Maniac Blades

[raptorheli2]

everything below is for sale folks, lol

[Oli]

I work with carbon fibre, i am suppried with the price of all carbon blades to be honest. Im geussing that the matiral costs for say a pair of 500 sized maniacs would be aprox £3 to £6 for the prepreg carbon, its only a plain weave style fairly cheep to get mabey £30 square meter for a .3mm thickness. Then you have the rochell core (foam insides), im geussing this is machined to shape. If the company i work for was to do this it would be in excess of £20 per blade. Then add to that consumeables, if vacume bagged and auto clave cured another £5, if heat pressed not a lot £1ish. Then you add on labour costs, my company charges £45 an hour. I would struggle to lay up a pair of blades in less than an hour, then they have to be trimmed, about 20 mins and then painted lacured and balanced. So if made by a UK based company im geussing you would be looking in the region of £200. Now im sure these will be made in the far east so will cut the costs down drematicly, but the vendor still has to have a mark up, but i cant imagine it being much? Anyways whilst I still dont like having to pay £50+ for a good set of blades I really dont think its to bad value.

Oli

(I really cant spell tonight, so sorry)

[raptorheli2]

are you serious? oh, you are.

cheers

[Oli]

Yer im serious, for structural quilty carbon components that have to be moulded rather than being cut from flat sheet your talking lots of money. Its a bit different when its just cosmetic bling carbon, you can get that wet layed for a fraction of the price. Also forgot to add in the tooling costs for the mould imagine that would be ££££'s.

Oli

[raptorheli2]

sorry, rip off...no 2 ways about it. maniacs will be laid up using the same materials as say the other offerings from align/sab.....that are 10 quid less. i'm not having a go at maniacs here, i'm meaning all blade makers. the only reason they are this expensive is.........drum roll.............we pay it.

cheers

[Oli]

Im not defending Maniacs, just giving my thoughts on the general price of good quaility carbon blades. I dont like having to pay as much as i do for them but at the same time i am suppried that they can be produced for what they are with everyone having a mark up on them along the way. I thought that it may interest people (probably wrongly) to know the amount of work involved in the manafacturing process. Moulded carbon component manafacture is extreemly labour intensive, every stage is done by hand, the preson who works out how to automate it will very quickly be incredibly rich.

Oli

[raptorheli2]

i think everyone knows the work involved in making them. your info is good and not knocking it. just wish these things were cheaper and certainly in line with other makers, in this instance 35 quid for 425's. they have probably lost a lot of sales at that price, kind of why i think V blades are not very popular in UK....ho hum.

cheers

[Oli]

Fair point, not owning a 500 size heli yet i havent looked in prices of other makes of blade. You never know they might lower the price when there are more 500's out there or they dont sell enough blades?

Oli

[raptorheli2]

the yellow/black centrury blades are superb and are 32 quid i think if you shop wisely in uk.....maniacs need to come down to that level to get the sales. kaniacs are superb blades on my 600n but the 500 size blades there seems to be little difference between all the offerings. i have all the blades currently made for the 500.

cheers

[Biggles]

Don't care how well they fly.....they look like something off a boy-racers dodgy 1980's XR3I........Or for the more modern era......Chav blades!!!!.....LMAO!!!!!!

[Disc]

I work with carbon fibre, i am suppried with the price of all carbon blades to be honest. Im geussing that the matiral costs for say a pair of 500 sized maniacs would be aprox £3 to £6 for the prepreg carbon, its only a plain weave style fairly cheep to get mabey £30 square meter for a .3mm thickness. Then you have the rochell core (foam insides), im geussing this is machined to shape. If the company i work for was to do this it would be in excess of £20 per blade. Then add to that consumeables, if vacume bagged and auto clave cured another £5, if heat pressed not a lot £1ish. Then you add on labour costs, my company charges £45 an hour. I would struggle to lay up a pair of blades in less than an hour, then they have to be trimmed, about 20 mins and then painted lacured and balanced. So if made by a UK based company im geussing you would be looking in the region of £200. Now im sure these will be made in the far east so will cut the costs down drematicly, but the vendor still has to have a mark up, but i cant imagine it being much? Anyways whilst I still dont like having to pay £50+ for a good set of blades I really dont think its to bad value.

Oli

(I really cant spell tonight, so sorry)

Interesting information....

Still Cost way to much though....

Tell you what I'd love to know

Mark up on a set of 603 Maniacs vs the T-rex 500 ones

Bet no-one is willing to tell me that bit of information

[Smoothound]

Don't care how well they fly.....they look like something off a boy-racers dodgy 1980's XR3I........Or for the more modern era......Chav blades!!!!.....LMAO!!!!!!

Yeah, cos they have writing all over them they make the Heli faster and tricker

I have Align yellows and SAB's both cheaper so I won't be buying any

[raptorheli2]

torsion blades are 52 quid for 430mm....DOH. i'm buying maniacs now....lol

cheers

[Sesame]

Like any minority sport or hobby, because it aint a mass market they have higher per item costs, which to am extent I can understand being a small manufacturer if items, what I cant understand is why there is such a difference in price between different makes. but then you have the same thing in every thing, lets face it a £150,000 Ferrari, in materials(metal plastic etc.) isnt going to be alot more or as much as your average £12,000 Mondeo. but we all go for the perceved value, the pretty lines on the radix, the badge of the Maniacs.

Personally I bend far to many so buy the cheepest, cept on my Knight, that needs Radix LOL.

[Tim Procter]

torsion blades are 52 quid for 430mm....DOH. i'm buying maniacs now....lol

cheers

Bitten the bullit and paid up front eh Paul..