Why you should balance your props

Probably one of the easiest things to do and yet one of the least done tasks is to balance the props on your heli or quad. If your rotors are not balanced, one blade will be heavier than the other which will cause an excessive amount of vibration. This vibration will cause extra wear on motors and bearings, make sensors less accurate, and make getting good video almost impossible.

Let’s take a look at two videos so you can see the effect of unbalanced props versus balanced props.

Unbalanced Props
In this first video you can see a horrible amount of “jello effect” caused by the vibration of the props being unbalanced. If you have a cell phone with a vibrator feature, this is caused by a motor spinning an unbalanced rotor. If a cell phone can vibrate with such a small rotor and motor, imagine how much vibration an 8″ propeller that is unbalanced can be generated.

Balanced Props
This was only a quick test after balancing the props because the wind was kicking up pretty good but even so there is a very dramatic difference in the amount of vibration.

Balancing Your Props
Actually balancing your props is fairly simple process of putting the props on a spindle and using small amounts of tape to get things to balance out. To make the process easier, you might want to invest in a prop balancer tool.

Go get your props balanced and make life easier on your copter.