Parked, not posed.
Wings spread, canopy on, weight on the nose and main gear — the attitude a Tomcat holds on the ramp with the crew gone. Keep scrolling to take it apart.
F-14DTomcat
The fleet defender, shrunk to a shelf: 15.4 in of gloss-black airframe with the wings out, standing on its own nose and main gear. Every marking on it is a separate printed part.
- 16
- printed parts
- 15.3 in
- across the wings
- 17.6 oz
- on the shelf
How it goes together
Colour is geometry.
Nothing on this jet is painted. It comes apart into 16 printed parts and every one of them arrives in its own filament, so the orange is orange all the way through.
The loud end.
Two orange cans slide onto the engine tunnels and two red faces close the intakes. A red cap drops over each fin — 4 mm wide, 42 mm long, and the highest thing on the model.
Glass without glass.
The 90 mm tandem canopy prints in khaki, which is what makes it read as glazing rather than as a lump of plastic. The anti-glare panel and the dorsal spine deck land either side of it in a black a shade off the airframe.
It carries its own weight.
A red nose strut on a twin wheel, two main struts, two main wheels: 96 mm of wheelbase, 81.2 mm of track, 10.1 mm of air under the belly. No acrylic stand, no rod, no hole drilled in the fuselage.
15.3 inches of wing.
15.4 × 15.3 × 4.6 in with the wings out. Put it where the planform shows, because that shape is how anyone recognises a Tomcat from the doorway.
16 parts, and no paint.
Pick a filament to see which pieces carry it. Each part prints on its own, so a knocked-off nozzle is a reprint of a nozzle.
Fuselage, both wings, both fins and the tunnel between the engines come off the plate as one black piece — 15.0 × 15.3 in of the jet in a single part. Everything else butt-joints onto it.
The tandem canopy prints khaki so the cockpit reads as glazing. The spine deck behind it and the anti-glare panel ahead of it print in blacks a shade off the airframe, which is what keeps the top of the jet from looking like one moulded lump.
Two orange afterburner cans and two red intake faces. These are the parts that carry the jet's colour, and the ones you would want in a different colour — so they are the ones that come off.
A deep red cap along the top of each fin, 4 mm wide and 42 mm long. They sit at the highest point on the model and they are what your eye finds first.
A red nose strut on a twin wheel, two black main struts, two main wheels. Nothing else touches the shelf: the whole 17.6 oz goes through four wheels.
Every joint is a butt-fit sized for a drop of cyanoacrylate. Build from the gear up and it is standing by the time the canopy goes on.
How big it actually is.
15.4 × 15.3 × 4.6 in and 17.6 oz, with the fins standing 4.6 in off the shelf. Wings out, it takes the footprint of a shelf rather than a desk corner.
What lands on the shelf.
Printed in PLA, assembled, and set down on its own wheels. Every figure below is measured off the finished model, not off the drawing.
- Overall, wings spread
- 15.4 × 15.3 × 4.6 in
- Weight
- 17.6 oz
- Printed parts
- 16
- Material
- PLA, multi-colour
- Time on the printer
- 59.7 h
- Wheelbase
- 96 mm
- Main gear track
- 81.2 mm
- Belly clearance
- 10.1 mm
- Main wheels
- 15.6 mm across
- Nose wheels
- 10 mm, on a 27 mm strut
- Stance
- four contacts within 0.001 mm of one plane
Every colour on it is a part you could hold.