Firing Bullets Through Propellers

April 25, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 39 Comments

Early airborne combat was more like a drive-by shooting as pilot used handheld firearms to fire upon other aircraft. Whomever could boost firepower and accuracy would have the upper hand and so machine guns were added to planes. But it certainly wasn’t as simple as just bolting one to the chassis.

This was during World War I which spanned 1914 to 1918 and the controllable airplane had been invented a mere eleven years before. Most airplanes still used wooden frames, fabric-covered wings, and external cable bracing. The engineers became pretty inventive, even finding ways to fire bullets through the path of the wooden propeller blades while somehow not tearing them to splinters.

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Watch This Tiny Dome Auto-open And Close Into A Propeller

March 30, 2018 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

Careful planning and simulation is invaluable, but it can also be rewarding to dive directly into prototyping. This is the approach [Carl Bugeja] took with his Spherical Folding Propeller design which he has entered into the Open Hardware Design Challenge category of The 2018 Hackaday Prize. While at rest, the folding propeller looks like a small dome attached to the top of a motor. As the motor fires up, centrifugal forces cause the two main halves of the dome to unfold outward where they act as propeller blades. When the motor stops, the assembly snaps shut again.

[Carl] has done some initial tests with his first prototype attached to a digital scale as a way of measuring thrust. The test unit isn’t large — the dome is only 1.6 cm in diameter when folded — but he feels the results are promising considering the small size of the props and the fact that no simulation work was done during the initial design. [Carl] is looking to optimize the actual thrust that can be delivered, now that it has been shown that his idea of a folding dome works as imagined.

Going straight to physical prototyping with an idea can be a valid approach to early development, especially nowadays when high quality components and technologies are easily available even to hobbyists. Plus it can be great fun! You can see and hear [Carl]’s prototype in the short video embedded below.

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3D Printed Propellers Take To The Skies

January 6, 2018 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

In the world of drones, propeller choice is key to performance. Selecting the right props can have a major effect on things like flight time, vibration, and a whole host of other factors. Thinking it might be fun to experiment, [RCLifeOn] decided to 3D print some props and head out for a fligh t.

The props are a fairly simple 3-bladed design, which were printed in both PETG and PLA. No major difference is noted between the two materials, and the quadcopter under test is able to fly with either. It was noted that the props perform particularly poorly in a crash, with all props failing even in the softest of crashes. We would recommend some eye (and body) protection when spinning these props up for the first time.

If you’re keen to try them out yourself, the STL file can be had here. The video notes that when printing 4 props, 2 must be reversed in the Y-axis to print a counter-rotating set of 4. The instructions used for creating propellers in Fusion3D are available here.

It’s a worthy experiment, and something we’d like to see more of. With a 3D printer, it’s possible to experiment with all manner of propeller designs, and we’d love to see the best and worst designs that are still capable of flight. We’ve also seen 3D printed props before, like this effort from [Anton].

3D Printed Airplane Engine Runs On Air

December 27, 2017 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

One of the most important considerations when flying remote-controlled airplanes is weight. Especially if the airplane has a motor, this has a huge potential impact on weight. For this reason, [gzumwalt] embarked on his own self-imposed challenge to build an engine with the smallest weight and the lowest parts count possible, and came away with a 25-gram, 8-part engine.

The engine is based around a single piston and runs on compressed air. The reduced parts count is a result of using the propeller axle as a key component in the engine itself. There are flat surfaces on the engine end of the axle which allow it to act as a valve and control its own timing. [gzumwalt] notes that this particular engine was more of a thought experiment and might not actually produce enough thrust to run an airplane, but that it certainly will spark up some conversations among RC enthusiasts.

The build is also one of the first designs in what [gzumwalt] hopes will be a series of ever-improving engine designs. Perhaps he should join forces with this other air-powered design that we’ve just recently featured. Who else is working on air-powered planes? Who knew that this was a thing?

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Hackaday Links: July 16, 2017

July 16, 2017 by Brian Benchoff 86 Comments

[Carl Bass] has joined the board at Formlabs. This is interesting, and further proof that Print The Legend is now absurdly out of date and should not be used as evidence of anything in the world of 3D printing.

Here’s something cool: a breadboardable dev board for the Parallax Propeller.

Finally, after years of hard work, there’s a change.org petition to stop me. I must congratulate [Peter] for the wonderful graphic for this petition.

Want some flexible circuits? OSHPark is testing something out. If you have an idea for a circuit that would look good on Kapton instead of FR4, shoot OSHPark an email.

SeeMeCNC has some new digs. SeeMeCNC are the creators of the awesome Rostock Max 3D printer and hosts of the Midwest RepRap Festival every March. If you’ve attended MRRF, you’re probably aware their old shop was a bit on the small side. As far as I can figure, they’ll soon have ten times the space as the old shop. What does this mean for the future of MRRF? Probably not much; we’ll find out in February or something.

Rumors of SoundCloud’s impending demise abound. There is some speculation that SoundCloud simply won’t exist by this time next year. There’s a lot of data on the SoundCloud servers, and when it comes to preserving our digital heritage, the Internet Archive (and [Jason Scott]) are the go-to people. Unfortunately, it’s going to cost a fortune to back up SoundCloud, and it would be (one of?) the largest projects the archive team has ever undertaken. Here’s your donation link.

If you’re looking for a place to buy a Raspberry Pi Zero or a Pi Zero W, there’s the Pi Locator, a site that pings stores and tells you where these computers are in stock. Now this site has been expanded to compare the price and stock of 2200 products from ModMyPi, ThePiHut, Pi-Supply, and Kubii.

Helix Display Brings Snake Into Three Dimensions

June 7, 2017 by James Hobson 7 Comments

Any time anyone finds a cool way to display in 3D — is there an uncool way? — we’re on board. Instructables user [Gelstronic]’s method involves an array of spinning props to play the game Snake in 3D.

The helix display consists of twelve props, precisely spaced and angled using 3D-printed parts, each with twelve individually addressable LEDs. Four control groups of 36 LEDs are controlled by the P8XBlade2 propeller microcontroller, and the resultant 17280 voxels per rotation are plenty to produce an identifiable image.

In order to power the LEDs, [Gelstronic] used wireless charging coils normally used for cell phones, transferring 10 W of power to the helix array. A brushless motor keeps things spinning, while an Arduino controls speed and position via an encoder. All the links to the code used are found on the project page, but we have the video of the display in action is after the break.

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KFC Winged Aircraft Actually Flies

April 14, 2017 by Jack Laidlaw 41 Comments

[PeterSripol] has made an RC model airplane but instead of using normal wings he decided to try getting it to fly using some KFC chicken buckets instead. Two KFC buckets in the place of wings were attached to a motor which spins the buckets up to speed. With a little help from the Magnus effect this creates lift.

Many different configurations were tried to get this contraption off the ground. They eventually settled on a dual prop setup, each spinning counter to each other for forward momentum. This helped to negate the gyroscopic effect of the spinning buckets producing the lift. After many failed build-then-fly attempts they finally got it in the air. It works, albeit not to well, but it did fly and was controllable. Perhaps with a few more adjustments and a bit of trial and error someone could build a really unique RC plane using this concept.

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