Pine Pienaar wrote:

Hi Paul

I follow the development of your CS prop with great interest. I'm planning
on building my own aswell, I have a full CNC shop available. I too think the
prices charged by the normal CS prop suppliers is exorbitant. 

I was thinking of using existing WARP drive blades and building my own hub.
Very similar to your design. Then at a later stage if needed I can machine a
couple of custom blades. This is very easy if you have access to a 5 axis
CNC machining center.

The main reason for this mail is I would like to know what your standing is
regarding your current design. I'm not intent to go off on my own and
manufacture it as a commercial venture, but I would like to use it as a
start for a CS prop unit for my own plane, and my plane only!

If this is acceptable to you, would you please supply me with whats availble
(DXF files or such)

No problem. John Moran is machining one as we speak. You might want to wait a bit
until we test it. There may be some changes necessary on the design.
The warp drive blade has two problems. Number one there is very little twist
so it is best used on a slow airplane. Number two it is difficult to 
attach the blade to a variable pitch hub. I think we have come up with a better
idea. Perry Mick is making some carbon fiber blades as we speak. 
The attached DXF may not be the latest as we are making some changes 
from time to time. One difference is in the pitch change motor as Vance has
loaned us a Globe motor he had lying around. I am sending you the DXF for the 
Globe motor.

I'm willing to help with the manufacture of the blade cores for your
project. All I need is the blade profiles at the various blade stations. I
have fond that a soft wood core is the best for this. I will cut the blades
thinner by the thickness of ply's ask for in the carbon or e-glass layup
schedule. All that's needed to do with the cores as they come off the CNC is
to finely sand them and do the glassing.

Pine Pienaar
pine@cpro.co.za
Lancair 360 #664

Bill Freeman is working on the blade coordinates. We should have those momentarily.
One problem. The blade hub uses a common 2" conduit coupling widely available here
in the States. There is no reason why it could not be machined from tubing stock.
John will have one on Friday and hopefully he can tell us the number of threads
per inch and the diameter. I do not have the tools for doing that. I could count
threads of course but I might make an error. It is better if John figures it out.

Paul Lamar
 
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