While working on the project earlier in the day we came to the conclusion that the fan we had planned on using (2000 RPM) wasn't spinning fast enough to lift the hovercraft. Luckily we just acquired two new fans. The new fans (15,000 RPM) spin at a greater speed and are a lot smaller than the first ones we were trying. The smaller fans could allow us to use more fans in our design. We decided to try using two of the smaller fans and a Styrofoam base. We tried to distribute the weight as evenly as possible with the battery pack in the middle. The setup is shown below.
After setting up the fans and battery pack on the Styrofoam base, we made a skirt out of a different material than we had previously used. In previous attempts we had used a supermarket bag but in this attempt we decided to use a clear painter's plastic. Below is the video of the first time we turned the new fans on with the new set up.
We were very happy that the fans we were using were finally able to lift up the hovercraft. The hovercraft was not able to slide very well because the skirt didn't have a hole in the bottom. In the next video below there is a hole in the bottom of the skirt and you can see that the hovercraft is able to slide smoothly along the floor.
Next we will try to make a bigger and more stable version of this hovercraft. We still are debating adding more fans to the design and are still in the trial and error stage.
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