- Joined
- Jan 12, 2009
- Location
- Greenville, Ms
The biggest misunderstanding of a given propeller is that most people think just because it's brand new, out of the box, It's perfect!! Not true with SOME propellers.
I would say about 1 out of 10 props that comes out of the mold is close to being perfect.
As the prop is cooling from the mold the blades will distort. I have seen blades be off as much as 2 pitch's from one blade to another, this makes for an uneven load (one blade will bite more than the other) causing vibration that most boaters can not feel because of the engines rubber mounts.
Take an engine that has solid mounts and you will feel the vibration as soon as you get up on pad and will worsen as rpm's increase.
Blueprinting is simply adjusting all the blades to have the same pitch and rake, this is what makes the prop turn out to be faster and more efficient. Now to the Balance, this is where the weight of each blade is made equal to one another. An out of balance propeller will rob you of power and vibrate. There will be a gain of rpm resulting in more speed. The worse the propeller is out of balance the better the gain you will see after it has been balanced.
This is a very important step in today's high output engines and high engine heights. As the blade is surfacing the pounding becomes more extreme and if the blades are not all true (one blade pulling harder than the other) after time they will develop a crack that a lot of times is unnoticed until destruction happens. Also think about your gear case, the wear from the vibration can shorten the life of it as well. Vibration is a #1 killer for any engine...
I would say about 1 out of 10 props that comes out of the mold is close to being perfect.
As the prop is cooling from the mold the blades will distort. I have seen blades be off as much as 2 pitch's from one blade to another, this makes for an uneven load (one blade will bite more than the other) causing vibration that most boaters can not feel because of the engines rubber mounts.
Take an engine that has solid mounts and you will feel the vibration as soon as you get up on pad and will worsen as rpm's increase.
Blueprinting is simply adjusting all the blades to have the same pitch and rake, this is what makes the prop turn out to be faster and more efficient. Now to the Balance, this is where the weight of each blade is made equal to one another. An out of balance propeller will rob you of power and vibrate. There will be a gain of rpm resulting in more speed. The worse the propeller is out of balance the better the gain you will see after it has been balanced.
This is a very important step in today's high output engines and high engine heights. As the blade is surfacing the pounding becomes more extreme and if the blades are not all true (one blade pulling harder than the other) after time they will develop a crack that a lot of times is unnoticed until destruction happens. Also think about your gear case, the wear from the vibration can shorten the life of it as well. Vibration is a #1 killer for any engine...
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