3D print the Sydney Airport Air Traffic Control Tower
A free, printable model of the Sydney Airport Air Traffic Control Tower, its slim shaft, spiral staircase and cabin, and the roads and open ground around it, generated from real map data in your browser.
Free, in your browser. Exports a slicer-ready 3MF.
About the Sydney Airport Air Traffic Control Tower
Sydney Airport in New South Wales, Australia, has a heritage-listed control tower on Lawrence Hargreaves Drive. The Australian Commonwealth Heritage List took it in on January 22, 2016. It came about because approval of a new parallel north–south runway meant the older Sydney Control Tower No. 4 would lose its view of all runways and taxiways.
Ancher, Mortlock & Woolley of Sydney developed the eye-catching design, with Ken Woolley as design architect. Work started in August 1993, and the tower entered service when it was commissioned on January 6, 1996. A pre-cast concrete shaft held by cables carries an external passenger lift, and a spiral escape staircase sweeps around it. At the top, a cloverleaf platform of six bays, nicknamed "beer cans" and clad in reflective blue-tinted glass, cantilevers out beneath the circular control cabin.
The cabin floor is 38.5 m above ground level and the cabin roof is 42.85 m. Its geometry rests on an equilateral triangle, a tri-star plan. It is the only tower of its kind in Australia held by cables, and it was highly commended in the 1995 Australian Steel Design Award for Buildings.
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 | 14 mm | 1:3,750 |
| 200 mm | 17 mm | 1:3,000 |
| 256 mm | 22 mm | 1:2,344 |
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East
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South
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West
- Thin stay rods and spiral stair
- Slim cable rods and a spiral staircase wrap the shaft. Print friendly thickens the thinnest parts to the print scale; Full detail keeps every rod on a large print.
- Aerial spikes on the cabin roof
- Thin aerials stand above the round cabin. Print slowly with good cooling, and use 0.12–0.16 mm layers so the tips come out clean.
- One piece with the ground
- The Sydney Airport Air Traffic 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 Sydney Airport Air Traffic 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 Sydney Airport Air Traffic 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 a Sydney Airport Air Traffic 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 Sydney Airport Air Traffic Control Tower grows with the print: about 14 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.
