Quote:
Originally Posted by adaptingthought
|
Unless I'm off my rocker, 200g of thrust means a little less than a half-pound of thrust? You'd need something like 14 of them to be roughly equivalent to the amount of force produced by frictional interaction from wheels.
I made that approximation based off a calculation of maximum frictional force by multiplying the weight (120lb.) by the *kinetic* coefficient of friction (.05 from the first manual), yielding a maximum force of 6lbs. to accelerate the robot. So, that's a lot of fans. Running all of them at their maximum of around 300 Watts each, that accounts for 4200 watts, and, I could be wrong, but I believe that would mean it would discharge one of the 12v 18Ah batteries in around 3 minutes.
So, that particular fan sounds pretty in-efficient to me. I would suggest looking for one with a much larger prop. Larger, slow moving props tend to have a higher efficiency (not to mention they tend to be a little safer). A larger prop would also mean more thrust, and fewer fans. Knock the number of fans needed down to 4 or so, and it would be manageable I think.
I'm still intrigued by the possibility of a fan-propelled bot. I think it would be quite spectacular to watch in action.
*EDIT*
This is all completely without regard to the legality of the fan and motor, merely assessing the viability of the particular product.