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I'm impressed - with DHL this time. My package is already in Ohio. One concern however, I received a voice mail today from a representative of DHL. She wants my Social Security Number for customs. This is likely typical, but with the recent security breach or Target's credit card system I am a slightly concerned. Has anyone else been asked for this info?

Just used gr5's instructions for DHL. Worked great. Doesn't give expected delivery date. Oh well . . . .

I ordered mine Nov 11th. Feeling my due date was near, I sent a PM to Sander who responded promptly . I got my shipment e-mail today, Jan 17th. Just over 9 weeks. Now I need to figure out the DHL tracking thing. I agree that team Ultimaker is a victim of their own success. I am happy for them. Its nice when people win.

I don't know if this is a helpful programming idea or not: I work in the food manufacturing industry. We have many temperature controlled systems. Our computers (PLCs) are set up that when they get a bad reading from a temp sensor for a set time they shut down the heaters and create an alarm.

Ordered my UM2 on Nov 11th. I'm hoping my order will slip through the cracks somehow and get shipped early. Otherwise I'm anticipating mid December??? If there is any truth to the rumor of someone in the US distributing the UM2, and there is a pallet on its way here, it would be nice to know. If I can get one sooner and a bit cheaper that seems like a win win to me. If not, I'll just wait. Impatiently, but I'll wait. With today's instant gratification its hard to wait for something your excited about. Remember mail-order??? I had to wait weeks for my K-tel records to arrive. I'm not sure if K-tel is known in Europe, but it was a big thing when I was a kid.

I'm about 1/2 way done with the fuselage. My intention was to have the fuse done before making another post. However, it is taking longer than I thought and I want confirmation that I am designing it correctly. If no one notices any problems I will be ordering a UM2 soon. If there is still a long lead time the printer should arrive just about when I am ready to go. Late December, maybe?? Here are the first 4 sections of the fuse. https://www.youmagine.com/designs/c-130-fuse-sections--2 The first section - the nose - seems easy enough. Only 45 minutes says Cura - nice!! I notice in the layers view in Cura there appear to be blank areas around some of the windows. Anyone have ideas about this?? Also Cura puts bridges in places I don't understand. The second section is for the nose gear. I kept it short to have shorter bridges. Also since it is complicated I wanted to keep it as easy as possible. I plan on using 100% infil for this section for strength. The nose retract is from E-flite. For the 3rd section I plan on having no bridges. The support tubes for the carbon fiber arrows are beveled at 45 degrees. I read or heard that most printers will print 45 degrees without much trouble. Keep in mind that I'm not terribly concerned about the appearance of the inside of the plane and can sand or cut as needed. The 4th section starts the wing and main landing gear mounts. It took a long time to design this section. I plan on using 50% infil for this section. The layers view also shows some holes in the outer skin??? I will likely modify this section as I am not very excited about a print that will last for more than one day. I machined the main gear retracts out of aluminum as I could not find retracts that go straight up like the C-130's. I am considering drilling the nozzle to .8mm to speed up print time. When I set the nozzle size in Cura to .8mm many of the outer skin sections fail to show up on the layers view. Any ideas?? Will drilling the nozzle work or will Cura have problems with the skin of the plane which I have designed at .8mm? How about layer height? So, am I ready to place my order or I better go back to design school? If I order a printer this C-130 will be the most expensive ever. The next plane will be cheaper and faster to design.

I had another "great" idea that I think would be very easy. Use a magnetic switch to monitor rotation of the feed spool. Embed magnets into the spools or make an attachment on the spool holder. When the program detects no rotation for a certain time it assumes the roll is empty. The print will pause and maybe the head moves away. Then you can splice in new filament and continue printing. As I said previously, I don't have a printer of my own yet. I only think I know how they operate. Maybe there is a common fix for this, but I think it would really suck to run out of filament mid-print. This also requires a commercially available filament splicer which I have not seen yet.

I am very inexperienced with 3D printers, but I like the scanner and laser cutter ideas best. A laser cutter is another toy I would like to have. How about a new laser head for the UM2? My concern with this is the "small" operating area of the machine compared to existing laser cutters. If you have to continuously swap in small squares of cardboard, or wood the laser would need to operate pretty fast to be able the have a decent sized finished project. It would be very labor intensive. I'm not sure I would have the patience. As always, bigger, better, faster seems good too. Oh, and cheaper. I read an article recently where the author said "Our children are going to laugh at the speed of our 3D printers."

Still moving forward - slowly. I spend about 4-5 hours per day in Blender and am becomming very pleased with it for my project. There is a YouTube video solving almost every problem I have encountered. I don't know which is faster, gluing balsa or designing in CAD. I suspect that if I devoted my time to gluing I could have the plane done before I'm finished with the CAD file, but what fun would that be. . . It is a very different process building a RC plane from the outside in. I have to plan where to make the section cuts for the available print space, think about how that will affect the next section, and think about where it needs to be stronger/thicker. All this from someone who thinks he knows how a 3D printer works but doesn't really know for sure. I'm sticking with .8mm skin thickness in most places remembering that every 19cm or so there will be a double thickness where the sections join. If things work out, it is going to look great on the outside and pretty nice on the inside. There should be room for a truck or something to fly along. I had the idea to use carbon fiber arrows for strength. Here in the US, you can buy them just about anywhere. They have a uniform diameter and are cheap. Next to free, cheap is good. I held 4 of them at one time and flexed them. They have a great "feel" that I think will work great for the wing. The good news is that my wife hasn't shut me down yet! She wants an island also . . . I will stop posting for a while as most of my Ultimaker questions have been answered. As soon as I have what I think is a finished section I will put it on the Youmagine site for review. Hopefully by that time I'll have a UM2 ordered.

I had not seen the plane mentioned above. Nice, but not what I am aiming for. My goal with this project is to take scale plans of a plane, from a 3D scanner or an existing mesh model like one used for video games (my source), and turn that into a flying model working from the outside in. I've seen scale RC planes printed, but the examples I've seen so far have needed the surface completed and I have not seen a video of one in flight. After further consideration, I have decided to stick with the shorter and factory ready UM2, assuming the units (which should start shipping today) get good reviews. My dollars eagerly await! My thought is that anyone who wants to buy a 3D printer can develop and print their own plane without a lot of tinkering and mods to the printer. I would rather spend my time tinkering on and flying the plane. I hope that after initial set-up I can hit "print" and leave the printer by itself for a few hours. I would also hate to start printing a long section and discover 15+ hours into it that I had something wrong. In the past month or so I've been many places searching for someone who has already done what I am attempting. I've had no success. I'll be world-famous!! I can just imagine the beautiful women lining up to pose with my C-130 for magazine covers. The talk show interviews. The money!! I'll be able to retire, buy an island!! Probably not . . .

Ok, so the obvious question is what would it take to get one in the US. Maybe somewhere in Iowa? I'd prefer not to make the plane out of so many sections, but I'll do what I have to. I've considered having it printed on one of the powder based printers. I'm afraid it would be pretty expensive and I want to have more control over the process. That's not really the point anyway. My thought is to have planes available that people can print themselves. If this works and can be done easily enough, it might catch on.

Yes, but just barely. I have to rotate it so it is diagonal on the table. I will be able to print the motor mounts and part of the nacelles attached to the wing. The nose of the nacelles will have to be separate which is ok because it allows for access. I'm not super excited about having the wing made up of so many sections, but hey, it will look like wing panel lines.

Its 1/24 scale. Wingspan of 1.68m or 5'6". I chose that because that is the scale of the balsa C-130 I have been working on. It's neat because the fuse cross sections fit nicely on the table of the printer. This example is far from final. I'm still learning Blender.

Here is what would be the 2nd section back from the nose. https://www.youmagine.com/designs/c-130-fuse-section I have not quite figured out an easy way to join the tubes to the fuse exterior. I would prefer more of a solid fillet between the fuse and the tubes. However, Cura seems to think everything is ok. (I just realized that the tubes start above the build table - oops.) Blender identifies several problems for 3D printing but once again Cura seems happy. For future design attempts I will likely print the tubes in 2 or 3 sections to save weight. I'll have to taper the bottom of the tubes to allow for proper printing. I also realized that the offset fuse section that would slide into its mating section is not necessary. I could eliminate that and use carbon fiber material or something similar to glue the sections together and fill the seam with balsa filler. I don't understand how some of the print settings in Cura affect print time. Why does changing shell thinkness result in a print time change if this is a solid object? Same goes for bottom/top thickness and fill density.

Would it be a good idea for me to download Cura and experiment with the settings there? I'm just not challenged enough trying to learn Blender. . .

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'm still plugging away at this. I'm 100% new to 3D CAD and printing but I have a pretty good technical background and have been flying RC for 25 years or so. I'm having good luck with Blender as my CAD program. It seems that I had better design the plane in mm. I had been working in inches. Once I get a section finished I will post it somewhere for analysis. That brings up the point: Where is a good place to post a .stl file for people to access?

The web site says 230X225X205. Which of these would be the height? My plan is to print the fuse and wings with a 1mm skin to start. I will lower that until the exterior starts to feel flimsy. I will use the carbon fiber shafts for strength. This should eliminate the balsa ribs, plywood bulkheads, and hard wood stringers hopefully making the entire plane lighter. I will have to bulk up the area where the wing, rudder and elevator attaches. I sure would like to order a UM2, but there seems to be a lot of confusion right now. I guess I'll wait until the reviews start showing up from people who get the first units. I'm working with the 3D file mentioned above. Looks good so far.

Thanks for the link. I'll experiment with the file later. I like free. Free is good. I had not considered the operating temp of the electric system. Good point. The batteries get warm, but not enough that you can't hold them. The speed controls get warm, but they are usually placed in a recession on the outside of the fuse or wing for maximum air flow. The motors also get warm, but typically there is ventilation designed into the engine nacelles.

I am currently building a C-130 out of balsa. Its slow and gluing balsa together seems way too 80's. I have been playing around with the idea of printing one. I know that there have been at least 3 planes that have been printed and at least 1 has flown. Search "First flight of 3D printed plane" on Youtube. I don't think anyone has tried a scale model. Someone needs to. I'm going to give it my best. The neat part is you can simply reprint badly damaged sections. Here is where I am at so far: - There are 3D files available on Turbosquid that can be downloaded as an .obj file. I have been using Blender to modify the exterior mesh of a sample plane for the required interior spaces. I plan on designing "tubes" into the fuselage and wings to slide carbon fiber shafts through for strength. Once the plane is redesigned I will divide it up into sections that will fit in a printer. - It seems that ABS is the preferred material for its strength vs PLA. - I'm just about ready to order a UM2. Just haven't been brave enough to hit "Buy" yet. - I don't think stringers and strange bumps from the printing process will matter much as I can simply sand them out. - I'm not going to print the control surfaces attached like in the video. Here are the unanswered issues and questions I can currently think of: - I will have to test PLA and ABS vs balsa, plywood and hardwood spars typical of RC plane construction. In the above video you notice that the interior of the fuse is empty compared to a built-up RC plane. I think I'll take advantage of "Print this for me" and see if someone will make me some samples. I understand that the plane in the video was printed with professional equipment. - A heated print chamber is recommended for ABS prints. Do you actively heat the chamber or simply insulate it so the heat from the bed and print head doesn't escape? Thoughts, ideas and advice welcome. Does this even seem possible? Thanks