Taking Flight with Carbon PLA: Building a 3D Printed Flying Wing
I’ve heard good reports about SunLu Carbon PLA and PLA Plus, and when SunLu reached out to me to try some of their filament, I decided a flying wing would be a good test.
Which flying wing was I going to build?
One that immediately caught my attention is the impressive “V-Turn from Plane Print” (you can find it here). My initial foray into flying wings was with my CNC Hot Wire Foam Cutter. Since then, I have made many flying wings, which are a blast to fly.
3D printing, Radio-controlled models are very popular and getting better all the time. This will be my 4th model using a 3D printer, so this will be a good comparison to the SunLu filament versus several other brands I’ve used.
My 3D printer is a Creality Ender 5 S1, which I’ve had for several months and has performed very well printing the V-Turn form Plane Print. To keep the flying wing as light as possible, Plane Print recommends using Cura for slicing and providing the settings for each part of the V-Turn. You can also download a free test piece to see how your printer performs.
Thin Wall Slicing
As stated above, we need to print the parts as lightly as possible, which can create some challenges. If you follow Plane Prints’ recommended setting, then you should only need some minor adjustments. I made a couple of profile changes for my Ender 5 S1 to reaction and prime settings. I’ll include my P3 profile in the downloads section if you want to try it. I also highly recommend watching this video by Troy Macmillan, which shows how to overcome some issues if you have them.
PLA Plus vs Carbon PLA
As you can see from the pictures, I printed the fuselage and some wing sections in PLA plus (blue) and PLA Carbon(black) for the outer wing sections. I’ve listed the differences between both filaments below, and the only issue I had was sometimes the Carbon PLA didn’t stick that well to the bed, which caused a couple of prints to fail. Now this can be partly the nature of thin-wall printing, but it was easily cured by using a raft on these fails.
- SunLu PLA Plus: PLA Plus, also known as PLA+, is an enhanced version of standard PLA filament. It offers improved mechanical properties and heat resistance compared to regular PLA. PLA Plus has better layer adhesion, reduced brittleness, and increased strength, making it a suitable filament choice for flying wings. It is generally easier to print with compared to carbon PLA, as it does not contain any fibres that may cause nozzle clogging or extrusion issues.
- SunLu Carbon PLA: Carbon PLA filament is a blend of PLA (polylactic acid) and carbon fibre, resulting in a filament with improved strength and stiffness. This increased rigidity makes it suitable for applications that require more durability, such as flying wings. The carbon fibre content provides added stability and reduces the likelihood of warping during the printing process. It is important to note that carbon PLA may have a higher nozzle wear rate compared to regular PLA due to its carbon fibre content.
The Carbon PLA prints look awesome, and you would be hard-pressed to tell they were 3D printed. The PLA Plus also printed very nicely. The parts fit together very well, and where I used a brim, it came off very easily. The picture below is of the two-part canopy, which I think you’ll agree looks very good.
My thoughts on the SunLu filament
SunLu filamenthttps://www.sunlu.com/en-gb/collections/fdm-3d-printing is very good and it is priced very competitively and I would use it again. I don’t think the few failures I had were because of the filament but more due to thin wall printing. The Carbon PLA is particularly impressive, and I can highly recommend it.
It flies very well.
The final weight of the V-turn is 1030 grams with a 2200 mAh 3 LiPo battery. PlanePrint suggests it should be 1000 grams, so I’m happy with that. I’ve used a T-motor 1450KV with an 8×4 2-bladed prop. The receiver is a Spektrum AR637T DSMX 6-Channel AS3X & SAFE, which I set up with a manual mode as well as the stabilised mode.
