Building a Jet Engine -- Hawken Project 2023

      During our first visit to MAGNET, Mrs. Becker put us in contact with one of MAGNET's many full-time engineers. Ouday had been interning at MAGNET as he completed his degree in mechanical engineering from Cleveland State University, and upon graduating, he was hired as a full-time engineer. On his third day on the job, we showed up seeking his help. Initially, MAGNET was just a place we wanted to tour to find out about their manufacturing processes and engineering jobs, but it soon became an impromptu shop when Mrs. Becker offered us her help. At this point, we would take anything. We were pressed for time to manufacture what seemed like a dozen parts (and what was actually about three), and we needed tools that we didn't have. She told us to come in with our designs and that she'd have Ouday try and help us out. We came in Friday after having sent the designs over earlier in the week to discover that he had already printed out all of the parts we sent him, and an ev...

      The design process has been slow, to say the least. What we initially had envisioned to be less than a week in our proposal turned out to be a project-long struggle. We felt pretty good about our initial designs (see previous blogs), but things kept popping up. Connections were the main issue. How were we going to connect the diffuser to the tube, the inlet to the diffuser, the compressor to the diffuser without having an excessive amount of friction? Those are all connections between stationary parts and one moving part, but what happens when we want to connect two moving parts, like the motor to the main shaft? These were all questions we had to answer before we could even finish the design process. Our preliminary designs, particularly for the diffuser, were rather problematic. Even if they included a nice fitting to slide over the tube, they were infeasible to print. As a result, we ended up with an 18-hour diffuser print that had no way of connecting to the tub...

      Today instead of following of normal routine of waking up and heading East down Gates Mills, Ben picked me up and we headed West! We'd contacted Mrs. Jennie Becker (old Hawken teacher) to tour her new job - MAGNET. Mr. D suggested that we go there to find out about some of the manufacturing processes that could be used to create a more functional and polished jet engine, and it was so worth it. We started in this fantastic building with glass walls and a really open layout. It had been an abandoned CMSD school that was converted in an effort to revitalize Midtown through community building. Mrs. Becker taught us about how MAGNET has two branches, the main one being consulting, and the minor one being workforce development. MAGNET hosts high school and adult programs that directly matriculate into real jobs in the manufacturing industry. The main branch however is essentially a group of engineers that consults for small to mid-sized manufacturing companies. Because M...

               These are the drawings from our designs of the full model, inlet, impeller, and diffuser. As a quick review of the function of each part: the inlet is vital for the efficiency of the impeller, the impeller brings in air, and the diffuser channels the air into the correct place and makes sure the air is traveling in the correct way (no spin).      Our design process was quite smooth despite having to both work on the same file. We used Fusion 360 and shared all of our files with each other so we could work on them at any time. We were able to use an online design for the impeller, and Nikhil designed the inlet flange and diffuser based off that impeller. We chose the design for the impeller that we did because it was used to test rocket engines so we assumed it was an efficient design. I also enjoyed making the drawings in Fusion so that they can be easily understood and helpful.      On 5/16, ...

  Our first few days consisted of compiling designs from the internet with our own designs to make a cohesive product. The impeller was taken from a previously made design and Nikhil modeled the inlet flange and the diffuser around that impeller. We made design choices such as where to add bearings and how we will connect them all together after printing an initial prototype, as seen in the pictures.  Left: impeller, Top: diffuser, Bottom: inlet       The system seemed to work surprisingly well as we were able to feel a draft by spinning it ourselves. The next round of printing should give us our final inlet, impeller, and flange; however, we will make changes as necessary.      We ran into one large issue: Case's Think[box] is closed during May. This means that many of our parts will have to be 3D printed and we will most likely use an acrylic tube for the housing. The benefit of using an acrylic tube is that the housing will be transparent ...

      This blog will be a more in-depth account of the design process and details. Picking up from the last blog, we found the initial models that we would be testing against each other and had a pretty good sense that we would be going with the model that was tested in a rocketry lab over the model that was found online with no caption. The only problem with this design was that there were no premade designs for the intake and the diffuser of this model. Because of this, we had to design our own inlet flange and diffuser. Additionally, the model that was used in the lab was a parametric model, which meant we had to navigate additional software (OpenSCAD) if we wanted to customize it in any way. Because these designs were premade, it was also much more difficult to manipulate them in Fusion360 because they came as simple meshes.          Despite all these potential complications, the inlet flange just required us to draw an arc around the profile ...