How It's Made Wooden Airplane Propellers

Discovery / Science Channel's "How It's Made" Wooden Airplane Propellers episode

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• discovery
• science
• channel
• how
• it's
• it
• its
• made
• tv
• television
• Wooden
• Airplane
• Propellers
• Propeller

[TimAwesomeface]

How its made: How its made videos

[hateliberals1]

Bring back Brooks........

[Itsmeeman1]

Anyone else notice the brainwashing? "The Worker."

Trust an American to plant the thought of 'a worker' doing 'the work' rather than just referring to the job that's being done.  Don't doubt it, people, it's brainwashing to make you think of people as 'workers' because that's all they want you to be; their workers, their slave workers.

There was absolutely no need to refer to the guy doing the work at all. Was there? NO!

[yamahonkawazuki]

@MrSunrise1961 i had composite props on my ultralights. tbh i like wooden ones better. idk it felt better ( and tbh was cheaper too overall )

[yamahonkawazuki]

@MrSunrise1961 true. very true. just saying, say you had, idk a piper cub or whatever ( anythign using a wooden prop) and are out, remote camping, and you nick the prop , MAY be able to pull of a field repair and get home. yeah it WILL vibrate like crazy

[MrSunrise1961]

@yamahonkawazuki Yup. That gets back to the vibration design thing again - a little too short (not unbalanced, just short) and you can get into airframe-prop resonances - at least that's what our AME told us about the props on our Scout tow planes.

[MrSunrise1961]

@GreenAce92 I don't know that much about composite props. I'm pretty sure the damping is mid-way between aluminium and carbon. Certainly, composites have been used for applications such as helicopter rotors and the rotors on the V-22, and dollars-to-donuts you can find some carbon-fiber props for ultralights, but I'll bet good money that you get a better choice of twist, advance ratio, and solidity with wood, simply because the tooling is so cheap.

[GreenAce92]

@MrSunrise1961 what about composite props?

[yamahonkawazuki]

@MrXceres you COULD, but id leave it to the experts. it wont be cheap though

[yamahonkawazuki]

@GrenadeCatcher in teh mile high department yes

[yamahonkawazuki]

@MrSunrise1961 as well as wooden props can be repaired if need be. say youre out in the field somewhere and have an incident. i wouldnt recommend this. BUT can be done if need be. ( if it means making it home or camping )

[MrSunrise1961]

@Ibringthetruth1 - Ultralights, powered parachutes, some light aircraft. Wood has a lot of natural damping, so vibration design is much easier. Aluminium has less damping, so it's easy to get destructive resonances in the prop or between the prop and the airframe. For this and other reasons, wood props are much cheaper that aluminium ones - often so much cheaper that the better durability of aluminium is irrelevant.