RangerOne
lvl.1
Flight distance : 2331132 ft
United States
Offline
|
Generally-speaking, I don't feel it is critical that you balance your DJI-manufactured blades. However, there are several cases where I have:
- Occasionally I receive a set that is more out-of-balance than is typical. This can happen for many reasons, but given DJI has fairly strict dimensional tolerances it usually comes down to the plastic filler material not having a completely homogeneous density across the entire blade. This may be related to material temperature, mold temperature, mixing inconsistencies, imbalanced cooling, etc.
- I've never really crashed, but I have clipped a few branches (and/or armored bugs!) that took chips out of my props. I would generally buy new props upon discovering any damage, but there were circumstances where I couldn't wait with my old P3, so balancing helped.
- My old Phantom 3 CF blades seemed significantly more out-of-balance than the white plastic ones. I absolutely had to balance those.
- I once noticed my P3 motors being somewhat loose, and decided it might have been related to rotor-induced vibration (confirmed by the vibration while holding onto the landing gear while hovering). However, I don't know how the P3 motors are attached, and admit this suspicion is based more on my experience with 550-to-800-size 3D collective-pitch helicopters and high-speed fixed wing aircraft.
Now, Phantom rotors are smaller and operate at lower RPMs so generally balance issues don't readily stand out. The easiest/cheapest way I suppose is to gently touch the landing gear during a hover to see if it's vibrating badly. You will always feel some vibration of course, but when it's bad you'll know it. Another way to detect this is to stand a couple feet away during a hover and look at the legs to see if you see vibrations. I have had a couple pair of rotors that were bad enough to cause this level of vibration. The problem with this approach, however, is that when you have 4 spinning rotors they can obfuscate balance issues of the other blades (you experience higher-frequency and/or lower-amplitude vibrations that can be harder to detect).
The best way to check is to pick up a balance shaft meant for DJI props and drop it into a prop balancer (or even hang it off a perfectly flat, smooth table). You stabilize the blade horizontally and see which end dips. Every blade I have has been out of balance to some degree, some fairly dramatically on the prop balancer... but they were seldom easy to notice on the drone. I would say that in half the props I've balanced (perhaps 10 pair), I have noticed somewhat of a difference when operating them on a drone in hover. I'd say the drone just felt a little smoother, possibly a little quieter, and possibly with slightly more battery life.
Would I run out and buy a balance shaft and a prop balancer just for a DJI drone? Absolutely not, and if you did get a really bad rotor set then you should probably just buy a new set rather than try to balance them. But if you have a balancer handy and you have the knowledge and patience to balance rotors (it can take a lot more of both than you think), it couldn't hurt.
Also, note that this is my experience with P3 blades. I didn't even check the blade balance on my P4P v2.0 (with the curved, quieter blades) -- I just put them on and flew (and was completely amazed at how quiet and smooth that bird is...).
|
|