3D Printed Mechanical Ornithopter

I knew that I wanted to enter the "Make It Fly" contest because I am interested in aerospace and flying vehicles. After some brainstorming, I decided to make an ornithopter. I liked the idea of replicating a wing with a mechanism. I designed a mechanism and eventually had something that looked like a bird. My motors broke, so at this point in the design it is a glider with a flapping wing mechanism. This also means unless you want to try to use motors the smaller gears in the 3D file will not be used.

• 3D Printer


• Filament


• Hot Glue Gun


• Hot Glue


• #4 x 1/2 in Screws


• 7 mm Diameter Bearings


• Pliers


• Screwdriver


• 2 mm Diameter Metal Wire


• Tissue Paper


• Sandpaper

This step is pretty straight forward. Just print all the parts by using the attached file. Once the parts have been printed, clean them up with some sandpaper.

With two screws, connect both brackets.

With pliers, press the bearings into the gears and wing arms.

With the peg pieces screw in the wing arms and the gears. The longer pegs are used for the gears and the shorter pegs are used for the wing arms.

Add the linear arms from the gears to the wing arms on both sides. This is what turns the rotational motion into linear motion.

Cut two 5 cm, two 6 cm, and two 8 cm metal rods. The 8 cm rods go the whole way back and bent to the shape of the tail. The 6 cm rods go out as the wings. Lastly, the 5 cm rods go above the 8 cm to have another place to attach the tissue paper wings.

Cut the tissue paper out in your desired size and shape. Then, glue the tissue paper onto the wing arms and tail.

Even though the wings are not motorized, the ornithopter is a fun mechanism to print and put together. In the future I would like to continue to work on adding motors. If you have any questions about this build please let me know.