3D-printed parts

What began as a rapid prototyping tool for the design industry has become an accessible, cost-effective option for owners who build, maintain, repair, and improve their airplanes and gliders. Although this technology is not quite ready for primary structural components, its growing use among individual builders makes understanding its limits essential. Just because modern desktop 3D printing can produce a part that looks perfect and fits perfectly doesn’t automatically mean the part should be installed in an aircraft—especially by a well-meaning hobbyist working alone. Some applications are ready for knowledgeable owner-fabrication today; others, particularly anything flight-critical or exposed to serious heat, vibration, and load, still demand professional engineering review to assure safety.

The technology today

Modern fused-filament (FFF/FDM) 3D printers—the type most owners can use—work like a computer-controlled hot-glue gun. A thin plastic thread (filament) is fed into a heated nozzle that melts it, and the nozzle moves in precise patterns to “draw” one thin layer at a time, typically 0.1 to 0.3 mm thick (about the thickness of a sheet of paper). Each layer cools and hardens almost instantly, bonding to the layer below as the part is built from the bottom up.

Affordable machines suitable for aviation-related parts now cost between $300 and $2,800, routinely hold plus or minus 0.1 mm accuracy, can run unattended for days, and include heated chambers that let them handle the same tough, high-temperature engineering plastics found in automotive and certified-aircraft components.

Key enablers for aircraft use include the availability of engineering-grade materials, which are continually being developed for the 3D-printing market. For example, polycarbonate-nylon 6 with chopped carbon or glass fiber (PA-CF, PA-GF) and PETG-CF offer high-strength, high-heat-deflection temperatures above 140 degrees Celsius and excellent UV and chemical resistance. These are the same polymer families used in the production of automotive under-hood components and interior parts on airliners.

Material selection is one of the most critical decisions for any part exposed to heat, vibration, or sustained load. In March 2025, a Cozy Mark IV crashed in England after a 3D-printed carbon-fiber-reinforced acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS-CF) induction elbow softened and collapsed under engine-bay heat, causing near-total power loss on final approach. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch determined the part was made from an inappropriate filament whose actual glass-transition temperature was only between 53 degrees and 54 degrees Celsius—far below the temperatures routinely reached in that location. Had the elbow been printed using a more suitable material, such as PAHT-CF, which exhibits a much higher heat deflection temperature and remains rigid in extreme engine compartment conditions, or other higher-performance material like PEEK (Polyether Ether Ketone), the outcome would almost certainly have been different. Either material would have been much better suited to handle the temperatures and stresses without creep or deformation.

When used appropriately with conservative safety margins and verification against published material strength data, modern engineering filaments are remarkably reliable for non-structural and lightly loaded applications.

Structural components may be around the corner for 3D printing. Direct metal laser sintering and bound-metal deposition systems can produce steel, aluminum, titanium, and Inconel parts. While the printers remain expensive, third-party print services routinely deliver strong metal components for some repair applications at lower cost than five-axis machining for low volumes. Like the drop in costs of TVs, as the market volume increases, prices will continue to come down.

Design accessibility

The days when 3D CAD software was an expensive, workstation-bound tool reserved for big engineering firms are long gone. Today, programs such as Fusion 360 (free for hobbyists and small businesses), Onshape (free tier available), FreeCAD (completely free and open-source), and even the hobbyist/community version of SolidWorks—SolidWorks for Makers (about $48 per year or sometimes offered for free during promotions)—can enable professional-grade design capability on any laptop or tablet. These packages are powerful enough to design complete airframes, yet their interfaces and online tutorials have improved so dramatically that you no longer need an engineering degree—or even years of experience—to produce usable, precise models. It still takes some practice and patience, but the learning curve is measured in weeks or months, not years.

If you’d rather not design from scratch, massive online repositories—Printables, Thingiverse, GrabCAD, Thangs, and others—offer millions of ready-to-download models that can be tweaked to address your needs. Aircraft-specific files are still far less common than, say, phone stands or drone parts, but the library is growing fast as more pilots and owners contribute their work.

And soon, AI-assisted tools will let you describe a part in plain English and receive a finished, printable design with almost no traditional CAD skill required. That future is no longer science fiction—it’s around the corner.

My project

The whole thing started with the instrument panel in my 1979 Schleicher ASW 20 glider. The original layout was a relic—huge steam-gauge holes scattered everywhere, the radio buried down between my knees, and the variometer was so far off to the side that I had to turn my head to read it in a thermal. I spent a couple of evenings in CAD moving things around until the panel finally made sense: big ClearNav screen front-and-center, vario right next to it, up-to-date 57-mm round instruments where my eyes naturally look, and the radio moved up high enough that I could see it while trying to change frequencies.

Once the design was finished, I ordered a single 500-by-400-mm sheet of 2.5 mm 3K twill carbon fiber for the panel. A good friend had built himself a very capable hobby-grade CNC router that would be perfect for this kind of task. Three iterations later, the carbon panel dropped into place perfectly. It looked factory-installed, weighed nothing extra, and instantly made the cockpit feel 20 years younger.

That solved the layout problem, but I still had to climb out from under that fixed panel like it was a fence every single flight. Modern gliders have panels that lift with the canopy; my ASW 20 did not. The few commercial lift kits on the market wanted me to start cutting control runs, modifying pedals, and beefing up the canopy lift mechanism—thousands of dollars and weeks of downtime.

Instead, I designed a simple four-bar linkage made from 12-mm carbon tubes and eight 3D-printed custom joints. The design is basic: two 30-pound gas struts push the entire panel up about 150 mm and 30 degrees with plenty of room to slide in without doing gymnastics. The printed joints are beefy: 5-mm walls, 50-percent gyroid infill, printed in Polymaker PolyMide PAHT-CF—and the highest load any of them ever sees is right around 30 pounds when the canopy is closed. Even after summer in the Arizona heat, nothing has crept, cracked, or loosened. The total added weight came in at 290 grams—basically a bottle of water. My CG didn’t measurably change after all was done.

The result is a cockpit that finally fits me, works the way a twenty-first-century panel should, and is easier to get in and out of—especially helpful now that I’m not 25 anymore. The best part? Several other ASW 20 owners have also installed this lift mechanism and love the outcome. That, more than anything, is what 3D printing has brought to older gliders: the ability to fix decades-old ergonomic sins for a few hundred dollars and a handful of weekends.

Today, flight-critical printed components should be reviewed by a qualified engineer. The components are not yet ready for casual hobbyist production, and the risks of getting it wrong are simply too high. That caution applies to a relatively small subset of parts, however. There are hundreds—perhaps thousands—of non-critical or lightly loaded components (instrument panels, knobs, vents, fairings, battery trays, glare-shield trim, and interior fittings) where modern engineering filaments, proper design practice, and documentation make 3D printing not only safe but often the best available solution.

For owners of older gliders, warbirds, or light sport aircraft, the technology is ready today for a very wide range of practical improvements. The only remaining question is whether you will be the one printing the solution—or still waiting for a $400 plastic knob from a manufacturer that closed in 1998.

Brian LaBorde is an instrument-rated pilot and glider pilot based in Arizona. His complete project is available in a multi-part video series on YouTube: @AppliedEngineering-z8o.