3D Printing for Aircraft Parts

[way_up_north]

Does anyone know how they do the pre punched holes in the RV and Zenith planes...software-CNC-forming process

just curious, as its almost magic how the holes line up between the skins and ribs.

[spinningwrench]

They use CNC routers to drill the skins. Drilling and routing are just different instructions. It requires machines with high accuracy given that alignment must be very accurate between mating parts,

[way_up_north]

wanted to thank the guys here for their tips and hints..

I downloaded solid works and fusion 360

played around with it and watched some youtube videos and once you get up to speed you can create some great stuff..

made a sample rib in about 30mins....

Such a rewarding process...

IMG_2843.JPG

[way_up_north]

Not 3D printing this time, but along the same lines... it could very well have been printed (the CNC was faster though at about 15 min to subtract material).

The story behind the part...

I tried making the cutout using traditional means... a jig saw with filing and sanding, a fly cutter with sanding, as well as careful router table free hand to sneak up on the line to sand. Needless to say none of these produced results that I was happy with, so I jumped into Fusion 360 and sketched up this part and then created the CAM and sent the Gcode to my CNC router, the part worked perfectly.

The part was positioned using the holed tabs traced, mostly cut out with holes followed by jig saw, then to the router table with a flush cut bit using the part as the template.

router template.jpg
The template next to the blanks for ribs 1 thru 5:
template and parts.jpg

I`m looking at the part(file) you created in fusion 360

...so this let you create the odd shaped oval we see in the photo...wow...looks very professional...bravo..

[way_up_north]

wanted to thank the guys here for their tips and hints..

I downloaded solid works and fusion 360

played around with it and watched some youtube videos and once you get up to speed you can create some great stuff..

made a sample rib in about 30mins....

Such a rewarding process...

IMG_2843.JPG

Oh oh...

i got out a caliper and started measuring my creation

the part is about 10 inches long and few inches wide...

I measured the rib width wise and all lines exactly accurate .... but the length of the part is 3mm or about 1/16 too long....the error got worse the farther along the part you measured...

usually you could compensate for that by scale printing at 99% or lower ... but it’s correct in one direction and not the other..so it won’t scale evenly

its probably my printer... being residential type.. it’s not meant for super accuracy ...but I thought I’d bring up this point as there is a possibility that printing can skew the part a little or a lot depending... meaning you have to double check everything even if it’s computer created

Next step is to hit a commercial printer to make copy and measure that

BTW how accurate are those home brew CNC machines?
what sort of tolerances do you expect

for those out there that do blue prints and things like that... is there a type of printer to ask for or are most print house equipment up to the job?

[U2fletch]

Looking for good places to mount the GSU 25 ADHRS modules, so thought just under the seats may be a good spot. Made a couple plates to clamp to the main cross bars and measured the angle relative to the lower longeron horizontal datum. Turns out 12.5 degrees is what I measured. So I printed some angle blocks from ABS-GF and embedded some AN3 nylock nuts inside. Think it will work well. Very solid mounting and they are within 1 degree of aircraft axes.

20250831_113501_resized.jpg 20250831_113507_resized.jpg