Earlier this year one of my grandsons (with some help from me) built a Flite Test Mighty Mini Tiny Tutor. The Mighty Mini Tiny Tutor is a sub 250 gram, foam board R/C kit … with dihedral wing, rudder, elevator and throttle … no ailerons. This was our first foam board construction, so our build quality was a bit rough. Fortunately the kit was well designed, and the instructions were excellent, so the aircraft went together w/o any significant problems. The finished model is very sturdy and has survived several crashes … and multiple hard landings.
Meanwhile, I thought it would be interesting to design a 3D printed wing for the Tiny Tutor … with ailerons. With the objective of not adding any weight, so that it would still be under 250 grams.
On Facebook I posted some renderings of the completed design: a single servo, 74.4cm, NACA 2412 wing … with ailerons. This design was then printed using PolyLight 1.0 LW PLA from 3DLabPrint … one of the newer active foaming PLA filaments. But even with a box beam the length of the wing, the LW-PLA is not strong enough (in my opinion) … even for this relatively small wing. Thus a 3mm carbon fiber tube was designed into the wing to provide the required structural integrity … augmented by 1mm carbon fiber rods in each aileron hinge.
When this video was taken we had not yet flown the Tiny Tutor with this new wing … so we don’t actually know if it will fly. But since the weight and CG have not changed … and the airfoil is more efficient … we have high expectations. Regardless, I thought it prudent to get some photos BEFORE the first flight. This is a short video of the ailerons in operation.
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