Building a radial engine

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jesse

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jesse
I've been working on building a 5 cylinder radial engine for my Dad for Christmas. Obviously this isn't going to be something you can add fuel, air, and spark to without a death wish. But it's still pretty cool to look at since the pistons and valves will all move properly. I'm half tempted to make some spark plugs with some LED(s) and get those to light at the right time as well but will probably skip that to make the Christmas delivery date.

This is where I stand so far. The 3d printer has been running non-stop for the last week. I have about another weeks worth of printing left to print the cylinders and a few other things.

The case will be silver, all the moving parts will be red, bearings, pins, and cylinders black.

The stand is made out of a hybrid wood/plastic that is probably about 30 percent wood. The cool part is it takes on some of the features of wood like the ability to sand and stain. The plan is to apply an oil based stain to the stand and then seal with a polyacrilic finish.

I'll make the prop out of the wood hybrid and will do a similar treatment to it as well.

Said and done the engine will be an assembly of roughly 270 parts all made on my 3D printer.

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Really, really neat, Jesse. On many levels. Thanks for sharing this with us.
 
Awesome. I would love to see pictures as it progresses.
 
That's awesome. It'd be cool to hook a motor up to it to make it work as a desk fan
 
Jesse - Did you find plans online for it or are you modelling the radial yourself to put into the printer?

What printer do you have? lulzbot is in my town, they have a pretty cool operation going on.
 
Cool as hell !
 
Mtns2Skies said:
Jesse - Did you find plans online for it or are you modelling the radial yourself to put into the printer?
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Plans for it are available:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:52769

I scaled up every single part 40% to make the engine larger. I've also modified a few of the parts simply because I didn't like the way they did it. I'll probably design an exhaust and intake stack as well for each cylinder.

Mtns2Skies said:
What printer do you have? lulzbot is in my town, they have a pretty cool operation going on.
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I have an older model of this:
http://www.amazon.com/ROBO-3D-Assem...ie=UTF8&qid=1449508245&sr=8-1&keywords=robo3d

The lulzbot is certainly nice, but way too expensive for my blood, a lulzbot with similar capability would cost $1,800 more.
 
A little synthetic oil and synthetic fuel, and you're ready to go!

Seriously cool. I bet you could sell those as gifts for a pretty good price. Make a three cylinder Papoose engine, won't take as long...
 
How tough would it be to build a 3D printer on a 150'x30'x30' bed?
 
Holy cow. Amazing!
 
WOW!! this is possibly the coolest thing on the internet right now
 
Jesse, that's just beyond cool!!! Amazing job sir :yes:
 
This has me thinking about buying a 3D printer now. Can it build me a tractor?
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Seriously cool. I bet you could sell those as gifts for a pretty good price. Make a three cylinder Papoose engine, won't take as long...
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Without really increasing my production capacity, and without simplifying the design a lot, I'd need to charge..like at least a thousand a piece to make it worth the time I have into this damn thing :)

I've been working on one part for three days now. Just can't quite get it to where I'm happy with it. Printing another iteration of the part now, it'll be done in 4 hours.

The wood hybrid and black print really nicely. Red prints pretty nicely as well but isn't quite as easy as those. I can print in everything but silver pretty much troublefree all day. The silver has been a giant PITA with me having to tweak a lot of the slicer settings, motor speeds, retraction and extrusion settings, etc to get the quality where I want it.
 
jesse said:
Without really increasing my production capacity, and without simplifying the design a lot, I'd need to charge..like at least a thousand a piece to make it worth the time I have into this damn thing :)

I've been working on one part for three days now. Just can't quite get it to where I'm happy with it. Printing another iteration of the part now, it'll be done in 4 hours.

The wood hybrid and black print really nicely. Red prints pretty nicely as well but isn't quite as easy as those. I can print in everything but silver pretty much troublefree all day. The silver has been a giant PITA with me having . to tweak a lot of the slicer settings, motor speeds, retraction and extrusion settings, etc to get the quality where I want it.
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Franklin Mint made a lot of money manufacturing rep!icas of stuff not nearly so cool, not all of it cheap. And what's a grand to a pilot (or pilot's wife) for the man who has everything ...except a cool working replica of a radial engine? Maybe I've been hanging at the Beech board too much...

Just a suggestion, not asking for a percentage. :D
 
I think Chip's idea would be great for an entrepreneurial young college student to try. (hint hint, Austin!)
 
Ted DuPuis said:
I think Chip's idea would be great for an entrepreneurial young college student to try. (hint hint, Austin!)
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Not a bad idea. I should definitely take advantage of my school's free 3D printing lab:
https://idea2product.net/

I've also been thinking about making a dremel/router mini CNC mill.
 
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Unfortunately, as Jesse points out, manufacturing with 3D printing is very slow and not particularly cost effective. Additionally the thick grain of the print makes it very poor structurally.

However this instant printing seems like the future and will make current ones obsolete depending on price point:

http://carbon3d.com/
 
Ted DuPuis said:
This has me thinking about buying a 3D printer now. Can it build me a tractor?
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Yeahbut, it would be big enough that you would need the tractor to haul it to your place. Catch 22 situation.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
Unfortunately, as Jesse points out, manufacturing with 3D printing is very slow and not particularly cost effective. Additionally the thick grain of the print makes it very poor structurally.

However this instant printing seems like the future and will make current ones obsolete depending on price point:

http://carbon3d.com/
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Cost effective depends on the cost of the process it replaces. 3D printing would allow me to loft a boat hull and superstructure core dead accurately replacing tens of thousands of man hours in the production process.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Yeahbut, it would be big enough that you would need the tractor to haul it to your place. Catch 22 situation.
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You clearly have been too engrossed in your socks to note that I already have two tractors (see my "Thinking About a Tractor" thread). :)
 
Henning said:
Cost effective depends on the cost of the process it replaces. 3D printing would allow me to loft a boat hull and superstructure core dead accurately replacing tens of thousands of man hours in the production process.
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And only take a lifetime to print. :wink2:
 
Ted DuPuis said:
You clearly have been too engrossed in your socks to note that I already have two tractors (see my "Thinking About a Tractor" thread). :)
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And yet, here you are, still looking for another...it's an addiction, I tells ya.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
And only take a lifetime to print. :wink2:
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That's really the question is how is the scaling of the nozzles coming along. The other day I saw a video where a 3D printer was laying out a 1/2" stripe of plastic at a reasonable rate. Right now it would take me about 7500 man hours across 3-4 months with a crew of 10 to loft up a 100' hull regardless the material. Since the printer can likely operate on a 90% duty cycle, it would not require any great speed. The ability for it to build the interior shell out at the same time is also a huge bonus.
 
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