Discussion group for ArduCopter users

3180 Members
Join Us!

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Comments are closed.

Comments

  • Jani,

    Do you make your thrust test data publicly available?

    I am building a large quad, with 15" dia props. It is hard to find right and left handed props at this size so I am stuck with only a few brands.


    Thanks,

    Michael
  • Chris, I appreciate the facts ... and yes, I like beeing corrected, since lot of the math, units and facts miss me and I like to learn. I only tryied to put it in not mathematical terms since I've been using some different motors and the lifting and static thrust they can achieve are somehow far from what expected, so I started using ecalc and that was the best thing I encountered to help me. :)

  • Developer

    In generally those calculators and others are always wrong as they miss many important parameters like temperature, humidity, general air pressure, altitude of testing. We at jDrones are testing every week many many motors with different propellers and batteries to find out how to tune motors and how to get bet results out from those. 

    3692362925?profile=original

    Theres one picture of our motor test rigs and Gap (our engineer) is running test runs for some of our test motors. 

    In last month itself we ran different tests more than 200 hours, tests are performed always with same propellers and fully charged batteries to get as accurate results as possible.

    Tests what we run are as close as possible to hover conditions and they give us a lot of good data to tune our motors.

    So far we have been running tests for over 150 different motors (our own custom and reference motors) and 8 most commonly used propellers (for multicopter uses). Based on these results there will be new even better motors coming soon.

    Motor KVs have been from 300kv to 1500kv and propellers from 6" ABS to 15" CarbonFiber, Batteries 3S, 4S and even 5S.

    Besides of technical and scientific data it's really nice to run those motors, as most of you know we are located in hot Asian country so some wind movement is always welcome :)

    Ps. No animals were harmed during these tests but few flowers have gotten hit and several batteries....

    jD-main
  • @Rui Manuel Cravo Marques, I agree that motors marked "suitable for a 1 kg plane" are not suitable for 1/4 of a 4kg quad. A 1kg plane requires a lot less than 1kg of thrust to maintain altitude or climb at a reasonable angle, so the motor probably produces less than 1/2 a kg of "thrust".

    Yes I have pushed a car, and yes, I was doing all the work. What's more, I have manually maneuvered an 11 ton boat too. That didn't require 11 million g of "thrust"!

    Thrust is pushing force that can be used to accelerate a mass and/or counteract drag, and is properly measured in Newtons. Measuring it in weight is a OK on the surface earth where counteracting gravity’s force against a 1kg mass requires 9.8 N in the opposite direction. That doesn't make sense somewhere with a different gravitational force though, like in space, weight is relative to gravity but thrust is thrust is thrust.

    When pushing a 2 ton car on the level, the ground is pushing up against gravity, you don't need to supply that force yourself. It would take an extra ~20,000 N to hold it over your head (Aaarg!), but accelerating it along the level ground only requires sufficient force to overcome inertia (accelerate the mass) + rolling resistance (counteract the drag). This is similar to a propeller pushing a plane, where the wings provide lifting force that carries the weight of the plane (but inducing some drag that has to be overcome in addition to the parasitic drag).

    I put it to you that a set of four motors/props that actually produce 1200g static thrust each IS almost enough to hover (but not climb) a quadcopter with an AUW of ALMOST 4800g. Not lift (climb), and only "almost" enough because some spare capacity is required for stabilisation (not all motors can produce maximum output all the time unless the airframe is inherently stable).

    I'm not suggesting anyone should take a quad with a theoretical maximum thrust of 4.8kg, load it up to 4.5 kg and expect it to fly. Given the the need to stabilise and navigate, prop unloading as airspeed increases, operation in a rotating column of air etc. etc. maybe 2kg is a more practical AUW limit for that quad (depending on how you want to use it, prop-speed of the motor/prop combo, etc).

    I think you and I would probably both agree about what constitutes a sensible amount of thrust for any given plane or multicopter. I only got all pedantic and gave you the physics refresher because you said "correct me if I'm wrong" :)

  • The thrust stated in the specs is usually "static" thrust. Meaning, under perfect conditions, with 100% efficiency, you will be able to *prevent* the equivalen load *from falling*, not do anything useful with it. Which is why a hefty margin on top of that is usually a good idea.

  • About the issue of thrust, yes, if ur motor has 1000 g thrust, it is supposed to be able to lift a 1000g wt, however, because u never get 100% efficiency, it better to take 80% of that value, so it will lift 800g physically, that is how u calulate the motor thrust u need for a planes. so for a trainer for which u could use a 600g thrust motor for a all up flying wt of 1000g, or 700 to 800 g motor thrust for sport flying of same fly wt  of 1000g or 1200g to 1500g motor thrust for 3D. That is the direct equation and u will never go wrong. There is something called thrust to wt ration, if u have a plane of 1:1 thrust to wt ration, (good enough for sport but not 3D) then if fly wt of plane is 1000g , ur motor thrust is 1000g, but do remember that motor thrust to be 1000g do take efficiency into account so u would actually take a motor thrust of 1200g for 1:1 ration.

  • Chris Gough, yes me too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but have you tryied to push a car ? It has about 2000kgs, are you making that force ? I seriouslly doubt that 1000gr of thrust in spec sheets would be lifting capability but more "suited for a 1000gr airplane model", so it accelerates untill it has a speed where air can sustain the weight. I see spec of motors with 1200gr thrust with a 10" prop... put 4 of this on a quad and see if you can lift 4800gr :)

  • Developer

    Ecalc work fine, when I designed my X8 got it right:

    3692362865?profile=original

  • Pay attention, sometimes motors have in their specs the thrust, but it's not lifting thrust but horizontal thrust (for planes)

    ??? I thought thrust was thrust.

    motocalc works well for me.

  • Gjango, I don't know if you're familiar with this site : http://www.ecalc.ch/ 

    The thrust depends on several factors : motor power, motor kv, propeller used. A 100w motor with 800kv and a 13" propeller will give you less thrust than a 300w motor with 800kv and a 13" prop, since the last one will be able to maitain higher rpms with such a "eavy" prop, but the motor will also be heavier. Pay attention, sometimes motors have in their specs the thrust, but it's not lifting thrust but horizontal thrust (for planes)

This reply was deleted.

Drone flying to non visible point

Hi there,I encountered a problem, while flying in auto mode, with approching to point that was not set by trajectory and is not visible after downloading mission from flight controller by Mission Planner. Does anybody encountered similar problem. The situation is that in the middle flight I stopped the UAV and uploaded new mission and after changing to auto mode it starts to fly in some direction. It goes straight to some point, so I assume it's not mechanical problem. I attached the link to…

Read more…
0 Replies

TAKEOFF WITHOUT USING GPS

Hi,Im working on a autonomous drones and im using JETSON NANO and flight controller PIXHAWK .Im able to control my drone by giving rc commands on the MAVLINK terminal itself by connecting it with PIXHAWK but now i want a python code from which i can do some operations like:takeoff,left ,right,forward,backward…and i am not using GPS…Can anyone please help me…

Read more…
1 Reply · Reply by tellinglean Oct 17, 2022

HELP quadcopter: one motor twitching and stuttering

Hello guys,I have a problem with one motor, do not spin and making a sound (videos in attachment), I changed the motor to another ESC and is work, so I checked the connections on ESC and all connections looking great. any ideas or something I can do, iam trying to build YMFC32 Brokking .thank youhttps://youtu.be/LagBqwGbixkhttps://youtu.be/PU20nCxApcs

Read more…
0 Replies

Will AHRS_ORIENTATION=8 for Arducopter 3.2.1 on APM 2.5 using a traditional Heli

I have been Reading Chris Olsen posts and watching his videos on Arducopter with traditional Helis using a Pixhawk.I have inherited an older Trex 450 heli with the old Align 3G FBL hardware.  The FBL controller appears to be bad.  So I have an old APM 2.5 without a compass or GPS on board.  I just want to replace the failed Align 3G FBL system with the APM.Now I have to mount the APM under the skids on the heli so the APM will be upside down.I have Two questions.1)  Is the AHRS_ORIENTATION=8…

Read more…
0 Replies