Close

Birds of a Feather...

A project log for Drone Swarm

Drones of varying complexity swarm an area, forming a distributed sensor and actuator network.

les-hallLes Hall 03/17/2015 at 19:040 Comments

Side view of four props (glued together in pairs)

top view of same props

The above photos show four propellers that I have made by printing eight prop halves and glueing the halves together. These props look cool in that they are leafy, feathery shapes accentuated by the stepped feathered texture and edges.

Their beauty is not skin deep, however, as they have the interesting property of adjusting their angle as a function of radius. This means that air at the core has one angle and air at the tip another, with gradation in between.

So in the center where the prop rotation is slower, you get more pull on the air from the angle and as we approach the edge we get less of the pull due to the prop angle and more due to the higher velocity of the prop at that radius. neat huh?

I don't know if regular props are made this way or if this is a new thing, but i thought it would be nice to share with the hive mind and see what the reaction is

Les

Discussions