, or around 30mph.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4lrtOc736M
Down the road they hope to double the size of the plane to have a wingspan of around 3 meters, and use miniature gas turbines to take it to new heights, literally!
[Thanks Joseph!]
Looks sexy, but if kinda flys like a brick. They need some vertical stabs and turbines or simply props instead of edfs. I do think scaling it up will help, however. Also, since there are two edfs, they cound use the differential throttle and a gyro to increase yaw stability, cuz i noticed some wobble in that axis
I understand some of these words.
I’m not sure how “turbines” would help? Yaw stability by differential throttle with relatively closely spaced engines would be difficult to achieve due to throttle lag and inertia effects. BTW it doesn’t fly like a brick – I know, I flew it. Considering that was the first ever flight, it performed extremely well.
Why do people continue to put cameras on the top of their planes? Why not the front or the bottom?
Less chance of a broken camera in a crash.
Because a lot of these planes belly land, they have no wheels. A slightly obscured view is better than a slightly smashed camera!
Well the bottom is more likely to come into contact with something that’s underneath all the lovely free air… the ground. And putting a camera at the front would dramatically affect the center of gravity.
Meh – A small camera is like 5$ these days and one could put a “uv-filter” over it.
Depends on the mass of the camera. Flying wings and conventional aircraft tend to become more longitudinally statically stable as the cog moves ahead of the wing’s aerodynamic center. Too far ahead though, and you lose controllabiity/maneuverability.
They could make the launching platform more compact by using those Ladder locking mechanisme that only click in the right angle.
And since the wings are already detachable ,why not make it that the whole wing moves instead of the little tiny flaps. less turn radius and what not, don’t know what that does to the dynamics tho
Moving the whole wing does not good things.
Wow starting at 2kg ending at 3.5kg that is aeronautic failure…
Well, yes. But I’m still interested as long as I can 3Dprint the whole thing on my 3D printer in about 24 hours….
But you can’t because of the carbon fiber panels.
The earlier glider version was all FDM printed, I think.
Hah! But he can print and finish the molds for the carbon fiber! And then he can make the carbon fiber panels.
Starting with a 2kg glider, then adding twin ducted fans, speed controllers and a battery was always likely to increase the weight of the airframe…
Those weights are comparing an unpowered previous version to the current ducted fan version. Their case study for the current version notes a self-imposed upper bound on mass at 5 kg, so they’re doing pretty well on that.
Horton 9
The twin duct version reminded me of the Ho 229.
They should have attached the cam at the bottom. ’tis more useful than looking at the clouds… I’m sure, if you could put pilots in planes upside down, all planes would have cockpit windows at the bottom as well…
What do you think would happen to a camera mounted on the bottom of an aircraft that has no landing gear (as stated in the article), when that aircraft lands?
We can put pilots in upside down. We still don’t because it messes up their hair (coincidentally why fighter pilots, those who have to be upside down from time to time, hide theirs with helmets), and is silly.
British hax?
BRITISH HAX WOO!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqgfjXaJxV8 Stealthy!
At that size it would be stealthy even if it were made of metal :P
Get tut droane on launch pad there lad!
2kg for glider. 3.5kg for EDF 1.5m flying wing ??? do they make it from depleted uranium???
HK Phantom FPV Flying Wing EPO Airplane 1550mm V2 has the flying weight 0.9kg.
So you figured out that an equivalent foam airframe would be lighter? Very well done.
Obviously we could have CNC milled the entire airframe from foam, or used a host of other commonly (or not so commonly) used techniques to build the aircraft, quite possibly lighter than the model you mentioned, but we would have learned absolutely nothing about design for FDM, which was one of the main objectives for the project.
Very nice build, but for me, this ain’t no hack.
The files are not released nor open source, and they don’t say a word about releasing them somehow (mainly because that’s not the purpose of this group).
It’s interesting, but without more details, kinda useless (sounds more like an ad for a company than a real hack, and given their means, of course they succeeded!).
Yep, no design files, no use to the hacker world.
Absolutely cool and awesome outcome, however, I fail to see the point. Usually engineering is to make something better. Building a model aircraft is certainly not engineering but hobby, without wanting to insult the latter. It’s heavy, it’s expensive and the properties in the air seem to be only ok’ish. That’s why we fund engineering departments with several hundred thousand bucks a year?
There is so much room for improvement here! Print molds for foam and fill the foam with aerogel to make a super light plane, do something with the printing that can’t be done with injection molding, directly print a foam aircraft whatever. But making a carbon fiber flying wing? Not really convincing use of the money and resources.
If you read the case study, you’ll find the main objectives of the project were to give the team experience of designing complex structures for rapid manufacture. Completely eliminating the need for support structure on the glider version thereby reducing manufacturing time and cost, and using printed moulds for carbon fibre on the powered version were both steps which have applications in a wide range of other projects totally unrelated to aircraft (in other words “making things better”). In addition, validation of CFD results through physical testing was achieved. In other words, the project achieved all its objectives and more.
Not sure how 3D printing and carbon fiber molding helps with the rapid manufacture??? If you are looking for rapid manufacture consider foam molds and CF reinforcement. In this case you can manufacture a single peice in about 10 minutes. Or CNC foam routing / foam cutting. Let’s say 1h.
3D printing as you mentioned is 24h. Manual carbon fiber molding is at least 3 or 5 hours.
Plus your design is just to heavy for no reason …
Obviously we could have CNC milled the entire airframe from foam, or used a host of other commonly used techniques to build the aircraft, but those methods were not what we were particularly interested in.
So what were you interested in? As it is not the rapid manufacture. Was not it rather the rapid design???
I think it would be useful for you to do a Google search for “Rapid Manufacturing”. In the context of the vast majority of definitions, it doesn’t mean simply “making this quickly”, which is what you appear to be assuming?
Yeah, I thought about it and it’s really an educational project, and in that sense it fulfills its goals scientifically, not so much, but if that wasn’t the goal, one shouldn’t complain about its lack. But mold printing is not new. Just applying it to aircraft models is also a trivial step. And eliminating support structure is also not new, foam gliders don’t have it either. There isn’t anything new in this one but as a team experience, yeah, why not.
Wow GN, you’re mean.
Anyway, project is pretty cool. I’ve been thinking about 3d printing molds for awhile. I think that 3d printing is a great addition to the toolbox. But it doesn’t quite get you there by itself since you still need to take it to mass manufacturing. CNC is still my faves.
What is the wing loading? It looks like about 8.8kg/m2. It seems a bit high? Was it a requirement and you do not care about the high stall speed???
Again, if you’d read the case study (or even other comments on here) you’d see we were working to a span limit and a max. weight limit. This pretty much defined the maximum wing loading, given a reasonable planform. Since we were well under our max. weight limit, and at our span limit, obviously we were under our wing loading limit. So no, we were not particulary concerned by it.
You should be quite concerned about the 8.8kg/m2 wing loading. Or at least I would be … The minimal stall speed for the 8.8kg/m2 is 42.8km/h
Firstly, your wing loading/stall speed assumptions are wrong, and you could easily have figured this out for yourself if you’d studied the test flight video more carefully (or indeed, at all). You’d have then seen that the catapult launched the aircraft to a peak velocity of 9.57m/sec (around 34 km/hr.) at the end of the rail, and at that point it was obviously not in a stalled condition. So please tell me how the minimum stall speed for the aircraft can be what you seem to assume i.e. 42.8 km/h? If we assume that our launch speed had a safety factor built in, then it’s clear that your assumptions are even further out.
The fact that you would be concerned about the stall speed of the aircraft is irrelevant: The fact that the aircraft was designed and built in the way it was, and performed as predicted during testing more than justified the effort that went into the project. Remember, this is not intended to be a mass-produced item, rather a prototype designed and built to further our knowledge of certain manufacturing and design techniques.
Wow, that whole 3D printing stuff is amazing. You’ve duplicated a flying wing that’s been made better, faster, cheaper since the 70’s and it almost kindof sortof flies like those earlier models. Not exactly the best example if you’re trying to show your rapid manufacturing chops.
Show me a “better” example of a twin EDF powered, rapid manufactured flying wing. Even better, show me one you designed, built and flew yourself…
E.g. HK Sonic 64 EDF Wing EPO 1230mm
– flying weight 700g
– costs $100 including EDF, ESC and servos
– it is rapidly manufactured
– has good flight characteristics with low wing loading
On the other side your design:
– looks sexy
– uses agile design techniques
– does not use rapid manufacturing techniques
– it is too heavy
– top speed does not justify the weight
– top speed does not justify 2 EDFs
So you think a mass-produced, moulded EPO aircraft is Rapid Manufactured? It certainly isn’t within what our definition of RM is. Here is a common definition:
“An additive fabrication technique for manufacturing solid objects by the sequential delivery of energy and/or material to specified points in space to produce that part”.
Ref. https://www.lia.org/conferences/lam/Conference/FAQ/RapidManu.php
…and you also think that an airframe that uses FDM does not use rapid manufacturing techniques?
Nor does the Sonic 64 have twin ducted fans.
I don’t see a reference, but I’m sure they used the Horten Ho 229 as the inspiration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229
My thought as well, though the Horten didn’t have the sticky up bit at the end of each wings.
Pretty much any blended-wing-body with integral engines will look something like a Horten 229, although I don’t think the Ho.229 had canted, swept wingtips, nor did it have a duck tail for pitch trimming, nor did it use only elevons for control.
The project wasn’t about coming up with a particularly unique aircraft planform, it was about learing about applying design specifically for rapid manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing…In fact I believe that’s mentioned in the case study.
So you could also have printed a coffee mug and achieved your goals?
Sure, we could have designed a coffee mug, but then again it’s unlikely we would be discussing it as we are here. One of the many benefits of building an aircraft is that people love to see things fly, and as such this project has generated an incredible amount of interest in our group. Even inane, cynical and ill-informed comments made on forums such as this ensure our work is brought to an ever wider audience. So thanks for your input.
@GN I don’t think most of the comments on here came from people that went to engineering school otherwise they would understand the case study and reasons behind the design. I’m sure if your goal was to purely build a fixed-wing UAV then the design constraints would have been much different, so there’s really no point in arguing the aeronautical design.
“@GN I don’t think most of the comments on here came from people that went to engineering school..”
You’re not kidding! Thanks for a considered, intelligent reply.
From our YouTube viewing statistics, this thread has had a significant positive effect, so it was well worth the pain. Job done, over and out :-)
i know i’m late to the party, but first, you just showed us an excellent example of feeding the trolls, even if they were trolling unintentionally, and seconly, i think half the arguments on heere werre basicallyy about word choice. HAD usually describes 3D printing as “Rapid Prototyping” which it very clearly is, vs rapid manufacturing, which is a less easily defined and kind of alien sounding to me. especially considering there have been a few arguments on here about people using printers to mass produce objects, when they should use the printer to make a mold, as printers are prototyping platforms. it’s weird, but those are my two cents.
Currently I am trying to design and print a plane like this. The aerodynamics is very diffilcult and also to print it with a DIY printer.
The design of my printed flying wing is not so beautiful but it has a wingspan of 1.95 meter and weights 2.25 kg – and is good enough for aerobatic flights.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:453090
The other one with wingspan: 1.35 meter: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:407766
Pretty slick for a prototype. Catapult could use a little more oomph though.
you do realize that they are testing it for commercial/military application, and still have room for ~2kg of payload