Design, 3D printing, and testing of propeller guards for advanced aerial drones

<p>  </p> <p>This study explores the additive manufacturing of various propeller designs as well as the design and manufacturing propeller guards to be used in a drone operating in a warehouse environment. The propellers were manufactured using stereolithography while the propeller guards used fused filament fabrication. A through material selection process was employed in order to select the optimal material for propeller manufacturing. Initially, Rigid 10K was selected as the material for propeller manufacturing and six propellers were produced. However, due to its low elastic modulus and elongation at break, the propellers were not able to perform in a satisfactory manner. The material was later changed to Tough 2000 as it offered a better elastic modulus without sacrificing impact and tensile strength. The propeller guards were manufactured using PETG and incorporated a mesh design printed using TPU, a flexible material with good tensile strength. The manufacturing of the TPU mesh required the fine tuning of several printing parameters such as bed temperature, printing speed, nozzle temperature and part cooling (fan speed). The study demonstrates the feasibility of using several additive manufacturing techniques to fabricate end-use parts of a drone.</p>