OpenSCAD Generic Blades and Rotors
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Generic OpenSCAD code to make customisable fan blades and compressor rotors
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- Source
- Printables
- Category
- Engineering
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- Creative Commons — Attribution — Share Alike
I've made a lot of fans and compressors but each time I've re-built the code for the blades from scratch and it's annoying. This is my new generic code that I'm going to use from now on so I'm sharing in case it helps anyone else.
This is intended to produce a blade for props or fans. The blades are produced from points that are derived from transformations of a basic panel.
The panel is given thickness using the "thick" argument in “bladeElement” and drives the upper surface. The factor “bladeThickFac” will pull the lower surface up to a fraction of the upper surface height so 1.0 will have a constant thickness, at 0.0 the lower surface will be flat, at 0.5 there will be camber between the two.
The angle of the blade element is defined based on the inflow and the rotation of the blade to define an incidence. The profile is simple convex/concave top/bottom with sharp-ish leading and trailing edges. As a result this is OK for small (low Reynolds number) applications (PC fans, model aircraft etc.) but not for larger scales. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number
The rotor element is designed to be more as would be used for a centrifugal blower or compressor. Its twist, sweep or other geometry do not depend on velocity or flow, all settings are defined by the user. Edges are blunt and thickness is generally uniform.
I've included example assemblies for each, showing a fan and a compressor wheel built with the modules in case you want to see how I've used the code.