"Red Oak" Boomerang

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.

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.

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.

EDIT: I added a video demonstrating this boomerang design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t\_kwJoYnxjU

How I Designed This

You will find the model in Onshape.

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.

Print instructions

Printer Brand: Creality
Printer: CR10S PRO
Rafts: No
Supports: No
Resolution: 0.24
Infill: 30%

Filament: 3dk Berlin PLA Crystal Violet
Notes:

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.

Post-Printing

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.

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.