MR60

Ok to mix propellers of different brand ?

Posted by Hugues on February 27, 2013 at 12:22pm

Hello,

I had to replace two of my props after a crash. So I ordered two new ones but they are from a different brand/supplier and not exactly the same material : two of them are APC, the two other are Turnigy plastic. The turnigy are more flexible than the APC ones.

Will this cause a problem in flight ? Can I mix different props (they have same dimension and pitch, of course).

Thx for your experience,

 

Hugues

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Replies

  • MR60
    Hugues February 27, 2013 at 1:55pm
    @Gary, gemfan is that turnigy model i got but i do not know if they are the carbon ones, will check
  • LanMark February 27, 2013 at 12:43pm

    yeah I agree with Gary.  The propellers are one of the cheapest elements of the UAV.. however a issue with them can cause your whole rig to come crashing down doing much more damage to expensive parts. 

    Like the car analogy.. you can do it like running on three normal wheels and one of those crappy solid rubber spare tires.. but you really should avoid it.. if you don't you end up trashing your suspension or something like that.

  • Gary McCray February 27, 2013 at 12:35pm

    Hi Hugues,

    This might work, but it is kind of analogous to using different tires on 4 wheel drive vehicles.

    Usually you want to avoid it. Multicopters really work best by keeping everything the same.

    Different props are going to mean different flight characteristics and probably diffeent motor RPM and power for equivalent thrust which means that even in a wind free stable hover the motors are going to be providing different speeds and power consumption.

    It will likely reduce flight times a bit and the PIDs are designed for pretty much identical response and thrust characteristics so it will noit be optimized. That said, in stabilize mode the APM works really hard to maintain level flight. I have had multiple instances where one ESC was slowly fading and the APM kept the copter level by simply descending until you compensated with the throttle.

    Right up until you ran out of throttle.

    Of course once you set it down, it has an immediate tendency to flip unless you immediately cut the throttle completely.

    GemFan Carbons are great, tough, well designed and inexpensive props. (Don't get the non-carbons).

    But I strongly recommend you buy and use them in sets.

  • Tono February 27, 2013 at 12:27pm

    I would say that if they have the same dimension, it doesn't matter.

    I have done that before with no issues.

    Not sure if I was lucky but it did work!

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