Photo: Current design for our compressor wheel. Will be changed to a 6+6 configuration in the future but fitment is being tested currently.
We're soon leaving week 3 and we've had great progress on our engine so far! We have structured the club into different teams working on different components of the engine based on their individual skill sets. We have also received funding from the school and have started purchasing required materials & books to help with the project.
We have successfully gotten the electric motor assembly to work and have soldered all electric parts and heatshrinked them correctly. We have sourced extra potentiometers and used arduino to run the motor.
We have also realized the shortcomings of interfacing the motor head to a 3D printed part with an improper fit creating large oscillations at higher rpms. We've solved this by CADing a metal part which will interface into the motor head with set screws and screw onto all of our compressors.
The team has also discussed many methods of creating the combustion chamber and that will likely be our main focus after the front section is working. New models of the turbine have been created to compress air more efficiently by referencing car turbos & the housing for the front section has had oscillation detectors added.
These first couple of weeks have definitely taught us the incredible importance of testing parts and the utility of 3D printing to understand shortcomings of our designs. We've learned a lot about manufacturing and the common phrase, "The devil is in the details''.
To the future!
-Max