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Piggott Blades simplification possible?
Flux:
"Over there in the US, people carve blades like hell. Over here they are scared of doing that as they feel it might be to complicated...Germans are strange when it comes to precission. It has to be perfect, not just close and they feel they cannot do this by hand...so they do not give it a try at all..."
Max that is interesting. I suspect the same is true to some extent here in the uk ( except for the precision bit). I hadn't thought about it before but it is probably age related, I was brought up at a time when if you wanted something you had to make it, even if you could find a supplier you couldn't afford it. Now I think about ti I doubt that many younger people here would be prepared to have a go ( not without incentive from one of Hugh's courses anyway). I made my first blades when about 12 and it didn't seem difficult then apart from the lack of physical strength as a small boy ( it taught me to sharpen dad's plane and spokeshave to make life easy and that is good advice to anyone, without sharp tools woodwork is a disaster).
I am sure you can devise a basic layout that can be done simply by machine and leave the finishing to be done to the standard that makes the owner happy. Too much perfection is a waste of time, I once sent instructions to a carpenter to make a replacement prop for a freelite. He did it and was delighted, some time later i got a chance to see it and it was dreadful ,especially for one trained to work in wood, but it worked and he was happy. The main thing is to avoid complicated high lift profiles for hand construction, without precision they really are a lot worse than the basic Hugh style blades.
Flux
Menelaos:
Anyway, it might be a cheap or at least not extraordinary expensive way to simplify speed up the carving process. I will report on the results :-)
Max
Photon:
I see a lot of woodworkers use wood router duplicators to make airplane props.
Lots of video's on youtube and mostly with homemade duplicators.
Ive never seen or heard of anyone using this method for windturbine blades.
Seems to me a good way to to get accurate repitition (even use a commercial blades to copy from).
Ive used Hughs way and i like it, but i would uses a router next time.
Menelaos:
For the last weeks I really wanted to build a machine like this and I already made the plans and research for cheap material...but still, to get a unit that does not cover the whole work shop and still can be disassembled...and then still has high accuracy I would probably have to spend something line 3000-4000& for a 2 Spindle machine. Well, money is not the problem here and I would have lots of fun building a device like that....
BUT on the other hand it is not really needed for wind turbine blades. Propeller pros are different in shape and construction and I would probably have to make hundrets of blade sets to cover the costs. Furthermore I have to watch the machine during operation and it is not really fast and also I still have to do some work afterwards. All in all this to me does not really seem effective.
One has to see what is most (cost-) effective for the purpose needed. By the time such a machine has roughed a single blade, I have probably also finished what is left to do on the waterjet precut blades and more or less sanding is still required with both versions.
The more simple carving duplicators are cheap to build and deliver good copies but they are dead slow.
For quite a long time I was running after high end airfoils and now returned to simple airfoils whicha re then made a little bigger in Diameter to compensate for what others get with more efficiency for the benefit of availability and costs
midwoud1:
Hi Max.
5 years ago I made a router duplicator ,making blades.
It was made with a long bed with a sort of rail wagon and a pantograph mechanism on it.
On the right side a model blade (black).
On the left side a mill and a blank following with a finger on the surface of the example model.
Unfortunatly I did not work it out further . To much leeway , slow procedure,
I think the pantograph must have made of metal. ( square tube )
Must work it out later .
Just an idea.
- Frans -
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