RC scale airplane propeller blades.

[tahustvedt]

I milled these blades from oak. They are for a 1:6 scale P-40 scale model. I designed them in Discreet Plasma and made the G-code with Vectric Cut3D. The diametre is 530 mm and the theoretical pitch is 370 mm (370 mm forward movement for each turn) and they will be mounted between two aluminium plates. This pitch should give over 100 km/h top speed. I have flown the plane for a while using a commercial propeller but the blades take forever to arrive when I ned replacements.





Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=zJRikuQmjnI

[Glenn]

Hi, Great blades!
  What will you coat these with to protect them from moisture, and did you do much sanding or did the router put that smooth
of a finish on them?
 Thanks ,
 Glenn

[tahustvedt]

I sanded them smooth after milling because the mesh was a little rough, and the surface is usually a little "furry" inplaces where the wood grain is softer. After milling the mesh grid structure was actually visible in the wood. Hehe. I have since smoothed the mesh out a lot so my next blades will not require much sanding. I usually coat wooden parts with a few layers of epoxy resin and sand between the layers, and then paint.

I tried the propeller on thursday. It worked great.

[Sam]

got any pics of the plane with the blades on?

[tahustvedt]

Just this one. I might go flying again tomorrow so I can take a better pic then.



Here's a video of the plane with the old prop, not the home made one: http://youtube.com/watch?v=97n7IoQ1ASo

[Sam]

Nice looking plane.

[W.Jansen]

Hallo Tahustvedt

I almost do not daring to ask but do you want to share the dxf or g-code for this blades and a brief description how you did synchronise/align  the top and the bottum side of the blade (how did you place it on the machine so the top and the bottum cumming exactly in place).

Greetings:
Willem

[knuckle_]

terrific blades !! did you model these from scratch or ? I am interested in developing  blades similar....for wind turbines.  I would appreciate feedback on Vcarve tool path development.

Mark

[Chaoticone]

tahustvedt,

Hate i missed this one. Good Job.

Brett

[Perfo]

Not being up on the terms, does the 'mesh' mean this was done with some sort of scanning then reproduction ? I would imagine this would be very tricky to do writing directly in G code.  Would you form the root of the blade whilst it was still in a block of wood form then clamp the root in your 4th axis and let it do it's stuff from there.  I've seen a few mentions of digitising probes and point clouds do these get converted from point clouds to g-code for reproduction or can they be cut directly from the point cloud ?  Hmmm more mystery's than knowledge on my behalf at the moment.