AR Drone 2.0 – Prop Balancing

Prop is now balanced

From time to time your props will get nicks and scrapes and need balancing. Also props that are new seems to all need balancing on once side due to the injection molding process leaving more weight on one side probably due to gravity pulling the material down during the mould process.

In any case you will need to balance your prop. To do this you need to place the prop onto a shaft of some sort horizontal and spin it around to find which side is heavier than the other. One you know which side is light you can add a small piece of electrical tape on the under side of that light end at the very end of the prop. Add a longer strip and trim off small bits at a time until you get the right amount and the prop sits straight on the shaft and does not favour one side or the other.

One side is heavy

Add a small strip of tape

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doing this helps with vibration and stability in flight and can even mean you use less battery and certainly less wear on your motors, shafts and gears.

Give it a try it works!

AR Drone 2.0 – Prop Straightening

Parrot AR Drone props are great, durable and hard to damage but eventually they do need replacing.

New props purchased from Parrot need to be straightened and balanced before you can use them otherwise your drone will end up flying all over the place and won’t hover properly.

You can see below that the props come packages well but this leads to them having a bowed form to the plastic no doubt from shipping conditions/heat etc.

The props should touch tip to tip when placed back to back in their clockwise-anticlockwise sets (A & C). If they do not touch it means they are out of shape and need to be straightend.

Prop tips do not touch

You can see they are not straight on the leading edges

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To straighten them you need to either put them in a home made jig or clamp them to a flat surface such as a wooden ruler and heat them up for a bit and then let them cool. Most people use a hair dryer to heat them up for 2-3 minutes then let them cool and repeat the process several times which lets them set in the correct postion.

I use an alternative method of taping the leading edges together of a A & C prop set and then dip each end in boiling water for 10 minutes a side and then let them cool in ice water. This has the same effect and is much quicker and easier than the jig method. Pics below:

With 1 side taped you can see just how bent out shape the prop is!

All taped up and ready to go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much better now but these will need another go to get them perfectly straight as they aren’t quite there yet.

Stay tuned for prop balancing!

AR Drone 2.0 – Outdoor Flight #3 – Flybys!

Had my iPhone 5 sitting in front of me recording the outdoor flight #3 I posted earlier. Here is the view from that!

AR Drone 2.0 – Outdoor Flight #3

Took the drone out for some fun the other day. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon in Melbourne with light winds so perfect timing!