The finish on the 3D printing is pretty good, but not perfectly smooth. It's rough to the touch, like decent but unsanded balsa. This is as good as it will get, because i'm not going to risk melting the plastic with the sandpaper. I'm just telling myself it's more efficient due to the boundary layer effects. Or something
The red stuff is Lightweight Poly Lactic Acid (LW-PLA) which foams up as it is heated to lower the density. The bonding between layers is very good so the normal horizontal banding is reduced. Of course, it's not as rigid as standard PLA so the designer needs to take that into account and put in reinforcing ribs and other shapes. On the upside, there are some really nice features designed into the fuselage like servo holders and guide tubes for the control wires leading to the tail.
I have also printed the undercarriage legs (one piece) which are in PET-G This type of plastic has more flexibility than the PLA so, along with some rubber bands, I should be able to slap it down on the grass without all the shock being transferred to the fuselage. That assumes it hits the ground wheels first, of-course
I have to say, I'm very unimpressed by the level of regulation that has grown up around the hobby since I last looked into it. Classing all RC aircraft as drones seems like overkill to me. It's not like I'll be flying this thing on FPV goggles over prisons or dropping 3D printed bombs into tank turrets. Hey ho, the law is the law I guess.
If I get everything up and running I'll take the good advice from The Lurker and DuncanM and ask somone else to give it a maiden flight. I haven't been to the local RC clubs before, but the two local ones to me are York and Scarborough. I'll drop an email to them when I'm a bit further on and see what they say.
As for print times, the fuselage represents about 13 hours print time in total. The biggest piece took 4 hours and there are 7 pieces in total (the battery cover catch only took about 20 minutes). Assembly is pretty quick. There was some headscratching and messing about with tweezers as I cleaned up any fuzzy areas to make sure the sections fitted together correctly. Then I superglued them together using Mitre Bond. I was recommended all sorts of expensive CA glues with accelerators but ScrewFix sold me 50g of "Mitre Fast Bond Adhesive" CA and a can of accelerator for about £7. This penny pinching may come back to bite me but so far it seems to create a bond that is stronger than the PLA so I hope it will work out.
The wings and tail are made of more, and much smaller, sections which are usually 30-45 minutes print time each. There's more faff involved in cleaning the build plate and setting off the jobs but it's not exactly a chore. You've just got to keep the printer churning and you soon make progress. For bonus points, I interleave print jobs with laundry loads to keep everyone sweet.
Here's the RC kit list if anyone is interested:
So far, I think I've got most of the spending done. I've bought an expensive (for me) radio controller on the basis that that's probably the only bit I'll still have on day two. I decided to go as cheap as possible on everything else so I've got two ZEEE RC batteries (£32 for the pair), 4 Emax ES08MAII servos, a ToolkitRC M8S battery charger (no power supply, just some croc clips and a spare car battery so far) and a random 30A ESC which arrived without any connectors so I need to break out the soldering iron. For a receiver I bought a Matek R24-P6 for £15 which I find an incredible price for a 6 channel receiver that weighs 3 grams. Technology really is marching on!
The last thing I think I need is the motor, the recommended options are all out of stock. So I just ordered a Skyrunner 980KV which seems to be the right size. I hope it fits in the mounts!
