Fixing the 3D Printed Gas Engine (so it runs, like, properly)

for the longest time a 3D printer has been my only means of precision manufacturing so as I'm sure you can imagine when it comes to a project as ambitious as you know building an engine my options are very limited I thought about casting Parts in metal however I don't own a forge but all of that changed once I finally got a lathe because this thing has opened up a whole new world of possibilities one of which being an a that I've had for a very long time I want to know if it's possible to turn a scrap piece of Steel into a cylinder for an engine and by scrap I mean one from the hardware store so here's the plan I'm thinking that I can just bore out the inside of this pipe so then I can use it to make a cylinder and originally I wanted to use this piston for the project because it's a little bit wider than the inside of the pipe however there's already a problem hello as it turns out the pipe that I was just expecting to be closer to 1 and 1/2 in is more like 1 and 35s which means that I'll need a larger piston but the only Pistons that I could get my hands on that would you know actually arrive on time are made for two stroke engines all right look I know that it hasn't even been like 2 minutes and I'm already thinking of committing a heinous act but just hear me out because the two-stroke piston is lacking the oil control ring that's found on the four stroke piston I'm thinking that as long as there's both oil inside the engine and mixed in with the fuel then this should work just fine besides this is going to be more of an experiment than anything as the only thing I've ever made on a lathe was half of this Hammer like 4 years ago in the 10th grade so trying to make an engine as my first real lathe project sounds like a bad idea but there's only one way to find out bruh all right so here's what we're looking at so because the Piston has a diameter of 43.961187 exactly sure how I should approach this so I just cut off some of the pipe to throw into the lathe but because the pipe is so large the only way I can fit it into the Chuck is if I swap out these interior Jaws for a set of these exterior jaws and I didn't realize that this would complicate things [Music] further these Jaws don't really have a good purchase on the pipe and because the pipe is sticking out so far it just keeps flly flying out of the Chuck which is really annoying so I turned down the side of the pipe that I wasn't using and now it fits in the chuck all right so now that the exterior is all cleaned up and everything looks good I can now switch to the boring bar to form the [Applause] cylinder it sounds really bad and it looks even worse too you know it's probably because the tool is sticking out so far which is causing it to vibrate and chatter so I tried a few different things like removing this giant seam weld with a hand file and I even tried using a thicker tool holder to try and make it more rigid but no matter what feed rate I try it just keeps chattering and has totally ruin this pipe for whatever reason I decided to try again if I mess this up once again I'm just going to become a a Minecraft Youtuber I think I'm not really sure what I was expecting but clearly this isn't going to work so here's the new idea I cut off a shorter pipe because instead of trying to bore through the entire length of the pipe in a single pass I'm going to try boring the pipe on one side first and then flip it around and what do you look at that Focus you know what what that's not bad at all now that the setup is actually working properly I finished boring out the first half of the pipe and then I turned the pipe around to finish the other side and once I was finished the cylinder looked really good and I was pretty happy with how everything turned out but just before I get ahead of myself and start turning this into a cylinder I need to make sure that the B size is correct and lo and behold that's a problem I made it way too big and maybe that's what I get for just blindly following this dial without ever once checking its accuracy truth be told I thought about just using the cylinder anyways since the requirements for a running engine are surprisingly low however if we check the clearance Gap yeah this is not going to work since I'm already here I decided it was better just to start over and do it properly the bore size is perfect which is great because I'm running out of pipe although there is this small Groove that formed around the middle of the pipe as as a result of the cutting tool stopping on the same spot over and over but since it's far enough down that the Rings won't run over it it shouldn't be a big deal so now that I have a usable cylinder next I need to hone the boar and to do this I'm going to use this cheap tool that I got online as it has these three stones that spring outwards to scrape against the boore and to keep these Stones lubricated I'm going to use this mineral oil that's been in the background of like all my videos [Music] the whole point of cylinder honing is to scrape a cross-hatch pattern into the boore these hatches form trenches that the oil gets trapped in which not only keeps the Rings lubricated but the trapped oil also helps to make a better seal and you know I've never honed a cylinder before so I tried a few different techniques for around 10 minutes or so and it seemed like it was working well that's nice I like that I like that but I think my angle is too aggressive ideally the angle of the crosshatch is supposed to be somewhere between 35 to 45° and this looks more like 10 maybe but because these cheap stones have basically disintegrated I entertained the idea of replacing the stones with bits of 220 grit sandpaper and you know it actually kind of works hey that actually kind of works except of course that the Finish is way too smooth and the paper clogs immediately medely so I ended up caving and just getting the replacement stones and now it looks good however it was only until after I finished the hone that I started to realize something so I messed up now when I was designing this I had the intentions of welding a plate to the top and the bottom so I could Mount this to the block and the engine head however it has now occurred to me that if I try to weld anything to this it is immediately going to warp it out of round and make it useless after realizing this I wasn't really sure what I should do next I brainstormed a few ideas until eventually I came up with a genius [Music] plan this new one is practically identical to the last one but instead of boring the pipe out first I cut off some pieces of flat bar that I used to make the top and bottom of the cylinder and after welding it all together I boarded it out on the lathe and then gave it a good hone which might I say is probably my best one yet and to finish the mating surface on the top I used some JB well to pack all the cavities full before I faced it on the lathe I wouldn't say it's a great finish but I'll take what I can get and while that completes the cylinder that still doesn't account for everything else I need to do because if I'm going to be reusing the parts that were provided to me in the last video that introduces some new problems and if you also want to have fun with metal 3D printing then you should check out PCB way as they offer not only that but they also offer everything from 3D printing to PCB fabrication and when you sign up you get a free $5 welcome bonus so definitely check them out anyways because the bore of the new cylinder is a lot larger the ceiling face on the engine head isn't wide enough to cover the top of the cylinder which means I'll have to resurface it and because I only have a three jaw Chuck I thought I could just weld a small pipe to the top of the head which then allowed me to fit it in the lathe but that's not the only thing because I also decided that I'm not going to be using this carburetor you know the one that I stole from a weed trimmer instead I'm going to switch to using this larger one as it's not only gravity fed but it's also going to be much easier to dial in properly so I cut off the old mount for the intake made this new one on the lathe welded it to the side of the head and then I tapped on the new adapter but since the new cylinder is a lot taller and I'm also using a totally different piston as well it means that I'll need a new crankshaft so using this drawing that I made as a reference I I grabbed some parts from my scrap Spin and then got to [Applause] work so once the shaft was turned down to size I started cutting up this piece of square bar that I'll used to form the crank webs and when everything seemed like it was coming along nicely I then boarded out some pieces of round bar then welded everything together to form the connecting rod and unlike last time where I sort of just guessed how heavy the counter weights need to be I did some calculations and determined that I would need around eight of these steel balls to keep everything in Balance all right and now that the crankshaft is finished it looks really bad which seems to be a bit of a trend throughout this video but anyways all that was left to do was to print a new engine block but while the block was printing I thought of something one of the biggest drawbacks of using plastic is that no matter how hard you try once it gets exposed to oil it never comes out oh sh even on the old engine which has sat on my shelf for almost like 3 months now it still feels oily which is not only annoying but it's also causing the oil to sort of Osmosis its way into the block but what if I could just coat it in something to protect it from the oil like for instance with some of this clear coat I mean on the back it says it's all right okay so I decided to conduct a bit of an experiment and once it had finished dry and my vision returned to normal I was pretty happy with what I saw after I covered the side of it with oil I was able to easily wipe it off after revealing a perfectly dry surface underneath So Satisfied with my results I then coated the rest of the block and once it was dry I could then finally put everything together oh that's so going to break trying to install the piston rings has me feeling like I'm walking on eggshells how to install rings without breaking them this is hard because from past experiences if you bend the ring just a little too much it breaks it oh that's so going to break if I pull on that any harder how do this is dumb how do I I can't get it please hu yeah no it's [Music] tight hell yeah after the Rings were installed the rest of the assembly was a total Cakewalk you know it's really nice when assembling something and finding that all your measurements were correct so everything fits nicely together for the most part anyways and to make sure the bore stays lubricated I'm going to be running the engine on a mixed fuel ratio a ratio that I just kind of guessed that's really a lot it's better than nothing anyways and because the carburetor gravity fed I made this really sketchy kind of IV drip bag fuel system from a water bottle and a jack stand so that way the fuel level always stays above the float Bowl but I mean after that that's really it all it needs now is some oil and it's ready to test except for this first test I'm actually not going to be feeding it any fuel as I have no idea what could happen [Music] it split the case right in half oh who could have ever guessed that my engine partially made from plastic would explode well not me because in previous attempts nothing like this had ever happened so I was actually really surprised the crankshaft it's still on the flywheel I was still confused as to how it even exploded in the first place but then I started to suspect that the ignition timing was set way too early causing the Piston to try and fire back downwards tearing the Block in half but after I spent like the next 2 days rebuilding the engine even with a much stronger block and also retarding the timing it barely ran for like a minute until it too blew up again interestingly enough the engine failed in a very similar way to the first time and I honestly don't know how I didn't see this sooner you see while the engine is running it's trying to force the block apart which is normal but having just four screws on the outer edges clamping to a thin portion of the block is clearly not enough now I could make the top part thicker so that there's more material offering support but then I thought what if I were to have studs that run from the base of the cylinder all the way to the bottom side of the block that way the forces responsible for tearing the Block in half will instead be dealt with by the studs so I made some changes to the cad design reprinted a new block then went through all the same motions until I had them finished but annoyingly I didn't have anything long enough that I could use for the studs so I ended up not only making my own from some really thick wire but I also had to make my own nuts for them as well but I mean that's what Machining is all about right oh and I also decided it was a good idea to remake the connecting rod so this time two bearings can be pressed into the bottom end which will bear the [Music] load anyways I got it all put back together and with a little bit of convincing it fired right up so it has an oil leak apparently that's kind of gross I'm actually really impressed it's able to maintain a decently High engine speed without any hiccups well mostly anyways bye-bye look at all the smoke it's a vaping oh it's just the uh just the key flew out but in no time it was right back in service oh that's not going in you know I wouldn't say that I trust putting my face right next to this thing but it's actually surprisingly refined and after playing with it for a while I only think that it's right if we hear how it sounds without any exhaust pipe I bet it's going to look sick if I take the exhaust [Music] [Music] off oh my God that is so loud that is so loud okay I think I need to evacuate the scene for for a minute here okay but seriously though I've been promising since the beginning of this project that I'd find a way to fix the fuel issue so that way it doesn't have to run off of propane and starter fluid and this requires me to tune the carburetor so the next day after I fix the output shaft that I totally didn't break does somebody want to tell me what's wrong here I played around with the fuel screw to try and see what it likes [Music] until eventually this happened for the very first time this engine is actually running on gas or petrol same thing although it does hold idle it seems like it still bogs down when I give it a bit of throttle maybe it's not warm enough but more than likely it's still an issue with how the fuel is being delivered but now that the engine is actually running I want to take this as an opportunity to try a few tests with it all right so I'm going to be doing a brake dynamometer test with my bare hands on the flywheel uh I don't know dude that's tough that's actually got quite a bit of torque stupid a hand start with it maybe admittedly it's not the smartest thing but even at idle there's still a lot of energy stored in this flywheel and it seems like it's able to pick itself back up after being loaded down now don't get me wrong I'm really happy with this thing but I think for the ultimate sendoff it's worth seeing just how long it can run before anything bad happens turn on the the old phone camera here dude Samsung camera is like the worst come on you can do it it's going to blow up on my hands or something cool all right so it seems like it's having some trouble running my intake is melting so I decided to give it a quick break and let it cool down for a while all right so I'm uh I'm dying at age 30 all right I think we all just want to see this thing run till failure at this point sick however now it seems like it's struggling to hold idle I decided to keep trying but ultimately the engine has had enough yeah I think that's all she wrote the engine head has gotten so hot that it started to warp the top part as if it was on a giant hot plate so now it doesn't want to stay on on the bright side however the engine still feels like it has plenty more to give beat that one Chrysler so as per tradition around here I decided to have a look on the inside all right moment of truth yoink whoa it actually looks good that's a first you can even see that the cross-hatching is still visible meaning it was doing a pretty good job in retaining oil it's even ran long enough that it started to develop its own carbon deposits that is sick what impresses me the most is just how well it's held up after all that run time which also includes all the time it was running that you haven't seen as I spent an entire day just firing this thing up over and over again to try and get a cool thumbnail photo and it still looks serviceable and if you want to see me make more engines then subscribe and I will do that but anyways that's it for today peace guys I'm tired

Channel: Camden Bowen

Views: 258,969

Keywords: Camden Bowen, Engine, 3d printing, video, sharing, camera phone, video phone, free, upload, 3d printed gas engine, 3d printed engine, metal 3d printing, metal 3d printed engine

Id: 9rVETHK94no

Length: 23min 16sec (1396 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024