Tru-Spin Prop Balancer, The Most Precise in the Market, Fully Adjustable for Small and Large Props, Tires, and Rotors

This review is for: Du-Bro Tru-Spin Prop Balancer, Cat No. 499 ================================================= This specialized tool has many positive, excellent reviews for balancing RC airplane and helo blades. but it can be useful for balancing other types of blades that move air too. I bought this tool to balance the blades on a small antique (~1930) fan. The stamped steel blades were in good condition but showed some signs of catastrophic damage - meaning the edges of two blades had non-conforming contours close to the hub. Those old steel blades are heavy duty, unlike those on fans manufactured today, so a lot of force would have been required to bend them like that. Anyway, before utilizing this tool, that old fan had to be held down or screwed to my bench or it would have violently bounced to the floor in just a few seconds. And that's after I had aligned the blades with a strobe so they all had the same contour and traveled along the same plane. That meant the blades were not balanced. (In other words the blades did not have the same weight, resulting in severe vibration.) This tool allowed me to quickly find the heavy blade so some material could be removed from the end. To balance all four blades and eliminate all vibrations, material also had to be removed from the other three blades. Now that beautiful old fan is back in service with a new paint job and moving a lot of air - with no vibrations. (Sorry Beach Boys -- When it comes to fans there is no such thing as ♫_good vibrations_♫. I know of no other way I could have balanced these blades without this tool. If you need to balance fan or RC blades, I recommend this tool!

This is an excellent propeller balance, and yes, in case you're wondering, you should balance your props. I've just gotten into quad flying and at first I thought nothing of the info I saw on prop balancing; I thought, these props are so light, how could it matter? Well it does matter. Some props are so small, it may not matter. For instance, I don't balance my Hubsan X4 props, but I continue to think of how I could because of what I've learned from balancing other props. I started balancing my V262 props with this balance and that's why I can easily say that balancing matters. There is a very noticeable difference. Whatever you fly will work and fly smoother: less vibration and oscillation. Back to the Du-Bro 499 itself. At first I ignored this balance because of some of the negative reviews, and some of the negative reviews are not unfounded. But there are an awful lot of positive reviews also. So when I began to really consider how I'd balance props I had to look at this again because it got the best reviews, overall, and because I'd watched some videos on it. Longer story shorter, I ordered one. I did have a little difficulty putting it together, but was able to get it together and WOW, what a difference balancing makes. I had some problems getting the last rod into the nut beneath the base, took a good few minutes of fiddling around. I can't tell for sure if the nut insertion spot is a little crooked or if the rod had a little bit too much of a machining problem on the first few threads (in other words, I can't tell if there is actually a problem with the rod or if I messed it up trying to force it into the nut, doesn't really matter). But as I said, got it together and it works great. However, I did call Du-Bro even though it was working perfectly because I was worried about rearranging the balance setup later; because there are different ways to arrange it to work on larger props, etc. Du-Bro immediately sent me two new rods and nuts at their cost. I cannot ask for more. Actually putting it together was very straightforward and easy, except for the last corner rod. The magnetic balances look OK to me and, in a perfect world one, of them would probably be the way to go (the concept of a magnetic balance is simple, the execution is much more difficult). But it is not a perfect world and this balance is the way to go, at least for me. However, this balance is expensive compared to many others and any balancing is better than none. Balance your props. Do your research. Have fun.

I looked at other balancers for less money. All of them reported problems with the balancing shaft holding the prop. There were no such problems reported with this balancer. Once I got it, I rolled the balancing shaft on a flat surface. It rolled true with no warp or wobble. Once assembled, it was a breeze to balance all my props. This is a very sensitive and accurate balancer as you will find upon purchase. You get what you pay for. Worth the price.

great product, works well for RC wheels as well.

Simplistic in design but does as stated. Is it worth the money to balance props in the grand scheme of things????? Not sure since I have yet to really find a issue with even a unbalanced prop. Some state it saves on battery life to enable longer flight times???? Not sure if they mean in minutes or seconds on this to be quite honest. However, I am willing to try it out and see. If you have a Autel XS/XSP drone then also get the 6mm prop shaft to be able to balance your props. They are the same as the DJI P3 and work great. However when mounting the red cap prop on the XSP you use the end of the prop shaft with the score line around the shaft prop. I was able to balance 4 props in about 30 minutes while taking my time. My question will be that most use a tape like electrical tape to place on the props to add weight and balance.......will this affect the tracking since the balancing of the prop with the prop edges up and down you have to put tape around the hub area that screws onto the drone. It can be tedious to try and get the tape flat working around curves and dome areas. Time will tell. Were my props severely off........a little but the drone prior did just fine......so I am ultimately trying to conserve battery effort I suppose like stated by some of the drone geeks have hinted to. So if you are into the science of flying or you fly other things like RC planes and such you can also balance those with this device. I gave it 5 stars because it worked as indicated.............however, the proof is in the flight and how the drone reacts now that the props are what we refer to as "balanced". Just so you know I used 3mm black electrical tape for adding the weight where needed. I may seek a white electrical tape to blend with my white props since I have a white XSP rather than the Pumpkin orange version with black props!

After reading reviews about machining problems with the nuts and threaded rods, I decided to check mine before building it. The nuts fit fine until I installed them into the plastic frame. Turns out the plastic holes and nuts are ever so slightly out of align with each other so it binds when threading the rod in. My fix was to drill out the plastic base holes with a 3/16th drill bit and everything fit perfectly fine. This is a great balancer and does not have the same problems the "other" magnetic balancer has. It can support any size/weight prop, wheel, spinner, hub, and so on where as the magnetic one has a limited diameter and the can only support what the magnets can hold. I was able to test this out with a few props and it is VERY accurate. There is also very little friction in the spinning large wheels so it will work fine on the smaller props. If it is less than 3.5-4", I would recommend using the old string method to balance the object

This is an amazingly accurate balancing tool. I was a little suspect of how well it might work given the mechanical wheels that the balancing shaft rests on, but the rolling resistance is extremely small. If you spin it even without the additional weight of a prop, it will rotate a long time. In use, any resistance is negligible. I was also a little concerned when I first got it because the shaft was packaged at the very bottom of the blister pack where any impact during handling/storage/shipping might have bent it slightly. It looked straight, but to be sure I took off the cones and rolled the shaft on a granite counter top, and it rolled perfectly. In use, it's very straightforward. My approach to balancing is to gently sand the back side of prop blades and the heavy edge of hubs rather than add material... I'm not sure if it really matters which way you go, but I can attest to the advantages of a set of balanced props on video performance, and it only makes sense that less vibration should extend motor life as well. It's a tad expensive compared to some of the balancers on the market, but you should only ever need to buy one, so a few dollars more was worth it to me. I can definitely recommend this one.

Once assembled the Du Bro Prop Balancer does an adequate job of balancing your props; however, getting there is not half the fun. In fact, getting there is no fun at all. The screw threads on the posts are coated with a residue from the manufacturing process. This makes assembly a real chore. Although the regular nuts and the knurl nuts are the correct ones, they could not overcome that residue without much blood, sweat and tears on my part. I first tried DW-40 which did not work. I finally had to clamp the posts in a vise and very carefully turn the nuts with a pair of pliers. By this method I finally overcame the residue and the nuts moved freely on the post threads. Another thing that should have been explained in the instructions is the fact that the nuts installed on the bottom of the unit must be forced fit. Someone unfamiliar with nuts and bolts would think that the nuts were too large and become quite frustrated. In regard to that residue, maybe I just acquired that one in a thousand. I do that quite often. I feel that I should add what I have found to be the easiest way to balance a prop. Some people who use the Du Bro prop balancer jump though all kinds of hoops to balance their props. Some sand or scrape material off the prop. I frown upon that method because once you remove material from a prop and then discover that you removed too much, it's usually too late to do anything about it. You can then scrape the other blade, but how far can you go with that until you have a useless prop on your hands. I have discovered that the heavier blade is usually heavier by very little. What I do is to take a small piece of Scotch tape that I calculate to be more than I need and apply it to the back of the lighter blade letting some extend over the edge of the blade. I then cut off small slivers until the blade balances. Once the blade has balanced I remove the tape and reposition it so all of it is on the back of the blade. Then I rub the tape down until I feel that it has adhered well to the blade. There you have it. Simple and effective . . . and if you don't get the results that you want, just remove the tape and start all over. You cannot go wrong.