3D print the Essendon Airport Control Tower
A free, printable model of the Essendon Airport Control Tower, a square base with an octagonal cabin and railed walkways, and the open ground around it, generated from real map data in your browser.
Free, in your browser. Exports a slicer-ready 3MF.
About the Essendon Airport Control Tower
The control tower at Essendon Airport, on Wirraway Road in Strathmore, Victoria, Australia, is on the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List, to which it was added on January 22, 2016. Only Sydney Airport is older than Essendon among Australia's operational airports. This is the third tower at the airport, and it ranks among the country's oldest control towers still in use.
The Department of Works for the Commonwealth of Australia, through its Victoria and Tasmania branch, designed it on behalf of the Department of Civil Aviation. The tower was meant as a central part of a large, experimental system for controlling civilian aircraft, at the airport that was then the British Empire's busiest.
A square base of three stories, framed in steel and covered in asbestos cement sheets, carries the cabin, an elongated octagon wider at its north and south ends, whose windows tilt outward. The base's roof forms a walkway that runs all the way around. In the late 1960s, a single-story extension with a sheet metal skillion roof was built on the east side to hold electronic and radar equipment tied to Melbourne's new Tullamarine airport. Frames, balustrades and the cabin's steel frame are painted vivid red, standing out against the pale panels. A fixed external ladder reaches the cabin roof, which carries the light beacon and antennae.
How it prints
Make this print opens the generator on a 600 m square around the landmark. Buildings print at close to true scale, so the landmark grows with the print size.
| Print size | Landmark height | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 160 mm default | 6 mm | 1:3,750 |
| 200 mm | 7 mm | 1:3,000 |
| 256 mm | 9 mm | 1:2,344 |
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North
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East
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South
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West
- Thin railings and antennae
- Slim railings circle the walkway and the cabin roof, and small antennae stand on top. Print friendly adapts them to the print scale; Full detail and a larger print keep more of them.
- Canted cabin on a small tower
- The octagonal cabin leans outward above the base. The model is small, so a larger print size and 0.12–0.16 mm layers keep the cabin edges crisp.
- One piece with the ground
- The Essendon Airport Control Tower is joined to the ground in the exported file, and the four-side check found no floating parts, so nothing needs gluing.
- Pick the detail for your nozzle
- In the Buildings settings, set Landmark detail to Print friendly to adapt thin parts and small details to the print scale. Full detail keeps every modeled feature, for larger prints or a finer nozzle.
- Colors
- Buildings, roads, water and ground arrive as separate filament slots in the 3MF. The Essendon Airport Control Tower takes the building color.
- File format
- You get a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer. Any of them can save it as STL if you need one.
About this model
The Essendon Airport Control Tower is one of more than 2,300 landmark models in Mini Skyline. They are made with AI, and each one is checked from four sides in its real surroundings before release. Everything around it is built from OpenStreetMap and Overture map data. If you would rather print the shape from map data, turn off Landmark models in the Buildings settings.
Common questions
Is there an Essendon Airport Control Tower STL I can download?
Mini Skyline builds the file for you in your browser and exports 3MF, which every major slicer opens. If you need an STL, open the 3MF in your slicer and export it from there.
How big can I print it?
Any print size from 40 mm across. The Essendon Airport Control Tower grows with the print: about 6 mm tall on the default 160 mm print. For a model larger than your printer bed, Project Mode splits the area into tiles.
Is it free?
Yes. Generation runs in your browser, with no account and nothing behind a paywall.
