Working Air-powered Wankel Rotary Engine

thingiverse

This is a single cycle Rotary engine that works. It runs at very high rpms (15000+ RPM). I thought a pneumatic rotary engine would be good to 3d print because piston based engines all sliding parts slide with the layer lines rather than against them. There is little sanding and post processing required. It runs pretty efficiently. Everything is printed with PLA except for the gasket. The gasket is made of TPU rubber. The housing and rotor need to be printed very slowly to hold good tolerances. Layer height should be .1 mm. I have tested this engine up to 100 PSI, and despite some minor air leaks around the gasket, the bearing and the gear, it did not fail and ran fine. The wall thickness on the rotor should be .8mm to keep the weight down otherwise it will vibrate pretty violently. I am looking to revisiting this project because there are a couple of different rotary engine designs that will be even more efficient because the crankshaft is only offset 2.7 mm which means it does not produce much torque. Another issue I have with the engine is that power is only being produced through roughly 60% of each rotation. The other designs I have in mind will hopefully produce power though 80-90% of each rotation/stroke. Anyway, I still find the engine to be very cool as it is based on the unique Mazda rotary engine. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFnZdF4O_cg