"Red Oak" Boomerang

prusaprinters

<p>This boomerang design has become an instant favorite. I modeled it after a wooden boomerang that I made a while ago, which happens to be made from quarter sawn oak and it is dyed red, hence the name.</p> <p>It takes a good hard throw, and then it will do some nice medium range (40-ish for the 85 percent print I made) with a great hover and easy catch at the end.</p> <p>The model in the STL may be a little to thick for optimal performance. I chose to scale the boomerang to 85% in X and Y, but only 80% in Z in the slicer to slim it down a little.</p> <p>EDIT: I added a video demonstrating this boomerang design: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_kwJoYnxjU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t\_kwJoYnxjU</a></p> <p><strong>How I Designed This</strong></p> <p>You will find the model in <a href="https://cad.onshape.com/documents/f4fc462cbce27d8bfdbc5d95/w/eccefc24dae15e6bea41a2f1/e/7b69b0d76b3ad63668da47ff">Onshape</a>.</p> <p>Designing this was pretty straightforward. I brought in a reference image of the wooden boomerang and traced its outline with splines. On a second plane offset by the thickness of the boomerang, I traced the shape of the insides of the airfoils on the top plane of the boomerang. Connect the two by a loft, and add some fillets on the top and chamfers on the bottom.</p> <h3>Print instructions</h3><p><strong>Printer Brand:</strong> Creality<br/> <strong>Printer:</strong> CR10S PRO<br/> <strong>Rafts:</strong> No<br/> <strong>Supports:</strong> No<br/> <strong>Resolution:</strong> 0.24<br/> <strong>Infill:</strong> 30%</p> <p><strong>Filament:</strong> 3dk Berlin PLA Crystal Violet<br/> <strong>Notes:</strong></p> <p>Printed with a .6 mm nozzle, which works great for boomerangs since they don't require a lot of detail, and the .6 mm will push about twice as much filament as a .4 mm one.</p> <p><strong>Post-Printing</strong></p> <p>Make sure the boomerang is flat. When I pop my prints off of the build plate, they tend to warp such that the wingtips face downward a little. This is called negative dihedral (or anhedral). We don't want that.</p> <p>What I usually do is to warm up my build plate to 50 °C, wait for the wings to warp upwards a little due to the heat, and then weigh the middle of the boomerang down. Let things cool and the anhedral should be corrected. Repeat if necessary.</p>