June 28, 2023
Description
The Twin Timber is sold with molded plastic 3-blade spinners. As Henery Ford said, "You can have any color you want as long as it's black." I wanted colors. Many have also found that 13x4 2-blade props work fine with the Twin Timber. I wanted a 2-blade spinner for 2-blade props.
So I designed this spinner. Not an engineer and it took me a few failures to get the dimensions of the spinner to be useful. I uploaded files for 2- and 3-blade spinners for both the right (green) and left (red) sides as viewed from the cockpit. The spinner is designed for a M2.5x8 SHCS and I believe the supplied Philips head screw will fit.
I printed with Sunlu PLA, Sunlu PLA+ and Prusa Galaxy Silver supplied with my MK3S kit. I always printed at the top end of the recommended temperature range to get good adhesion to the bed and between layers. I used the Satin sheet with a layer of Elmers "Disappearing Purple" glue stick as a release agent along with a good squish first layer. There is not much contact with the build plate, so I slowed printing speed to 50% using the LCD and never had a print failure.
Here are the print settings I used:
Perimeters 4
Infill 100% Rectilinear
Skirt loops 2
Generate support material
Support on build plate only
Use Paint on supports, check Tool type Smart fill, and right click on the inside of the spinner to prevent supports at the top inside of the spinner. Only the prop cutouts, ribs and the screw shaft need support.
Here are the filament settings I used:
High end of temperature range. For example, Sunlu PLA+ 190-230. I used 229 for first layer and 228 for the rest of the print.
Bed temp 65 and 65 for first layer and the rest of the print.
Fan off for the first layer then up to 100% over the next 4 layers.
Post processing - slowly rock support from each prop cutout. Screw shaft comes out half of the time. When it did not, I Used very small needle nose pliers to reach into the shaft, grab the center support and gently twist it until it came out. Never had an issue.
Be careful with printing more than one spinner at a time. Due to the high temperature, you will get a lot of stringing between instances. I did print pairs sequentially, but make sure you have plenty of separation in the Y axis so there is no crash into the X axis.
One last thing. This is a 3D printed spinner that is cone shaped. There will be a seam. I used the default aligned seam. It does not bother me, but it is there.
License:
Creative Commons — Public Domain
8