I would like to start selling some of the parts I have designed, made in my own shop using a high quality resin 3D printer. Some of the first products I would like to make available are a folding propeller, and a universal ‘bracket’ for mounting a motor to the mast. With the new abundance of reliable suppliers for the motors and electronics, I feel that there could be some demand for additional parts to speed up the DIY process.
The propeller is based off of the great design by Superlefax that I found on Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4583073). I have modified the pitch and shape of the propeller, as well as the hub. Printing it in resin has proven to be very effective, the stronger material has allowed me to increase the pitch and surface area to get more thrust. My apologies for not being more clear about this in the original post.
Here are some additional photos of the pieces I have designed and made so far. These are still in the early phases, and I would like to get some more data to help iron out the details.
Hi Superlefax.
You are absolutely right, I originally downloaded your design from thingiverse. But I have since made enough modifications that I feel that it is now a new product. I’m sorry I didn’t make that more clear in my post, I didn’t mean to sound disingenuous. I have edited my original post with the link to your thingiverse.
It was a really great starting point. since I printed it in resin and it was much stronger than the filament, I was able to increase the pitch and add some surface area to get more thrust.
Maybe you should consider to offer superlefax a share in every folding prop you sell? It does not need to be much, but it should honor his efforts. I am sure that he did not design it on the fly. It’s not about the law here, but more about a gentlemen agreement within this forum. I would be very disappointed to see any of my shared designs to be commercialized by someone and even promoted on the same Plattform. Lucky me my designs are usually very bad
Hey zephyr, I’m sure you have the best of intentions, but no matter how many modifications you make to the design it still is a derivative design that falls under the same rules as it was originally shared at.
Is your mast holder to fasten the flipsky motor directly on mast with long M5 screws from the front? I did this with alloy brackets, but if your printed one is strong enough I would like to try…Can you share it on thingiverse too?
You may have gained more thrust, but you’ve definitely increased the electric current and therefore shortened the battery life. In that case, it is very likely that the propeller has worse efficiency than the original Superlefax propeller shape. This is another reason why it is not worth making this propeller in Canada on a 3D printer and selling it to the EU, as the shipping, customs fee and VAT will be very high.
Can you post some data log of the propeller (e.g. from metr.at)?
I was going to clean up a couple little things but this should get you started for now. I don’t have the fusion360 file in there but I’ll put that in there when I’m done traveling
