The 3D Printed Air Compressor: Will it Work?

Today, I 3d printed an air compressor. Lets see if it works. Compressors are useful as they can store potential energy as form of compressed air. This pressure can be later released as kinetic energy to run something like a 3d printed air engine for example. The idea is to create a 3d printed air compressor, the design is very similar to that from my 3d printed gas engine. The biggest differences include a piston with more o-rings to hold greater pressure and heads with check valves to work without the need of timing devices.

#3dprinting #engines

[jeronimomurruni]

I think most dual cylinder high pressure compressors have different size cylinders to increase compression. The "first" cylinder is bigger and the "second" cylinder is smaller (in volume)

[Michael-Martell]

Considering I’ve watched many attempts at building similarly scaled milled and CNC’d superchargers and turbochargers out of metal that barely held 4psi, I’d say this is a major major win.

[sepharos]

Might be a little late to the party but i think it would be interesting to hook it up to an airbrush. Compressors made for airbrushing are often quite expensive so to see how well a 3d printed one could do would be cool

[kennethfisher]

I recently found your videos and love them! I wanted to recommend using some graphite powder on your crank shaft connections or any other parts that rub or spin around each other as a dry lubricant. I have used some on projects in the past and it works wonders.

[BartJBols]

There is no way the second cylinder would add any substantial performance, you probably had a leak and fixed it during reassembly of the 2 cylinder assemblage. When you compress the air in the first cylinder, as soon as you exhaust it into the second, it not just has enough room to expand in the blue line, it also decompresses again 1:1 in the expanded piston of piston nr 2 because the total volume of the first cylinder is the same as the second one. In other words, since the second cylinder can only draw in as much air in an open piston as the first one exhausts in a closed piston, you are in essence compressing it, decompressing it, then compressing it the same.

What you need is a smaller piston as piston nr 2 but with a higher leverage advantage to compress pre-compressed air even more. Due to compressor 2 then being able to move less air in 1 cycle, the air between the compressors will get pressurised, making it so piston 2 starts with already pressurised air, and compresses it some more with its increased leverage.

Love to be proven wrong.

[lewidris]

I coupled a single cylinder 2 stroke RC engine with an electric motor and was surprising good at supplying air, obviously in pulses and a little warm but surprisingly good

[garbageman]

really cool video! I thought the bearing less crankshaft had no hope of survival but its cool that it stood up to a drill. I am making air powered engines and I have no luck if it doesn't have a bearing, all of mine melt or explode if they don't have a lubricated bearing but yours held up really well.

[BlockGod_]

You always make really cool things this is awesome

[YourLocalRailfan]

Hook it up to an air powered engine so as the engine turns it makes more compressed air and puts it back into the engine

[Jim_One-wlke]

Awesome work bro. Thanks ❤for the bb valves & copper sleeves for my other projects.

[jabonet]

To make a proper 2 stage compressor the volume of the first piston should be bigger than on the second. Either with a bigger diameter or a bigger stroke.

[thematronsmilitia]

If the valves were the issue, it would be interesting to see different materials tried for the ball valves or forced valves used. It would be pretty cool to have a 3d printable air compressor that can actually be used for air tools. Particularly if it was turned by a 3d printed dc motor run off of solar panels, so that the compressed air acts as a solar battery

[Lucius.Hercules]

This is so cool! I didn't realise multiple cylinder compressors are a thing haha! I want a V16 fridge compressor just to flex now. Also would have loved to see a vacuum demo by connecting the bottle to the intake. It's kinda funny/crazy to me that engines, compressors and vacuums are all doing the same job of pushing fluids around for us.

Another cracking vid Camden you're on fire! Also very nearly at 20K subs, I commented a few days ago that you'd hit 20K soon but I didn't realise how fast the growth rate is. I commented at 17.5K (ish) and now it's 19.2K! insanity!!

[TimTamsLOL]

I'd love to see this scaled up. The tolerances in 3D printing aren't great for things like this but as you increase the flow volume the compression losses are a smaller percentage of it overall. If you can use teflon seals and proper bearings for the crank you would be able to run it faster more reliably, plus an air tank with proper fittings would be nice also. Copper tube for the cylinders is a great idea to help with heat which is pretty much going to be the limiting factor on performance for any compressor with plastic parts.

[GamesPlayer]

A suggestion on what you could do with it? Use it for an airbrush, most dont need a lot of compressed air and i wonder if it can be consistent enough and give out enough for that to work!

[boenko]

I would love to see you build an actual hobby/small workshop air compresser with an actual tank several liters in size

Seems like a cool idea

[AxelDayton]

I might have to build one for some of my projects 😂, great video bro!

[mr.fringeminority]

Ya know the truly amazing part of this is the pressure holding abilities of a simple water bottle. I inflated one (actually many.. we were playing with bottle rockets on a slow day at work) with the air compressor at the shop and had it up to approx 150 psi if memory serves me right. Bottle rockets really do rocket when you chuck 150 at em. lol

[spika]

Nice job, now you can power air engine <3

[Deathbyfartz]

see through cylinders and then turning it into a air brush compressor could be kind a neat conversation piece :P