Air Engine V3 is coming soon!

Hey Thibault. Well I guess the 2 main things are software and hardware. From what I have seen Fusion 360 looks the business. Which brings me on to the printers... I know nothing. I have started looking in to it but there is a lot. The main question is can we get started with a cheap 3d printer from ebay? It's hard to justify the initial outlay when you are just starting out. Is the other option to send it away to be printer? (this is less appealing from an educational perspective for the kids)

In the same boat like you (minus the kids ;) ). What specific questions do you have? I've done quite a bit of research so I might have encountered some of them already.

Tom, I have been doing a lot of thinking on your RC planes and to cut down on even more weight you could try 3D printing the form and then vacuum forming it with styrene sheets. This will make it lighter and still have a measure of strength. Just be aware you dont want to melt the 3D print or crush it so use a good temperature resistant PLA and use a lot of infill.

Tom - congratulations... this is a great project. Have been watching your videos for weeks on YouTube and you have inspired me start dabbling in 3d printing so i can build stuff with the kids. Do you have any guides/info on how to start. Obviously it will be a long long time before i can build something like this but would like to start. Maybe you could post some videos on here?

Haha, that was how I felt until about a month in when I finally decided that it was safe to do an overnight print. Since then I’ve been doing overnight prints of like 34 hours

I mentioned in a previous video comment that I was procuring some actual Air Hogs air motors. I now have 4 of them in my collection. One is nonfunctional, one is partially functional, one is fully functional, and the last is untested because it's an unopened box plane I don't want to damage. There are some features in the engine that are not described in the patent application which I have been reverse engineering their purpose and incorporating into my own design inspired by your video. I'm not sure if you want spoilers or if you want to work the design out for yourself, so I am being quiet at the moment, but would share if you would find it informative.

U.S. Water Rockets

No I don’t but I saw it mentioned during a video (might’ve been tom but not sure). Anyway i printed for about an hour yesterday but was too afraid to let it run during the night.. 😂

Part of my reasoning behind the square piston is actually to reduce the blow-by, but only because it's easier to manufacture. I've always had issues with getting the cylindrical piston to run smooth with a decent seal due to it requiring some light sanding (even before acetone smoothing the V1 piston). However, the square piston is much easier to sand to a tight tolerence. I'll post the video of the test results in here a bit later. Thanks

Tom Stanton

Tom, I'm not sure about the square piston. I think this would have a lot of blow-by, especially in the corners. It looks like you've made a separate cam and valve, which should allow a better control of the flow. It should be interesting to see how this performs.

U.S. Water Rockets

This engine design relies on the expansion of the compressed air in the cylinder to move the piston. There are impeller or turbine based designs that are more effective with water. Also, Tom's engine is made for a plane which would be really heavy if it carried a couple liters of water as fuel.

U.S. Water Rockets

Wait, you use glue. First(ish) lesson I learned was: don't use glue. The nozzle likes to get glue smothered all over it when you use glue during the first layer.

I’m just printing on the glass without glue because I was too impatient to wait untill tomorrow. First lesson learned... 😀

Haha try 70º c on the bed, its the best for me

I expect trouble as well. Haha and as I was typing this my testprint lost traction with the bed

Hey ​thats ​awesome! My first (and only) printer is the origanal​ CR-10. It's becoming a pain to use as for whatever reason the hotend always gets jammed.

I’ve just installed my cr-10s (first 3d printer). Definetly going to try and make this!

Wow, great idea Fiid. I think once I print this new design, I might try to downsize the piston and make the hole in the cap bigger. I think the bike valve idea for pressureizing the bottle.

I had a question: When I was a kid, I made compressed air bottle rockets with water in the bottom as a "propellant". Is there any benefit to running water through "engine" like this since it has more mass and no compressibility??