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Brock's bits - LEXLV3 / Re: Wings
« Last post by Brock on May 16, 2026, 02:13:55 PM »Been moving a bit slow these past few weeks, brain space has been full-up with other things.
Finally decided to get something done and, for now, it's the nose ribs. I have some basic 1/8" (flimsy) and 1/4" (stout) plywood nose ribs but my reading suggests I need at least one, possibly two, foam ribs in between. Wanting to play with foaming filament in my 3D printer I decided to see what I can come up with for those intermediate nose ribs.
I imported a picture of of the nose rib (taken from the Ironside drawings) into Shapr3d, traced it, sized it, extruded it, and printed it. I'm quite happy with the initial results. Not knowing what to expect I made it 1/2" thick. It is so stiff I think I'll try 3/8" next go around. The filament is LW-PLA which poses some problems. I know PLA on the dash of a hot car does not fair well so I might have to try LW-ASA. But then my wings will be off white and I doubt that inside the wing nose gets very hot anyway. The second consideration is glue-ablility. PLA is hard to glue to but this LW-PLA has a more foam texture so I'm doing a glue test with T88 just to see. I doubt it will be structural but there are other options to consider. What have folks been glueing the blue construction foam with?
BTW: this was printed with 3 layer walls and 10% infil. There is plenty of room to make it lighter.
Finally decided to get something done and, for now, it's the nose ribs. I have some basic 1/8" (flimsy) and 1/4" (stout) plywood nose ribs but my reading suggests I need at least one, possibly two, foam ribs in between. Wanting to play with foaming filament in my 3D printer I decided to see what I can come up with for those intermediate nose ribs.
I imported a picture of of the nose rib (taken from the Ironside drawings) into Shapr3d, traced it, sized it, extruded it, and printed it. I'm quite happy with the initial results. Not knowing what to expect I made it 1/2" thick. It is so stiff I think I'll try 3/8" next go around. The filament is LW-PLA which poses some problems. I know PLA on the dash of a hot car does not fair well so I might have to try LW-ASA. But then my wings will be off white and I doubt that inside the wing nose gets very hot anyway. The second consideration is glue-ablility. PLA is hard to glue to but this LW-PLA has a more foam texture so I'm doing a glue test with T88 just to see. I doubt it will be structural but there are other options to consider. What have folks been glueing the blue construction foam with?
BTW: this was printed with 3 layer walls and 10% infil. There is plenty of room to make it lighter.
you can easily fly a Legal Eagle with no instruments except seat of the pants and the mark 9 eyeball.