[Tom Stanton] is a fan of things like rubber band planes, and has built many of his own air-powered models over the years. Now, he’s built a model powered by a supercapacitor for a thoroughly modern twist on stored-energy flying toys.
It’s not a wholly original idea; [Tom] was inspired by a toy he bought off-the-shelf. His idea, though, was to make one that could be hand-cranked to charge it to make it more like the rubber-band planes of old. He thus built his own geared generator for the job using a big pile of magnets and 3D printed components. It’s capable of putting out around 17 volts when cranked at a reasonable speed. Hooked up to the toy plane, his hand-crank generator was able to fully charge the plane in just a few turns.
His generator was really overkill for the small toy, though. Thus, he elected to build himself a much larger supercapacitor-powered model. He wired up a pack of six supercapacitors in series, designed for roughly 18 volts. The pack was given balance leads to ensure that no individual capacitor was charged beyond its 3.0 V rating. The pack was placed inside a nice aerodynamic printed fuselage. The plane was then given a brushless motor and prop, speed controller, servos, and an RC receiver. Indeed, far from a simple throwable model, it’s a fully flyable RC plane.
The plane is quite a capable flyer with plenty of power, but a fairly short run time of just under two minutes. Though, with that said, it can be recharged in just about that same amount of time thanks to its supercapacitor power supply. [Tom] reckons it should be capable of a 1:1 crank time to flight time ratio in ideal conditions.
Supercapacitors are super cool, but we don’t see enough of them. They’ve popped up here and there, and obviously have many important applications, but we’re not sure they’ve had a real killer app in the consumer space. XV Racers were killer fun, though.
I just love the way the capacitors are arranged radially just like a piston radial engine.
Now that’s creative design for you!
Unfortunately that design seems to be fot clickety baitily reasons only. The plane in the video has the caps in the fuselage…
Now can you charge your supercaps during a fly-by?
Maybe if he put in an induction coil on both sides…
Or lightning rods — keep flying till the thunderstorm ends and the airport beneath reopens
This would be an absolutely ideal use case for an RC glider with the motor to get it to altitude. Cool stuff.
If only super capacitors were available in a sheet-like form allowing them to be used as the material for the wings.
Maybe 10 years ago i read in a rc plane forum that a guy melted metal in a foil in a hot waterbath. It was a pure metal block with a low melting point and ability to store 4.5 voltage.
It was a ultra lightweight rc plane forum which normally use supercapacitors as energy source.
Which type of metall could that be?
I liked the simple idea just to pour your battery in the space you have.
Probably Gallium.
Thanks!
The metal was being used for storage rather than just some convenient other purpose since it’s easy to melt it in water? I am struggling to think what sort of energy storage someone would be trying to make that way.
As for what metal it could have been, if If it was gallium and was melted touching aluminum foil, it would have eaten thru the foil quickly. Something like Field’s metal is a non-toxic alternative for when you want a low melting point metal, but it could have been another alloy like the ones on this list as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusible_alloy#Well_known_alloys
While it’s somewhat easy to make capacitors easily with foil that can be convinced to form a very thin but even insulating layer, often followed by a liquid on the other side to match up to that uneven surface as closely as possible… using one of these alloys doesn’t make sense to me. A solution of borax would be easier, lighter, and work better for the simple kind. That’s not even a supercapacitor (which generally includes EDLC and pseudocapacitors, so I’ll be nonspecific), but those don’t go to 4.5 volts each – if you want that, you need to put them in series. I don’t see any of these DIY options storing enough energy and I think there’s some missing information.
Hi spaceminion thank you for your interest but could not find the rc forum again, i read it years ago. But i found an example site A and B. The forum member wrote even back than that the material was expensive compared to the weight, but for this rc guys light weight is important.
I remember (pictures) that he used a pot filled with water and heated it up, than he used a mylar like foil to melt the metal in the waterpot. He put a red and black copper wire on both ends and let the metal back solidified. I remeber that is was dangerous because the metal could react with the water, maybe it was pure lithium.
He experimented with pure metals as light weight batteries as an alterative to supercaps.
I was just curious what material that could be :-)
A: https://www.rc-network.de/threads/saalflug-mit-supercaps-im-kommen.11779566/
B: https://www.thermiksense.de/saalflugmodelle/
Love it!
The motor controller should have a programmable brake to stop the prop from wind milling and fold when the throttle goes to zero.
Although he said super-caps were better than LiPos, I don’t think his numbers and assumptions are correct. At the start of the video he shows a commercial product. This originally had a LiPo…. until the hoverboard/Samsung fires changed air shipping requirements. The LiPo version had better performance.
A LiPo is be better in pretty much every way since this isn’t a commercial product. It can be charged the same (tiny) amount just as fast and easily, the LiPo can in-fact output the same power, actually more power and more efficiently since the voltage doesn’t drop.
Since he’s not charging the entire battery, his charging doesn’t have to deal with the time-consuming contant-voltage stage. He can use the same same crank setup which supplies <1C and stop at 3V… it would be perfectly fine.
It's just like when he commented on CO2 and didn't understand it was stored as liquid. Wish response videos were more of a thing.