3D Printed Ornithopter

I am a student at Collyer's, Horsham, West Sussex

I wanted to create a design for the make it fly student design contest. I was reading the description and something caught my attention, Ornithopter, my immediate thought was what is that. So, I did some research and found out it was a aircraft that flaps its wings to fly. I was intrigued and I decided that this is what I wanted to make. Having no knowledge in how to make one of these I took some inspiration from ones that other people had made to make my own 3D printed one. Then I started to design my on one on Fusion 360 and hoped for the best as I have no idea how to make one of these actually fly.

For this project you will need:

3D printer

Filament

One bamboo skewer (about 3mm in diameter)

Super glue

Thin plastic bag

Some paperclips

Pliers

Scissors

Rubber band

First you will want to assemble the wheel. All you need to do is cut a piece off the bamboo skewer and stick the wheel on the end of it and add some super glue to hold it in place. The you can stick a small piece of filament in the other hole and super glue it. Make sure that both sides are flush otherwise it won't work properly.

To make the first single rod that connects to the wheel to the up and down thing you need to bend a hole/loop that is the right size so it can freely move around a piece of filament. Then you want to make another hole/loop about one centimetre away and check it fits in gap between the centre slot of the 'up and down thing' (I wasn't sure what else to call it) the rod will be held in place by filament through the holes and the loop on the rod. It is important to make sure that when the wheel is fully down there is at least a 1mm gap between the wheel and the up and down thing. When I was doing this it involved a lot of trial and error.

To make the pair of metal rods to connect the wings and the 'up and down thing' you need to make the hole/loop at each end of the metal rod, like the first one, and make it about one centimetre again. We want it to fly straight so these rods need to be the exact same length as each other and when the wheel is positioned around the middle the wings should be roughly flat. These rods will be positioned in the end slots of the 'up and down thing' and held in place by filament through the hole and the centre of the hole/loop in the rod. Check that they move freely.

To assemble this you need to put the metal rods in place and then push a small piece of filament through the hole in the 'up and down thing' and the centre of the rod, making sure it moves freely. The two rods that are the same length should be on the left and right end slots of the 'up and down thing' and the one that attaches to the wheel in the middle slot. After this is assembled you can clip it onto the main body at the same time as the wheel making sure that the wheel is attached to the metal rod, you may need to sand down the body so both parts move freely.

This step is quite simple, all you need to do is cut a piece of plastic that is bigger than the wing or tail and then run some super glue along the top of the printed part and place it super glue side down on the plastic. Wait for it to dry and then cut off the excess plastic. When I was cutting of the plastic I taped the wings together to make sure that they were the same shape.

To attach the wings you need to place the metal rod in the slot and push a small piece of filament through making sure it can move freely and it is flush with the edge of the part. Now attach the wing to the body in the same way you attached it to the metal rod. Then do this for the other wing.

To attach the first hook, first check if the hook fits on and there is not a large gap between the hook and the body, if there is cut down the bamboo skewer. Then put a small blob of super glue on the end of the bamboo skewer and then push the first hook on. Next push the other hook onto the remaining length of skewer and then push that into the body, you want the hooks to be a distance apart so the band is not too stretched but won't fall off when you put it on. Remember to place the hooks in opposing directions so that the band can be place between them. I had to sand the bamboo down a bit to get it to fit.

All you need to do for this is push the tail on, again if it doesn't fit just sand down the bamboo skewer until the tail fits snugly.

This was a fun project to do. It challenged me to make a mechanism that allows the wings to move up and down in a small space and not being to bulky, keeping it light weight but not making it too weak. Overall I think there are a few things that could be improved and I would like to try some of your suggestions of how to improve it so it flies better. The main thing that I think needs improving is the wing design, I do not have much experience in this so it is hard to know what will work well but what I have made has worked for demonstration purposes. If you know what would work better for any aspects of the design please feel free to leave me a comment. Thanks :)