Axial Compressor (not very effective) by murrayread

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Who hasn't wanted to build their own jet engine? It turns out to be harder than it first looks ;-)
This attempt at an axial compressor requires a lego axle, and a motor to drive it. A lego power functions motor is sufficient to create a slight breeze from this. I've tried driving it with a power drill at 2600rpm. This created sufficient output pressure to inflate a balloon to the point that the rubber started to resist, IE hardly any pressure, much less than you can blow. Unfortunately 2600rpm creates enough internal friction to partly melt and fuse the components when they stop, so I don't recommend it.
So why am I publishing this? Well, it works a little bit. Maybe someone can suggest improvements. And I think it's still quite cool. The scad source is available on github, if anyone wants to have a go.
The compressor has 6 rotor and 6 stator elements, each of which attempts a 10% compression (way too optimistic!). The stator elements snap tightly into the case, the rotor elements rotate freely between them. A lego axle runs down the central axis. If you intend printing this, I've attached axlex.stl and axle_hole.stl as test components for testing the axle fit.