3D Printed Skids Go Poof

A while back I purchased the Baby Lama Michael Kranitz had for sale. At the time of purchase, my only concern was the integrity of the 3D printed plastics used in the Landing Gear, but I put my faith in Vario thinking that there is no way they would produce and market a product that would not stand the test of time.

I was wrong, Vario is not perfect!

I was at the field test hovering with 4 successful takeoffs and landings for the purpose of setting up the tail (all landings were like touching down on cotton. 😊 On the 5th hover test, I was getting close but not there yet, so I set it down again (very soft landing as well) after set down and firmly planted something in the gear gave and one end of one of the skids shot up into the main rotor.

Main Blades, Main Shaft, Torque tube, Torque tube bearing retainers, almost all of the struts and of course the complete landing gear structure. I was about to give up on this due to its inferior design flaws but then decided to go off on another track. Why not build the gear just like what was on my Starwood Lama. I have a pic of the the lama for reference and have started construction (all stainless steel, silver soldered together) I have never done this kind of thing before but now my feet are wet and I have no concerns whatsoever in completing the buildout to match the Starwood. Please see photos. The Arms from the main frame and then vertical are complete. The Stainless protrudes into the main latece (a number of different ID/OD metals had to be used).

I was a little aprehensive jumping into this but now that I have my first few welds done I feel very comfortable in bringing this to the same level as the Starwood.

I just added a photo of the Skids for the Lama 1.8 as out of the box. I don't know what material or method of welding they used but it most certainly isn't silver soldering (a lot of grinder work to be done there).

This is a mock up of the skids (stainless steel 10x8x425mm) with rear support struts positioned and now all ready for welding (silver soldering). I modified the wheel mounts which will be glued on at a later stage and the wheels mounted. Bending the skids was quite the task and I ended up using heat to red hot and bent as desired. I tried using a small pipe bender but the steel was too much for it and one of the handles snapped off.

There are 8 - 15x15mm triangles of 1.5mm Stainless to be cut and soldered for further structural support (see photo of the Starwood Lama in part 1). This is going to be difficult because the existing welds will likely de-solder while applying the heat for the support pieces, however, with enough weight on the main structure the other 3 stanchions should keep everything in place.

One step at a time.

Not much to tell here other than I completed all soldering and painted the skid structure. I have now gone a bit further and built side baskets with support struts. The baskets were made of 3mm brass tube with SS 10 mesh covering. Mesh was mounted using copper wire tightly wound around brass tube and the SS mesh and then soldered. After soldering I trimmed off the copper wire and smoothed out the solder.

No more 3D printed materials for structural components for me. That was a frustrating and costly thing to deal with. I am now happy though.

The SS landing gear added 100g in total and the baskets added an additional 245g. I have been flying at 1350 RPM but will up that to 1450 to handle the extra weight. I flew it yesterday and found that it needs just a bit more authority in the cyclic. Even at 1350 it fly's nicely.