You spin me right round, baby, right round, like a record baby... (or at least appear to)

My nephew is an aerospace geek (formally at SpaceX) who built a P-51 model (wooden) and didn’t like that while hanging the prop is just frozen in place (i.e. if it was real it would fall out of the sky). So he asked me to create a propellor in motion for him. My idea was to use acrylic as the propellor disk, but those always look somewhat cheesy when you see the little plastic discs on the propellor of a model plane. So first off had to design a spinner in OnShape which I 3D-printed, it has a small interlocked set of tabs on the bottom to grab the acrylic. I then projected that outline of the cross onto the acrylic disc part. When I first did this, he didn’t like the look as it looked like the propellor was behind the spinner (in real life then come out in the body of the spinner). I thought etching in a old-timey propellor cartoon would work well here, so found a WWII drawing of a P-51 which has the spinning prop cartoon, and traced that in AI. So I realized the :proofgrade: Blue acrylic is about the same color as the PETG I was printing with. So then I could sandwich another disk of blue medium acrylic so I CAD’ed up another disk with the projection of the cross. Exported that as DXF and then this is what I got. Glued the 2 disks together with WeldOn acrylic glue. Note the clear acrylic is Inventables 1/16" clear.


The disks sitting on top of each other


The tabs of the PETG part pressed (fit like a glove) into the acrylic part


front view (yes the cartoon spin isn’t quite symmetrical)


Side view of the sandwich.

30 Likes

Very cool! I’d love to see it on the plane.

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The aviator in me approves.

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Great work! Love that we can create such a wide variety of design ideas.

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Perfect! Yet another prime example why I should probably get a 3D printer eventually LOL

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Oh, it’s perfect! :heart_eyes::heart_eyes::heart_eyes:

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A spinner winner.

John :upside_down_face:

That really works well!