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Working 3D printed Helicopter Blades by tlalexander is licensed under the Attribution - Share Alike - Creative Commons license.
© 2012 by tlalexander
Instructions
EDIT4: Now with source files! Solidworks 2012. Both blades are there. Suppress the last "body delete" command to show the other blade. Unsuppress one or the other when saving STL Files. Use the coordinate system I added when exporting (in STL options. might already do it by default now)
EDIT 3: Added some new smaller blades. They don't have as much lift but the heli seems to fly faster. Interesting! They are 2A and 2B, and print in about 17 minutes apiece. Also, sorry, this is getting messy, I should probably re-write this section.
EDIT 2: Added pictures of a blade as printed, before being removed from the bed. Its actually a slightly smaller design I'm working on, but it demonstrates the orientation. I will try to get higher quality pics soon.
EDIT: STL Orientation is now correct. In case there is any question: Print the blade upside-down from the flying configuration - you'll see that there is a slight flat on that side. The overhangs seem to work OK with small layer heights.
There's an A blade and a B blade. A goes on top, B goes on bottom. Unscrew the old blades and screw these right on.
Aside from yanking off some fluff with my fingers, I didn't so any secondary operations on these things. Just print and go.
Print these with small layer heights (I used 0.08mm) and blast it with a fan to keep it from deforming while printing. They're only 0.025" (.65mm) thick, so they want to deform. I used PLA, no raft, printed on blue tape, and most of the time they stick well enough to print. I have no idea if this would work with ABS. Also I'd print these one at a time to avoid stringing.
If you buy one of these helis, pick another part and try to 3D print it. If we can slowly replace all the parts on this thing with 3D printed parts, we will have eventually created a home 3D printable helicopter! Let me know if you do - mark your part as a derivative or something so we can keep track!
