How to Make a Propellor Hub with Tinkercad

by Mike Diamond

A couple of days ago I posted a blog that described how I designed and constructed an Hourglass Inverter. I used Tinkercad to design the parts. Quite a number of people commented, so I thought I'd share another small project I completed.

I've talked often about the popsicle sticks I use to build rickety models. One thing I wanted to do was create a propellor, with the popsicle sticks as the rotor blades. All I needed to do was design the hub into which the sticks would slot.

This proved more difficult than I thought. I struggled with it for a few hours and each time I thought I had it right, for some reason the slots I'd made met in opposite directions.

I scoured the internet looking for a solution but couldn't find one. It took me a while to work out what I was doing wrong. When I discovered my error, it took seconds to produce the hub.

Rather than try to describe it, I patched together three videos. (I didn't bother to polish it, so please excuse the crudeness of presentation).

The video, shows:

  • How to create the hub in Tinkercad. (Once or twice in the video you may see duplicates of things just "appear" on the screen. This is because I typed Ctl D which duplicates an object and/or an action.)
  • Timelapse of the print process.
  • The propellor in motion. (I used an old motor from a CD Rom tray).