First 3D Printed UMX Turbo Timber - RC Airplane 

Is there any chance you would share your final print files with those of us who want to experiment further?

Files? Would love to play with this.

Initial impression whenever I see guys print their own plane ..Cool! But after I see most crashes require complete or most re-builds and how long it takes to re-print it, I'll mostly stick to foamies. Although I might try and do an amalgamation of PLA, TPU and foam one day.

Thanks for the real world experience that is crazy bad luck

I admire your dedication to push through the failures until you dialed-in the final design! I wonder if a spring and cable assembly might be the ultimate shock absorber for the landing gear-I think you made the right choice with ditching the cross supports in your final design so that the gear can flex. My favorite part was hearing your “camera crew’s” excitement when your prototype with the landing gear flew-it’s always a cool feeling when you’ve impressed someone else with something you did 😁👍

So cute plane

Congratulations! This is perhaps the first video showing the process of trial and error and see it through success by making modifications after identifying what went wrong, going back to the drawing board (old school expression - in this case: going back to Fusion 360). Every attempt / failure came with improvements, what is beautiful is that your UMX Turbo Timber is now your platform for future improvements/experimentation/modifications. Most videos online show that a plane is built and flies in the first attempt...that is not realistic (in my opinion). There is always tweaking even when you purchase an ARF...for a scratch built, it takes a lot more tweaking.

Persistence pays off! Your flying skills improved as this project progressed! Hand launching gives you almost no time to make corrections, so throw with the left hand. Some suggestions: Install springs into the landing gear, fly in a larger space, over grass, never fly without ailerons. Keep making great videos and great planes!

Thank you so much. You inspired me alot!!! Have a great day brother.

Nice video and good job the designing and printing of the plane. Seems like a lot of the crashes could have been avoided by just balancing the plane.

Most entertaining video I've seen in a while. You just kept putting them up in the air... it was excellent. Really well done modifying the design until you got a good flyer. Thanks for this. Great stuff.

The wheels and strutts is what it needed the weight and Drag... to help with the pitching up! I'm going to start doing this, this is interesting,,,, I'm a Balsa builder, this seems practical, and educational!

Great job sticking with it and getting this flying well! That was quite a positive transformation from the first prototype to the final version. I would recommend not selling these files or giving them away, however. Even though the UMX Timber is now discontinued, the “Timber” name is owned by Eflite/Horizon Hobby. But now you’ve proven you can design a 3D printed aircraft and make it fly, so keep it up!

Great video. It was interesting following the process to get to a successful flying model.

You are my new go to 3D RC Plane Guy. I am so impressed you never tried Fusion 360 and made it work. But the most amazing thing is that you kept at it until success.

I’m surprised that you got an 3d printed airplane that small to fly!

The thrust and pitch angle on those small high rpm motors is knarly way to the left and downward.....it's a must

Amazing!! I think I need a little more experience but I too want to design my own plane. But you did really good work and I hope to see more of your designs!!

Great Job Troy loved it Merry Christmas

Very nice baby plane. Good Job!

Flaps are very important for cubs and it helps with the low speed capabilities like you were having problems with. Getting flaps down to 30 40 or even 50 degrees can drastically improve the performance at low speeds and is well worth the extra weight.

You put a lot of work into this! I think this plane has a lot of potential. I'd like to see you make one with a smaller power system. I feel like it's twitchy from the excess weight. That and with so much power even the slightlest error in thrust line will make it do really weird things. If you print most of it with single wall vase mode and use the stock UMX 180 motor (Like 1/5th the size) It'd be an amazing plane.

Fantastic journey you took us on, Troy! I've used my printer to support my quadcopter and fixed wing kits, for FPV camera gimbals and such, but dang... this is next level, and heartily appreciated. Merry Christmas, can't wait to watch more epic creations next year.

CG for this type of wing should be 20-25% of the wing chord or 20-25% back from the leading edge at the wing root. Other wing types can get more interesting.

Awsome

Great video! I 'm glad you made it fly! My own designs have never flown, I always give up to early lol. Take care.

Since you can't print the wings in the strongest orientation (lying) without lots of infill or support you might want to try a different polymer. Polypropylene apparently has much better layer adhesion, so your wings won't break so easily.

For the landing gear, why not use the X bracing and make it like an internal shock from an r/c car? Make the bottom be the shaft and spring perch portion, then the upper part can hold a spring and the casing. Make it to where when assembling you attach a cap to it and then it either glues or screws onto the rest of the assembly... just an idea.

Thank you for sharing your failures. Made me think this is exactly how it would go for me but way worse. I liked & subscribed. And great job staying positive !!

You need flaperons it slow plane down many easer landing

Great video I had overlooked this video, as it was published before had discovered and subscribed to your channel. Many great lesson about the process and journey to a RC build here. Would love to see you do a follow-on to the TM Turbo Timber build printing in LW-PLA and perhaps applying some of the design tricks you have learnt since this initial design. Thinking a contributing factor to stall/spins on first few flights was the weight and CoG of initial builds. I've experience similar, too heavy or just tail heavy of a build. (as is so easy to do. LOL) Great lesson in persistence paying off. Seeing where your channel is today. :) For landing gear cross-braces, wondering if using rubber bands provide flexibility while adding support?

I would just go with carbon fiber tubes for those struts. You could CA glue those in there. You could also make the whole assembly out of TPU. It will take a beating and absorb lots of energy. I want to make a rear pusher with a TPU nose...should hold up to almost anything.

nicework

fyi airplanes with rudder only need more dihedral I see you have changed that.maybe a little more ailerons will help great video those models are awesome

I love the way this plane flies and looks! Any chance you could release the files you designed for this? I'd love to build it. Regards, the files

Did you draw the parts as solid bodies and set the infill zero in slicer ? or did you draw surface bodies like 3DLabPrint's drawings ? I tried drawing surface bodies and slice in Surface mode but its difficult to draw in surface modeling.

Landing Gear Struts should be a Bungee system to flex/expand.

LOL, did you stick the CG marker on the fin 😁😁😁

You may consider tpu for the landing gear along with strengthening struts.. I've seen it done on another video and it gives good suspension due to the flexibility of tpu. Your being very hard on that landing gear..

I started my flying on the umx timber loved it didnt love the linear servos how do you feel about releaseing the stl to the public i would love to print one for my two sons to learn on

I love this trial and errornautics!

this should definitely get printed in LW-PLA

Can we get the files

Great work. Thanks for another build video. Are you making the stl files available?

very cool! This is such an awesome hobby I love RC planes. How much more does it weigh than the foam version?

You are an awesome teacher. What is the weight of this model? Did you use light weight pla?

Could you post a video on how you designed the files you used to build the plane. The short clips you show at the beginning look very intriguing. I want to design and build some small scale gliders and the only weight in them will be the smallest video cam and Tx I can find. I plan to use Rx’s from Horizon UMX models that are pretty much beaten to hell. there’s nothing lighter that’s widely available and I could easily build a balsa version but I’ve got my Artillery all set up waiting.

Would you be able to make a new servo/electronic tray and firewall to fit the guts from an eflite umx turbo timber? I have a crashed umx turbo timber my friend gave me and I think if I printed this plane it would fly very nicely with the eflite guts, please let me know!

How many people out there would like someone to 3d scan and make files for old Cox planes?

Would it be possible to scale this up to a 1.3 meter?

Do you have the stl files for this final model

I apologize if I missed it but, how much does this plane weigh? Also awesome job on the plane, I really enjoy the videos!

excellent contribution, I want to print a trainer to learn to fly, what do you recommend?

Do you can share you file 3D printing this model?

I think it needs flaps tbh, other than that pretty sweet!

Why the hell would anyone want to “buy you a coffee” if you can’t even share plans? Lol

Pls files

u need put spar throught wing.

Share STL files?

tail heavy but awesome

I am a professional kit designer with aircraft in the marketplace. See RadicalRC.com I will help you if you like. First lesson. With a conventional tail behind airplane that looks relatively normal (like what your working on) and a constant cord (Hershey bar wing) you calculate CG thusly. Measure cored (front to back of wing. Multiply cord by .3 (30%) to get max rearward CG. Multiply cord by .25 (25%) to get most forward CG. Put two marks on wing - measure from front. Balance between these two marks. Why it flew better when you added the landing gear is you moved your CG forward with it's weight. But still not far enough forward. A tiny bit behind 30% will turn it into an unflyable monster. Get this right and 90% of your problems are solved. I really like what you've done so far. I'm into 3d printing but have done no aircraft with that method. Very hard to keep them light enough to fly well. But I encourage the development. Another thing you could do is increase he thickness and shells in front of the CG. Adding material there will help you. 3D printing isn't good for everything. Landing gear needs to flex for example. Trying to make it do everything might imply the entire technique is poor to your viewers and I know that isn't your intention. You need some grain span wise in the wings to make them stronger. A small hole that is printed oversize and a thin carbon rod slipped in will go a long way. Keep at it.

at 10:41, note the (dihedral) at the underside at the wingtips, of a cub or cessna. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Piper_J3_Cub.svg/1200px-Piper_J3_Cub.svg.png

the plastic bullet

Where could someone get the files for this??

at 3:46, can you spell "the giant rudder is H E A V Y"

at 8:20, it is NOT clear whether the upper-side elevator hinge tape is OPTIMALLY applied.

at 6:19, Giant, full-strip AILERONS !!!!!

at 9:30, PUT the MASS, in the Battery, AS LOW AS POSSIBLE!!!!

😂

that is, zero-zero to the wing's Lower surface.

super tail heavy! good try!

at 5:00, is the thrust line NOT zero-zero !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

at 3:07, someone stole the MAIN SPAR. no wait, YOU DIDN'T MAKE ONE!!!

MAIN SPAR GOES AT THIRTY PERCENT OF CHORD.

at 4:25, OOOOPS STILL NO MAIN SPAR !!!!!!

at 7:47, control horn Not correctly made/configured. putting BEVELS Fore and aft is DUMBBB. at 7:55, STILL NO MAIN SPAR !!!!!

you SHOULD be finding out HOW the model GLIDES and STALLS. you Should be TRIMMING the elevator; for a NOMINAL cruising airspeed.!!!! the model CLEARLY has Chronic dom ISSUES.

"a chain is only as strong as its WEAKEST link." LOTS OF WEAK LINKS, here.