Trying a New Radial Impeller Design for Quadcopters

[Diablo]

Even if the world has already settled on plain old propellers as the way to make quadcopter drones fly, this doesn’t mean that you cannot give other designs a shake to see what kind of flying performance they result in. For example impeller designs that depart radically from standard propellers – themselves a sub-category of axial impellers – and go radically radial instead as in this design by [quadmovr] with accompanying demonstration video.

This is itself a remix of a design by [Baba] to make it fit the target 1750KV T-mount motor. As for whether this is a design that you want to slap on your own quadcopter, the obvious disadvantage is that it’s much heavier than regular propellers.

Weighing [quadmovr]’s drone without battery pack and with these 3D-printed PETG impellers shows them to weigh 189 grams. This compares to 141 grams with the standard three-bladed propellers, or a hefty 12.8 gram weight penalty per impeller. Naturally this translates into less flying time, so what are the advantages?

The noise profile of the impeller design is definitely more pleasant, and much like novice quadcopters with the protective ring around the propellers these impellers should be more robust. On the other hand increased mass adds to inertia, and there is a lot more surface area with the air to add drag, so despite the absolutely sick moves that [quadmovr] pulls off with both impeller configurations in the video one has to admit that regular three-blade propellers do have the edge here.