3d printing for parts?
 

this is more from a rc truck perspective, with cheap 3d printers - what is stopping us printing up our own parts that break?

i have no idea if it is practicable or strong enough

would love to hear what people think.
the only reason i thought about this is because i live 1.5 hours away from our nearest RC shop, and even then they have to order the parts in :( the advantages of living in a small community.

From all of the reading I've done, printed parts in the most common material pla are to weak for any normal usage. Unless you have one of the more exotic printers, it's only good for low stress or rapid prototyping

thanks for the answer - i had seen some people making parts and it made me wonder

I've read up on this and learned that you can get a high temp extruder with a heated bed to print with nylon filament, still not as strong as molded plastic because you can't add reinforced fibers... but you can theoretically produce parts on par with Traxxas/Tamiya quality, just not RPM quality.

The hotter temp extruders need a larger nozzle to prevent clogging and this also forces you to lose precision for fancy curves so chances are you'll need to do additional milling of the parts to file any rounded edges, ream holes, etc... making it more impractical.

I've come to the conclusion that it would be better to use a CNC to mill custom molds and then you can experiment with custom fiber reinforced blends using a mold injector to make your own parts. You can still use a 3D printer for prototyping, then once you have a design that works, you simply perform an inverse tooling path on the CNC to mill the molds + injection hole.

Not 100% accurate, there are glass fiber reinforced PETG out there, along with glass fiber reinforced NYLON. Glass fiber reinforced I do agree that even if using fiber reinforced, your parts would be too weak for something like ARMS, pivot joints, shock towers, ETC... but radio boxes and low stress places would be perfect.

this morning i did a bit of looking up and (as billdelong mentions) a lot has changed over the last few years with also many different materials (not just pla)
2013 - only good for prototypes and low stress (no real useful applications for RC)
2017 - good price, good tech, good materials, (a lot of good uses for rc's)
although i may have to put a disclaimer in here - where i read good uses may have been for planes and drones :)

this is the impression i get as well with the current tech

high stress points (probably), but is everything a high stress point on a RC, or different rc's like rock crawlers that are slower?

You failed to qoute the part of my post where I mention low stress areas.

​​​​​All you can do is try, I wouldn't run any 3d printed parts on the axles, transmission, or drive shafts.

It won't be exact or as perfect as injection molded plastics, but you can make simple stuff like waterfall braces and custom fan mounts. Definitely no arms or shock towers.
billdelong, Tamyia and Traxxas may not be as strong as RPM, but they're still unprintable.

hi guys, came across this on youtube, 6 mins published nov 2017 - uses only pla (i think) but makes an excellent point about orientation that makes a HUGH difference to strength