GREEN TWP., Clark County — Manipulating a remote control device, Jade Lowrey taxied a 5.3-pound airplane along the floor of a 17,000-square-foot aircraft hanger on a recent morning.

This was no ordinary model plane. According to engineers at Centerville-based SelectTech Services Corp.’s advanced manufacturing facility, it’s the world’s first privately funded 3-D printed plane that is able to take off and land on its own landing gear. And it may be just the third 3-D printed airplane in the world, they believe.

The plane was produced in a three-dimensional printing process, a Dimension SS 1200 ES printer slowly weaving together strands of ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) plastic to make the plane’s components.

SelectTech engineers took the battery-powered plane up for the first time in mid-September, braving winds of 25 knots in the process.

“It took about a week to get the smiles off our faces,” said Frank Beafore, executive director of SelectTech’s manufacturing facility at the Springfield Beckley Municipal Airport.

With more than 100 employees, SelectTech provides engineering and technical services mainly to the Department of Defense. Perhaps best known for secure communication suites that fit aboard large airplanes, the company could easily craft those systems for corporate customers as well, Beafore said.

The idea behind the printed plane is to show customers what SelectTech can do with an idea and how quickly it can take that idea from napkin sketch to reality.

Already, Beafore said, SelectTech is speaking with an Air Force prime contractor he wouldn’t name about using the vehicle as a platform for testing a sensor array. But the plane could be used for other tasks, including public safety and agriculture, he said.

It took about five working days to take the plane from idea to CAD (computer assisted drawing) model to 3-D modeling to a finished prototype ready to fly.

Beafore said the process is almost the opposite of CNC (computer numeric control) machining, which sculpts and shapes blocks or tubes of metal by removing material.

Sensor arrays on the 3-D printed planes can send sensitive information to secure enclosed communication sites on the ground, built by SelectTech, completing what Beafore sees as a start-to-finish process.

Scott Sullivan, SelectTech president, said wading through the Air Force acquisition process can take a long time, so the company wanted to extend its array of products.

“We didn’t start out to build an aircraft,” Beafore said. “We started out to demonstrate this process.”