glass or carbon blades
03-12-2005, 08:43 PM
#1
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glass or carbon blades
which blades are better. carbon blades or glass blades? or is it just personal preferance. I am leaning more tward the carbon blades than the glass blades because i havent seen anybody with glass blades.
03-14-2005, 11:53 PM
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RE: glass or carbon blades
That is a regularly asked question. The true answer is that it is not necessarily what a blade is made of that makes it good or bad. It is more how well it is designed and manufactured.
Some carbon blades are even worst then some fiberglass ones (or even worst then some well designed woodies) in many important areas.
There are some very unstable C/F blades and even some whose construction is suspect that are being manufactured. Some of these can be so bad that they will make a stable heli very "pitchy", or make a rotor head flutter. These will be very hard on the servos, control links and other control components, causing them to wear prematurely. While there are some F/G ones that are very good. There are even some woodies that are better then some C/F units. There are some C/F units that look very attractive from the outside and match weights very well, but they start to delaminate from the inside early on until they fail in flight etc.
What a blade is made of is not as important as many other features e.g. how well it stays together under load, how efficient is its airfoil, how well placed are its centers of gravities (chordwise and spanwise) relative to its center of lift, the proper location of the blade bolt hole relative to the other items etc. etc.
The only thing about any composite blade is that it is easier to match their weights. Other then that, if the manufacturer does not properly understand the dynamics of the rotor blade you can buy some sorry sets of composite blades today. There seems to be a proliferation of late of manufacturers who may know the rudimentaries of laying up composite materials and applying resin to them to make them look good, but these same manufacturers do not seem to have a clue how to design a proper rotor blade.
Staying with proven brands such as SAB, NHP, RotorTech, FunKey and such will ensure that you have a blade that has proper R&D etc. in the design and manufacture.
Some carbon blades are even worst then some fiberglass ones (or even worst then some well designed woodies) in many important areas.
There are some very unstable C/F blades and even some whose construction is suspect that are being manufactured. Some of these can be so bad that they will make a stable heli very "pitchy", or make a rotor head flutter. These will be very hard on the servos, control links and other control components, causing them to wear prematurely. While there are some F/G ones that are very good. There are even some woodies that are better then some C/F units. There are some C/F units that look very attractive from the outside and match weights very well, but they start to delaminate from the inside early on until they fail in flight etc.
What a blade is made of is not as important as many other features e.g. how well it stays together under load, how efficient is its airfoil, how well placed are its centers of gravities (chordwise and spanwise) relative to its center of lift, the proper location of the blade bolt hole relative to the other items etc. etc.
The only thing about any composite blade is that it is easier to match their weights. Other then that, if the manufacturer does not properly understand the dynamics of the rotor blade you can buy some sorry sets of composite blades today. There seems to be a proliferation of late of manufacturers who may know the rudimentaries of laying up composite materials and applying resin to them to make them look good, but these same manufacturers do not seem to have a clue how to design a proper rotor blade.
Staying with proven brands such as SAB, NHP, RotorTech, FunKey and such will ensure that you have a blade that has proper R&D etc. in the design and manufacture.
03-15-2005, 05:03 PM
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RE: glass or carbon blades
So that being said I am currently flying TT 600 CF blades on my R50 V2 and had planned on getting the Mavrikk G4 Pro 600's. Should I stay away from them? I've heard a lot of folks say they are good blades, and I have nothing bad to say about the TT's, yet.
