‘Worker’ and Taobao Flywheel Review

Is it 2016 already? Yikes! Well, I’ve been doing some bits and bobs during the off season and one of the things I’ve been looking at is improving my flywheel blasters. OldNoob over at Foam Data Services kindly provided me with a set of aluminium flywheels from Taobao and a pair of Worker flywheels from eBay caught my eye, too. I said I’d test them both out and see what the results came out like. I will put my hand up now and say the data has thoroughly proved me wrong about the Worker flywheels. You can see me and /u/foam_data ragging on them back in December. Well, turns out we were wrong! I’ve got my serving of humble pie in the microwave… :D



Each of these types of flywheel was tested in my own Stryfe. Perhaps the most tested Stryfe in the world, by changing one variable at a time we can get a very good idea of how each modification changes things. In this case, I changed only the flywheels - everything else was identical. I’ve written up a full technical paper on the trials and the methods over on BritNerf if you’re interested.

Remember the work I did with Falcon 130 motors? Well, I’m using that as a benchmark for comparison so it’s worth restating here:

Stock Average Velocity: 112.86FPS



Stock Standard Deviation: 15.87



Taobao Aluminium Flywheels:

First, the Taobao aluminium flywheels. They’re much heavier than stock flywheels at 8.28g.These are great insofar as they allow you to roughly balance your flywheels by using the two integrated grub screws. By changing the depth each screw sits at, you can theoretically compensate for any difficulties with the CNC routing that these are made from.

The results aren’t too shabby, either:

Average Velocity: 118.78FPS



Standard Deviation:9.46



That’s a 6FPS increase on stock so perhaps for the price it’s not really worth it. That said, there are some interesting nuggets hidden in the data. There is a slightly smaller standard deviation so it’s possible that’s demonstrating a more consistent output but we’ll need more tests to verify that.

All the data can be found here, including the stock flywheel data I’m using as a benchmark.

I couldn’t find a purchasing link for these but I’m sure I’ll edit the post when I find one. :)



Worker Plastic Flywheels:

Now, the Worker flywheels are something else entirely. They’re lighter than the stock version (3.87g compared to 3.96g for stock) but are a rock solid push fit and much more rigid than the stock flywheels. Despite the concave surface and teeth, these shoot like a dream. The data is below and I’ve not had any problems in my Stryfe with feed problems from the concave shape with either Elites, Voberry or Elite darts. That might not be the case for other blasters but I’ve only got this platform to test with.

Average Velocity:128.19FPS

Standard Deviation:13.99

Average 128FPS compared to average 112FPS for stock flywheels! Well, that’s certainly something to take note of! I guess a combination of better quality control and the extra surface area accounts for the increase velocity.

The full Worker flywheel data can be found here.

At £11 a pair including shipping, they’re a little costly but the gains can’t be denied.

Notes:

One of the things I love about this hobby is that the engineering component is very much open to the user. Unlike airsoft or paintball, end users in Nerf really can get into the nitty gritty of builds and test new things. The fact I’ve been proven so spectacularly wrong is refreshing and I’d invite others to replicate my results to see if it’s more than just me. Until then, I’ve got the data in hand to prove the Worker flywheels are better than both the stock and aluminium ones. I’ll be using them at 109th Sanctioned next month to see how they fare on the field!

