January 3, 2015

Blue Robotics T100 Thruster (First Look and Testing)

This was a first look at one of the first actual production runs (well second run anyway) of the new Blue Robotics T100 thruster.  Note – this page is pretty much no longer relevant because Blue Robotics doesn’t make the T100 anymore.   There stuff is still amazing though so you can still see where they started with the T100.

(circa – 2014) I jumped on their Kickstarter as soon as I saw it and backed the thruster and added on the speed controller.  They threw in the mount as a stretch goal and it’s should be easy to mount to any flat surface.

My initial reaction was pure awe, these things look awesome.  If these work as well as they are suppose to these are going to change the home building ROV game a lot.

The size is perfect for most of the ROV’s us home builders are making.

It’s about the same overall size of a bilge pump thruster with the nozzle being just around 3.75″ in diameter.

This picture is a bit deceiving as the nozzle looks all scratched up.  Rest assured those are just marks from when its popped out of the injection mold and are hardly visible to the naked eye.  (Here they are just really accentuated by the flash on my camera.)

The blade of the prop look really tiny but this thing is suppose to put out around 5lbs of thrust.

While they do have a version with an integrated speed control I chose the external speed control encase I burn it out it testing this thing.  I’m not to versed on the Brushless stuff and I all ready fried one controller testing my magnetic drive project.

I dug out my old prop test tank this weekend so I could get on to the testing phase of the T100.

I needed a way to attach the Thruster to the bottom of the measuring lever so I figured I’d put my 3D printer to good use for my first Rov related project.  I came up with this quick mount that will press right into the original lever without any modifications.

I had to make sure the center axis of the Thruster was in the right spot to get an accurate enough measurement.  Blue Robotics actually shares their general dimensions cad files of the thrusters to help aid in cad design of customers ROV’s.  (WHICH IS AMAZING IN ITSELF.)  I was able to use those files to make sure my mount would work before printing it.

It took about two hours to print and this is how it came out.

My Cad skills are improving, the thruster bolted right up and the mount fit the pipe perfect on the first try.

Here it is all wired up and ready to test the thrust.  I did fire the thruster up just to make sure it worked and my initial response was this thing makes quite a racket and is not as smooth as I though it would be like it has a blown bearing.  Guessing it just needs to be in the water I looked at the documentation on Bluerobotics website just to make sure I didn’t get a lemon and that is exactly what it says.  Apparently they use plastic bearings that are in fact lucubrated by the water and they say that “A slight clicking noise is normal, especially when operated dry.”  Relieved about that I can get on with my tests.

The test tank is all rigger up, filled, and ready to go.

Full Throttle produced around 4lbs of thrust at just under 8amps.

My fishing scale reads in tenths of pounds instead of pound/ounces which I hate so I did try my trigger scale also just to be sure the reading were right.  (they were about the same)

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The following videos gives a rough idea of the thrust verse amps. Sorry for the quality and you might have to turn your sound down.

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Over all I’m pretty impressed with the thruster, the thrust to amp ratio is pretty good in my opinion and it sounds much smoother now that it’s in the water.  Compared to the standard bilge pump thruster a lot of us use its almost 3 times less draw for 2 lbs of thrust. Of course now I want to throw one of these props on a bilge pump and see what happens.

Here was the performance plots straight from BlueRobotics.

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MY RESULTS

Thrust vs Amps
1 Lbs @ .95 Amps (12.87 volts)
2 Lbs @ 2.17 Amps (12.70 volts)
3 Lbs @ 3.8 Amps (12.52 volts)
4 Lbs @ 6.1 Amps (12.26 volts)
5 Lbs @ 8.2 Amps (12.05 volts)
6 Lbs @ 13.2 Amps (11.68 volts)

These are great numbers, most of the time you with be running at limited throttle with an ROV anyway so even if you programed your controller to max out say at 4 lbs of thrust to limit your amp draw you would have plenty of thrust for most tasks and more than enough when you needed it.  I said it before ……. I think these thrusters are going to be a real game changer in the home build ROV hobby.  I really have to hand it to the guys over at Blue Robotics they have an awesome product here. I think my next ROV is going to be built around a set of these.

Go check out Blue Robotics it all started with the T100.

Update for 2022 – Blue Robotics really did change the face of Home Built ROV’s, MATE Competitions, as well as the Commercial side of ROV’s.

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