The history of our project

When we built our first prototype of the turbine, we originally used balsa wood. We thought this was a good choice because of its light weight.

After using balsa wood, we came up with the idea to use 3-d printed blades. We used Qblade to come up with the optimal shape and design for them.

One problem we ran into however, was that the blades were too heavy, and would not spin quick enough to offset the gained energy we would get from a better shape.

After regionals, we went back to the drawing board. We needed something light, so we cut and experimented with styrofoam a bit. 

We decided to 3-d print another batch of blades, this time learning from the shortcomings our previous models. This time we used a much lighter filament, and printed them hollow. This made the blades weigh drastically less. We also increased the surface area of the blades, making them bigger.

We still needed to print them in two separate parts because the size of the printer itself isn't big enough for an entire blade.