Brushless R/C Racing Hovercraft - For 200x200 printer by Apru

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

Some playing around on a small frozen pondhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtGw097Tzy4
Edit Dec 21, 2017: I added a new lift duct design. The normal duct is designed to cancel out the motor torque of a clock wise rotating propeller. You can mirror it in your slicer if you have a counter clockwise propeller rotation direction. Additionally, a safety grate has been added which screws to the top of the duct and protects peoples fingers. A grate for the thrust duct is forthcoming.
This is a remix of the original to hovercraft to fit on a 200 x 200 printer. I added reinforcements at the joints of the upper and lower hulls to make sure the seam was strong. I used Welders contact adhesive available on Amazon. Other adhesives such as Goop or E6000 available at Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot would work too. CA/Superglue will work but it's a brittle glue when cured. You want the adhesive to be somewhat flexible but strong or the joint may fail.
Print the thrust duct and rudders with 1 perimeter and low infill - like 15% or so. They need to be light. I recommend using a brim to keep the thrust duct stuck to the build platform. Tall and thin objects like the legs of the thrust duct tend to have large thermal stress distributions causing them to warp and pull off the bed. a 5mm brim solved my problems. The thrust duct requires the use of supports.
I recommend printing in PETG or ABS. PLA will be brittle. ABS may cause problems with warping and printing large pieces without an enclosure. PETG is a good mix of strength and printing ease.
I printed the skirt ring successfully in one piece on my 200 x 200 Makerfarm I3V 8inch printer.
I used pieces of 1.8mm filament as alignment pins. They also act to strengthen the joint.
I am experimenting with a new thrust duct remix design to decrease weight (lower the CG) while increasing durability.
I would also recommend getting the skirt parameters correct using a trash bag, however, use of nylon ripstop material (parachute fabric) is ideal as it's tough, light weight, abrasion resistant and a much better material than a trash bag.
Further remixed parts are coming as I work on the design iterations.