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Propellers!

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Published on May 24, 2011

Description

Propellers are neat things that you can attach to motors. When they turn, they create a pressure difference on the front/back of the blade. The front has high pressure, and the back has low pressure.

These are done in Sketchup using a technique that I am developing. Each blade is 120 degrees from the others. The profile is extruded up 1/16" and then the top edge is rotated on the center point. The new top edge is then extruded again 1/16" and rotated by the same number of degrees. There is a line through the center to help locate the rotation point. This line would also be useful for placing a hole to accomodate a motor or other post.

This design would be good to print and then make a mold of so you could make lots of propellers for underwater robots or airplanes or similar.

After printing a few versions, it appears that the props need to have a steeper angle for proper Makerbotting. This will reduce the overhang, but will likely also require a taller blade to get enough surface area on the blades.

If the profile of the blade is 1/16th of an inch, it seems to print neater and faster with abs. The included g code is based on MK5 with automated build platform. Having the angle too steep also makes for a sloppy print with lots of loops and drips. The three holes will allow the prop to be bolted onto a laser cut acrylic motor adapter.

Instructions

Print it out and see how well it works.

You will need to make a center hub for attaching it to the rotational device of your choice.

This is a very new design and technique, so mess with it and share your results!
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Nice! I tried something similar in OpenSCAD and it worked really well:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thi...

You can even scale the layers to get a more rounded propeller blade. :-)

That's a nice design. I've been looking for prop files to download and haven't found anything that suits my needs. After a lot of messing around in Sketchup, I tried Solidworks and came back to Sketchup.

Where I was extruding it up 1/2 inch in Sketchup and then rotating it, this time I extruded it a little, rotated a little, repeat, repeat, repeat.

It took about three hours today to develop the technique, but now I can do it in about 5 minutes from a blank file. Exporting the .stl is pretty effo
rtless and quick.

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License

Propellers! by connors934 is licensed under the Attribution - Creative Commons license.

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