Gonna try out this new design for the turbine. Hopefully it works better. Will do a deeper analysis on why past designs were worse. (Mostly because it was all eyeballed)
Just did the whole print, which lasted two hours. The fan was too large, and the texture of the PLA made a lot of friction, so I’ll need to fix that. Walls were also horribly thin, and all pins were wayyy too tiny. So here are my fixes. [img1: New design; img2: Old design]
Today, I mostly optimized the entire project to be 3D printable without needing any metal bits (but I’d really like to tbh). The first ever print of the impeller got its insides all messed up at about 1cm height, so I’ll be decreasing the print speed from 22mm³/s to 18mm³/s. That’s it. (The turbo also looks like a very specific platypus now)
Made a little connector for the future engine sound mechanism. Basically, with my backyard-physics knowledge, I can either do a passively adjusting Helmholtz resonator, a rotor that spins and chops the air, or an edge tone. I hope to test all 3 and show you guys! [img1: Helmholtz; img2: Similar rotor in sirens; img3: Edge tone] The only worry is drag.
Made some cool supports for the cone’s rigidity (img1) alongside many other small changes like a “reinforcement webbing” (img2) pattern on the motor side of the shell, which hopefully does something to make less air enter BEHIND the baseplate. Otherwise, it’s all. (Or it will create more drag and tank the rpm.) (Hopefully not.) (Please.)
A departure from the old impeller design! Image 1 shows my latest impeller design with now 8 blades instead of 19, a baseplate in the rear, and a slopey cone-ish shape for the body. I really could’ve just used my first ever cone-looking design (image 3) to simply change just the blade design and count, but the minor changes I’ve done to yesterday’s baseless one (image 2) were—say—not so minor as I thought… The more you learn. I’ll do prototyping very soon to really figure out what is roughly the optimal impeller shape with my limited knowledge. Pretty happy with the project, but sadly it’s not so mechanical as I’d like. [img1: Latest; img2: Yesterday’s baseless; img3: First version]
Made 2 versions of the turbine. Pretty sure the base-less version would work better. Any other suggestions or clarifications? Insults?
Had no idea how to more efficiently create the fins for the turbine CAD, but it turned out fine. Kudos to Neil Cross on YT for the awesome Inventor video (even though I’m using Onshape)
