Blog #5 -- Setbacks and Slowdows -- May 23rd, 2023


     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 tube. As we worked through these questions, and continue to work through them, we've come up with some rather clever solutions, and a great number of failures. Our greatest stroke of genius, some would even say a masterpiece, was a flanged cylinder and some electrical tape. While it doesn't sound like much, it worked on the very first try, and securely held the diffuser down onto the tube while also creating a nice seal. 

    Despite our miraculous success, we still had a long way to go. Tape was able to hold the inlet to the diffuser, at least temporarily, and a drill with a chuck would have to function for the time being as our motor. All of these connections, but the whole thing was still very very wobbly. We didn't have enough bearings, which means we needed something at the back of the tube to stabilize the shaft as it spun. Enter the stator. A piece that is intended to direct airflow before the turbine in a functioning turbojet, but more importantly for us, a part that can house a bearing to stabilize the spin of our shaft. With some designs in hand, we headed to the printer, knowing we would have two or maybe three shots to get this printed in time. We had severely underestimated the hindrance of print time in planning for our project, mainly because we had no idea we would be 3D printing everything. Even if we were able to start printing the diffuser after the first week, we would've had a maximum of 10 iterations of it. Combined with the high rate of failure for inserting bearings into an ongoing print, as well as various conflicts, there were very few opportunities to get it right. 

    Overall, I feel as though this process has taught me, just like every engineer has been telling me, that a problem that I think will take ten minutes to solve, may very well take days or even weeks. Engineering this has been painstakingly slow and frustrating, but getting even the smallest things right has given me massive amounts of gratification.


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