The danger of plastic blade grips

[robgt]

It also adds to the damping effect in the head assembly.
Metal blades don't give... much

Cheers,
Rob

[gazza]

I had nothing but trouble with the plastic grips on my 600e.
At first I thought it was eating dampeners as there was loads of play if you 'Rocked' The feathering shaft. Changed the dampeners three times but the play kept returning.

Changed the grips for new ones and it went away but returned after a couple of flights..Think running the 11T pinion & 100% throttle was somehow aggravating the situation Changed to metal grips and no issues since.

[kennycl2007]

It also adds to the damping effect in the head assembly.
Metal blades don't give... much

Cheers,
Rob

Absolutely agree. I would like to quote part of the review from
http://www.trextuning.com/trex600maingrips.php
which states:
Metal blade grips are an item on which the community tends to be split with regard to whether they are a good thing or not. The reason for this difference of opinion is down to what effect metal blade grips have not only on the performance of the machine in flight but also on the wear and tear of other components. With plastic grips there is some natural flex in the material which acts as a kind of dampening, this take some load off of the dampeners in the head block. Metal blade grips generally do not have any give in them at all. This has the effect of sharpening up and providing a more crisp collective response but the downside is that the dampeners now have two deal with all of the head stresses.

Kenny

[ChrisB]

I have never had an issue with plastic grips,,many 90 size helis use plastic grips with no problems whatsoever..

The grips shown in this thread are the OLD 600E grips that had an issue and Align told people to ground the models until newer grips were in circulation..


I do not like metal grips myself,plastic with its slight damping effect suits me fine

[Thomas]

it sure looks like those grips are the original versions.

That looks like the updated grip to me, the original dodgy one had a smaller lump of plastic around the bolt hole - here's a photo of the current ones and the original one.

[Swashplate]

Hi Guys,
New to the forum and just been doing the research on the 600 as a first nitro. I came across this site which details the blade grips issue?!
http://www.ukheli.com/mods.htm

Barry

[SRH990]

The blade grip issue is pretty old news, nearly 12 months ago now and I had my replacements for my original kit.

As has been said, most 90's still have plastic blade grips and so did all the Mikado Logo 600's flying at 3D masters and they were sure swinging the blades around fast enough. There's nothing wrong with plastic if it's properly designed and manufactured, we just seem to be in an era of metal bling with everything and damn the reasons (and I've got all the metal bling on my Trex 600 so I'm as guilty!).

[ChrisB]

Maybe when we crash our models not saying this one has been,maybe the bladegrips get weakened to fail another day

I personally have always preferred plastic and failures as a whole are extremely rare

[SRH990]

Maybe when we crash our models not saying this one has been,maybe the bladegrips get weakened to fail another day

I personally have always preferred plastic and failures as a whole are extremely rare

Maybe we should consider plastic blade grips as aservice replacement item which should be replaced with new after a heavy crash breaking blades, bending shafts etc.

[skatefreak]

Hey,
I have to say, thoes do look like the older plastic grips, but what really concerns me is this post here on RR
http://www.runryder.com/helicopter/t366201p1/
If you look you can see that thoes grips are the same ones that come with the current T-rex 600 kits...

As far as plastic bits being servicable, running a raptor stock plastic head up pretty high for 3D isnt a problem... you just have to be prepared to replace it fairly often...
You get slop appearing rather quickly and if you let this develop then this will result in a failure...

I guess the same could be happening with the T-rex blade grips... The question is... if it is for these reasons then surly we would have other plastic blade grips suffering the same (or to be devils advocate, maybe we are just hearing about more T-rex grips letting go because their relitivly new and we havent heard so much about the older helis, aka the raptor in a previous post).

Best regards

-Jvr

[Toolman]

Just out of interest those of you who have had grip failures, what blades were you using?

Someone on Helifreak was proposing that the failures may be due to the much publicised Align CF blade issue.

Tim.

[Carver]

Does torque come into it here at all? I would think that the nitro engine would produce alot more torque than the electric motor thus stressing the grips...even though the final head speed is the same.