Now we come to proposed improvements in Marcy 1. Fired up Her avionics & got the radio to work again. That was a huge step, but there's a long road of depression between this & golf course flight.
Most micro airplanes have a solenoid actuator for the rudder on the fuselage & no aileron actuator. We need the aileron actuator, which begs the question of how such a large surface can be actuated from the fuselage. It would be on the fuselage.
Fabricating a traditional actuator without machine tools is quite challenging. A material stronger than wood, yet bonding to CA glue is needed. It has the disadvantage of deflecting a large wing surface.
The leading idea is to make the whole wing 1 big actuator. The repulsion between a NdFeB magnet on the wing & a coil on the fuselage deflects it downward. Airflow centers it. This is rugged, light, & uses the full surface. The same principle could be applied to a lift fan if it was bidirectional.
Next, the actuator department came up with this. Not enough power to
get any motion before it overheats. At 3V, it moves the wing 1/4" &
then dies. That's 3A, almost the motor at full power. At least we now
know medical tape sticks to wood & makes viable hinges.
Without a core, the solenoid isn't going to produce much thrust.
Conventional actuators are ruled out. It takes a ton of force to move
the wing, compared to a normal micro plane. It takes our largest NdFeB
magnet to fully deflect the wing.
The ideal Marcy-1 is variable pitch & fixed RPM, as we learned before.
The best any useful weight is going to do is variable RPM & the minimum
actuation. 1 option is a solenoid core. There's also a linear motor
with multiple solenoids.
1 search for actuators leads to another thing.
No, we are not trying to get a marrital tax deduction without a providing for a wife 1/2 our age. Homopolar motors looked like a novel way to get miniature thrust. The problem is fabricating bearings precise enough to reach enough RPM & attaching a propeller tight enough for VTOL.
Figured we'd make a high quality video of a homopolar motor, since all the others are out of focus. Those things are really tough to balance. See video above. Music: Transformers escape
Comments
Jack,
educational reading, thanks!
I guess you don't want to just use a servo because of the inevitable mechanical failures?
How about using that nano-muscle stuff? http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8805
-Randy