Some time ago, a buddy sent me an STL file of a Spitfire MkV grip to try to machine on the ShopBot. I tried it and the most usable result (still wrong) took five hours to machine out of a “billet’ of plywood I made.
I recently finished calibrating my Rostock MAX 3D printer, and decided to give that Spitfire grip another go.
It took 11 hours, 17 minutes and 7 seconds to print. It consumed 35.6 meters of 1.75 silver ABS plastic filament. There’s a few areas where the overhang is too great and it messed up a tiny bit, but overall I’m very happy with the result!
Back of the grip
Front of the Spitfire grip
Front side, cleaned up
Back side, cleaned up
The grip is amazingly strong and doesn’t warp at all when you twist on it. The grip was printed using KisSlicer as the slicing software and uses a 25% infill. (that means that 75% of the interior space in the model is just air).
Any chance you would part with a copy of that stl file for the Spitfire Spade grip? I want to cast an ali one and I need to make a really good mould.
You should contact 453Raafspitty on the SimHQ cockpit builder forum. He’s the guy that I got the model from.
g.