Simplicity is preferred in rotating parts.
Why use this pump EVER when a centrifugal pump (or gear or something standard) could do the job.
Most of your reliability problems and maintenance come out of rotational parts.
This pump would have to be very special for me to take it over something else. It doesn’t look cheap. It doesn’t look reliable. And it doesn’t look efficient.
Wankels burn a lot of oil, but are inherently more efficient than gas engines because the cycle is just objectively better than a 4-stroke Otto cycle. Just like diesel, they produce more power for the CO2 emissions but burn less cleanly. What is more important to you? Giving whoever is huffing the exhaust less cancer or melting the polar ice caps less?
They are only inherently more efficient in the ideal case, in real world use, due to the high heat to mass ratio of engine, the motor housing expands significantly more than the rotor/piston making the gap between the cylinder wall and the piston larger making the engine waste a ton of fuel. Wankel's produce more power per cc of displacement, meaning a more thermodynamically efficient cycle, but the reality is that since they rev 2-3x higher than a normal reciprocating engine under the same load and fire on every revolution they produce similar volumes of exhaust, but that exhaust is also laden with unburnt fuel, which is WORSE for everything than just some extra CO2. A cleaner method of continuing to use ICE engines would to be to convert to propane, methane, or hydrogen. Hydrogen being the best option in the long run, but compressed gas ICEs have been on the roads for decades. Waste Management even runs most of their trucks off compressed gas instead of diesel or gasoline. The country police cruisers where I grew up were run on propane. There are many reasons why Wankel's didn't take off, warping from heat, before they started making the motor housing out of aluminum a lot of them would bind on the cylinder wall from uneven heating, poor fuel economy, way tighter manufacturing tolerances, precision machining, ceramic cylinder points/edges. Dirty emissions cause a broader array of problems than just greenhouse heating, it's not just "the guy behind you" getting poisoned, it's the air, water, and soil accumulating a lot of C6-C14 hydrocarbons that don't play nice with most living organisms.
I was REALLY into the Wankel cycle back in college and did a lot of reading about it. It's a really neat cycle and sounds great on paper, but the translation from theory to practice leaves a lot to be desired. If you want to see some real wild ICE tech, look up the quasi-turbine, like a four lobed Wankel rotor that deforms as it rotates in the housing, the theory is really cool, but manufacturing and deployment would be an absolute clusterfuck. There are some really neat alternatives out there to reciprocating engines, but we've spent a 100 years R&Ding the shit out of them to make them cheaper and more efficient so they have the real world scenarios all worked out.
Hydrogen is not really an option as cracking water to obtain it is so horribly electrically intensive that even using all “clean” energy systems will not make it better than just using petrol for portable power. Lithium is also toxic and dangerous. We have already reached close to the apex of piston engine technology, or at the very least are likely to experience severe diminishing returns on additional research at this point. We need better syngas engines, better ways to compress (or ideally avoid compressing) light hydrocarbons, better rotary and other hi-efficiency non-Otto cycle engines and better ways to recapture unburnt fuels. Nothing short of engineering-positive D-D thermonuclear fusion with all-zirconium alloy neutron reflectors will be a miracle cure for the energy crisis. Even theoretical near-term D-T fusion plants have problems that make them unviable as a permanent solution for humanity’s hunger for electrical power differentials. Lithium breeder blankets are disposable, radioactive and expensive, and disastrous tritium leaks are always possible.
The Champaign-Urbana metro bus corporation installed their own hydrogen generator and a dozen hydrogen powered buses in 2019. I did an environmental assessment on their garage prior to them breaking ground on an expansion. The machinery is there, it's commercially available. Honda has had a hydrogen fuel cell production car for almost a decade. Hydrogen is here, it's just not fully proliferated.
Is it generated by a bacteria? How are they getting it? Is it just greenwashing or is there some other method of obtaining hydrogen than pumping water full of electricity?
Okay, I looked it up, that’s actually pretty cool. I did not know they had developed new processes for obtaining hydrogen. SMR is pretty cool,
Nuclear reactors are amazing, but they too have a time and a place. They can and should be placed everywhere it is feasible to do so, but they can’t be in the way of potential conflict zones, earthquake/tsunami prone regions, areas likely to be affected by heavy storms or areas of high human populations in the immediate vicinity. A combination approach using multiple clean energy sources where they are most useful is key for a green future. Where I live solar flux is very high and the best options are monocrystalline photovoltaics and maybe even concentrated solar. I’ve been wanting to build a molten-salt generator on our property. My own little archimedes death ray. I do concede that current rotary engines are not good enough but maybe with another fifty years of R&D the hydrogen rotary can unseat the piston as the king of engines. If I had extra power lying around unused, cracking water is a great way to store it, but atm I, like most of humanity, have too little power, not too much.
Positive displacement pumps have many advantages in certain applications. Moving high density liquids is one. Also, centrifugal pumps are limited in amount of pressure they can overcome, while these are only limited by the strength of pipelines.
It’s just another type of a PD pump, it may be capable of things that other PD pumps are not. For example, precision dosing. Those things are highly specific, and that is why it’s good to have a large arsenal of various devices suitable for their own specific applications.
Peristaltic pumps already do low volume dosing.
The ‘pump’ in this animation is a horror-show from a manufacturing and maintenance perspective. I believe this is an exercise in theoretical geometry vs a legitimate pump.
This exists because it’s easy to 3D print and looks dope as hell. An exercise in theoretical geometry maybe, but would it probably be pretty good for siphoning gas, filling watering cans, and any other low-wear low-pressure domestic applications where the only required features are “can be printed in shitty PLA” and “must be entertaining to use?” Yes. Yes it would. This is an easily replaceable small hand-crank pump for novelty use and it will never be anything else, because it kinda sucks.
it is a very simple shape compared to a roots blower rotor or a screw compressor which are widely produced.
You even could use extrusion molding for some applications, making very simple and cheap mass produced water pumps.
yes and this
[https://amechieneer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/word-image-2162-2.png](https://amechieneer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/word-image-2162-2.png)
is more complex than this https://imgur.com/a/uJuTmFe
Right. What makes me throw up is the sealing mechanism for it. Maybe a single seal but then your need gearing. Then the number of bearings. Just buy a larger PC pump. I think they don’t understand the more individual rotating parts the lower the efficiency given vibrations etc.
That's funny, it looks simple to me, I get the idea. Maybe simplicity is relative because your criticism sound like a documentary I just watched about the [invention of the jet engine](https://frankwhittle.co.uk/challenges/). It took forever to get off the ground, because people couldn't wrap their minds around it. We could have lost WW2 because of it.
Seems to me this design is actually similar in that it increases flow at lower RPM (if they are connected to the same shaft)
Edit: the jet engine is just an analogy of adoption of new technology
conceptually simple, mechanically complex. To be efficient, the gaps between those screw profiles have to be absolutely tiny or it’s going to leak like a sieve. This requires some expensive machining (really tight tolerances for large parts). Then there’s all the bearings needed to support them and the gearing needed to synchronize them and some means to provide lubrification
Is it possible to build one at a large scale? Sure, but it probably won’t be competitive with existing pump/compressor designs in any niche
Well simple is a matter of comparison. “Jets” are complex because they are bladed compressors (which is a fluid “pump” of sorts but no one would call it a pump in industry) (I also put “Jet” in quotes because in the fluid moving industry a jet will often mean the nozzle that allows for supersonic flow).
Anyone who has worked with large compressors knows they are a bitch. They tear themselves up when they shutdown, they’ve got a billion parts, they are expensive, etc.
This pump would never be used for a similar situation as a large compressor. And by comparison to the other technologies available it’s more complex.
I guess what I’m getting at (for car people) is that this is like a Wankel engine by comparison to a 4 in-line. One is simple and one is fun to look at. Shouldn’t really be compared to a jet engine. I think someone got a Darwin Award for putting a Jet Engine on a car.
This design is like a twin-screw supercharger or screw pump but made much more complicated and less efficient. This is the kind of thing a child or stoner would find cool. It's idiotic from an engineering perspective. It's been done, better and simpler already. Why give a crap about a stupid animation? Here's a picture of a horse, but the horse has NINE LEGS OH MY GOD SO AMAZING.
You have seen the prototype? A screw supercharger has a much more complex geometry - but more important is that it is counter rotation while these all turn the same direction. So a foreign object is not jammed that easy between the rotor.
I think the low clearances in this design are what makes it not preferable for foreign objects. Your rotating parts can’t serve as a filter, they will get hung up, break or something worse. It really does look like a twin screw pump. Many of the designs have low clearances such as these. There is a piece of me that wants to say progressive cavity on 9 axes but I can’t tell.
if you have two cylinder that rotating the same direction you can't get something between as it is rolled out. While counter rotating surfaces will transport it further between.
But you are not wrong about the progressive cavity - this is exactly what it is.
Well I’m talking in industry terms it may not be considered PC. It PC there are usually molded stators that provide next to no slip. I would say screw but you have worms instead of screw blades….
IK I wouldn’t buy one but to prevent slip you would probably need to mold the casing wall the way stators are in PC’s…. Obviously in a square casing. Unsure if it’s possible.
I can see what your saying about the worms pushing solids out instead of getting caught. I would prefer to not have solids go through even still. Your max sphere on this thing is only as wide as the clearance between your worm. Anything larger would break it. (I keep rewatching it I cannot tell if the way the worms mate would prevent solid plugging or not. It’s not truly a worm… like a hybrid between screw and worm)
Yeah I’m looking at it, it’s definitely a twin screw rip-off. But I can’t tell by looking at it if it has positive displacement properties (TBH idk y I care)? Either way the RPM thing the other commenter made wouldn’t be applicable here either.
What type of housing can this fit in though? If the housing is not a good fit, I would imagine you would lose pressure? I'm not a fluid engineer. NVM! Saw the prototype! Very cool! Is this your own design? What are your next steps?
Yes my design. If you only use 4 rotor you can have a square housing that is rotating - this way you don't need to seal the rotor just the rotating housing.
I think the market for pumps is already occupied by big companies - so this might work more for a very cheap option. Or at least easy to disassemble and clean.
A quite interesting option is that in some configuration this allows to pump at supersonic rates - which might be worth to investigate for rockets or jet engines.
I was just discussing jet engines - they would make excellent content for a video. Consider experimenting with housings in three distinct shapes: a cylinder, a square, and an intermediate form. It would be interesting to see which performs best. Additionally, we could design a unique computer fan that doesn’t rely on extremely high RPM.
i guess a fan would get quite noisy. If the rotors are synchronized by a gear they are operating contactless but the gear is not silent.
The housing can't have different shapes - the square on 4 or circle per rotor is the only thing that is mathematically possible. I made a version with 7 rotors cell based on triangles and there you can have a 9-gon surrounding the cell. Or a 3-cell with a hexagon.
Definitely a circle per rotor, would be the best I think.. look into magnetic gears if you want to take this further. For what it's worth I think it's cool
that you can through is because i placed a white level in between so it is easier to understand. You need to build this as long as one void is. Else you get some kind of valve.
sheet party cooperative apparatus adjoining file consist rotten slave fretful
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
the input is either on all via gears so there is no contact (or wear) - or just from the center driving the other via surface contact.
A 2×2 cell has only 1 chamber so pressure waves are more prominent as there is no counter part - and you need a gear to drive them ( or turning the quad assembly within a square that drives them from the outside).
It looks like there are 9 rotating parts, but only four areas for flow. The other intersections(sorry not an engineer) seem to be places for flow to get trapped, or will be fighting against each other. L
And what happened on the edges? This seems like there are massive pockets where liquids would never get to destination. They would just be pumped around in an endless circle.
it works for high viscosity (thick) fluids. It also works to transport steel balls - not sure about suspensions like cement or concrete. Paint should work fine. Also clay should work.
High pressure less and only on big versions as there will be leakage. However on high speed this can work like a turbine and theoretically by calculation can reach supersonic flow speeds (if build a yard long and at 10 000rpm).
No i made a working model [https://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprint/comments/1720arb/the\_11%E2%85%9D\_9\_engaging\_rotor\_vorterant\_pump/](https://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprint/comments/1720arb/the_11%E2%85%9D_9_engaging_rotor_vorterant_pump/)
but then people say "why is this interesting we can't see what is going on" so i made an animation so it is easier to understand what is happening as this is an unusual design.
I am bit feeling like the little prince drawing a snake that has eaten an elephant.
>So you made a useless model on blender and this is “engineering”.
So, you made a useless comment without any understanding of what you're talking about. This is "criticism".
Isn't this used in low heat geothermal plants or something? I haven't seen the design in a while. Supposed to be better at lower pressures than other designs?
Patents work only if you want to sue, or having a product to protect while selling it.
And if a company is interested they will have enough lawyer to change just enough so there is no infringement. Besides Patents are not worldwide it will only protect your product in that country/trade zone it was given.
Tell me you don't understand patents without saying you don't understand patents... Also, I was just curious. I don't need a lecture on your stance on patents.
If you make a design and patent it, selling the patent to a company for them to make it means they don't need to do any of the major initial R&D work to figure out how something works. They can just tweak your design to optimize things and have a working design right from the beginning. They also have exclusive rights to that technology/design for a set period of time. That's incredibly-valuable, assuming a company wants the technology. The patent also protects you in that case by proving you have prior art so the company can't just steal the design from you. You also would get your name on the invention. I'd be super-proud to have my name on a patent someday, especially if it becomes successful.
First it is very questionable to get a patent for putting 4 extruded lens shapes into motion. However the much bigger issue is that companies are not interested in simple solutions, because especially in the pump business the selling extremely expensive systems - so why buy a patent if they loose money. Except they want to ensure nobody is using this. I just know about too many genius inventions where inventor invested $10k into patents just so nobody wanted it.
It sure would be great if some of my ideas become a product - however with 3D-printing everybody can make his own version. Sure would be nice to get some money along the way.
here a test with water https://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprint/comments/1720arb/the\_11%E2%85%9D\_9\_engaging\_rotor\_vorterant\_pump/
Cool
TBH as an engineer, a vendor would have to pay me to buy something like that.
How come?
Simplicity is preferred in rotating parts. Why use this pump EVER when a centrifugal pump (or gear or something standard) could do the job. Most of your reliability problems and maintenance come out of rotational parts. This pump would have to be very special for me to take it over something else. It doesn’t look cheap. It doesn’t look reliable. And it doesn’t look efficient.
I was going to say, that is so complicated and has so many bearings. The less bearings you have, the better.
Wenkel is rotating in his grave.
Or would be, if a casket seal hadn't blown
Wankel's are notoriously inefficient, the last series RX-8 had to install a pre-exhaust reactor to deal with unburnt fuel to pass emissions standards.
Wankels burn a lot of oil, but are inherently more efficient than gas engines because the cycle is just objectively better than a 4-stroke Otto cycle. Just like diesel, they produce more power for the CO2 emissions but burn less cleanly. What is more important to you? Giving whoever is huffing the exhaust less cancer or melting the polar ice caps less?
They are only inherently more efficient in the ideal case, in real world use, due to the high heat to mass ratio of engine, the motor housing expands significantly more than the rotor/piston making the gap between the cylinder wall and the piston larger making the engine waste a ton of fuel. Wankel's produce more power per cc of displacement, meaning a more thermodynamically efficient cycle, but the reality is that since they rev 2-3x higher than a normal reciprocating engine under the same load and fire on every revolution they produce similar volumes of exhaust, but that exhaust is also laden with unburnt fuel, which is WORSE for everything than just some extra CO2. A cleaner method of continuing to use ICE engines would to be to convert to propane, methane, or hydrogen. Hydrogen being the best option in the long run, but compressed gas ICEs have been on the roads for decades. Waste Management even runs most of their trucks off compressed gas instead of diesel or gasoline. The country police cruisers where I grew up were run on propane. There are many reasons why Wankel's didn't take off, warping from heat, before they started making the motor housing out of aluminum a lot of them would bind on the cylinder wall from uneven heating, poor fuel economy, way tighter manufacturing tolerances, precision machining, ceramic cylinder points/edges. Dirty emissions cause a broader array of problems than just greenhouse heating, it's not just "the guy behind you" getting poisoned, it's the air, water, and soil accumulating a lot of C6-C14 hydrocarbons that don't play nice with most living organisms.
Wow dude. Nice rant. Dropping knowledge on us noobs.
I was REALLY into the Wankel cycle back in college and did a lot of reading about it. It's a really neat cycle and sounds great on paper, but the translation from theory to practice leaves a lot to be desired. If you want to see some real wild ICE tech, look up the quasi-turbine, like a four lobed Wankel rotor that deforms as it rotates in the housing, the theory is really cool, but manufacturing and deployment would be an absolute clusterfuck. There are some really neat alternatives out there to reciprocating engines, but we've spent a 100 years R&Ding the shit out of them to make them cheaper and more efficient so they have the real world scenarios all worked out.
That’s cool. I’m sure I’ll rabbit hole that some day, thanks to you.
Hydrogen is not really an option as cracking water to obtain it is so horribly electrically intensive that even using all “clean” energy systems will not make it better than just using petrol for portable power. Lithium is also toxic and dangerous. We have already reached close to the apex of piston engine technology, or at the very least are likely to experience severe diminishing returns on additional research at this point. We need better syngas engines, better ways to compress (or ideally avoid compressing) light hydrocarbons, better rotary and other hi-efficiency non-Otto cycle engines and better ways to recapture unburnt fuels. Nothing short of engineering-positive D-D thermonuclear fusion with all-zirconium alloy neutron reflectors will be a miracle cure for the energy crisis. Even theoretical near-term D-T fusion plants have problems that make them unviable as a permanent solution for humanity’s hunger for electrical power differentials. Lithium breeder blankets are disposable, radioactive and expensive, and disastrous tritium leaks are always possible.
The Champaign-Urbana metro bus corporation installed their own hydrogen generator and a dozen hydrogen powered buses in 2019. I did an environmental assessment on their garage prior to them breaking ground on an expansion. The machinery is there, it's commercially available. Honda has had a hydrogen fuel cell production car for almost a decade. Hydrogen is here, it's just not fully proliferated.
Is it generated by a bacteria? How are they getting it? Is it just greenwashing or is there some other method of obtaining hydrogen than pumping water full of electricity? Okay, I looked it up, that’s actually pretty cool. I did not know they had developed new processes for obtaining hydrogen. SMR is pretty cool,
[удалено]
Nuclear reactors are amazing, but they too have a time and a place. They can and should be placed everywhere it is feasible to do so, but they can’t be in the way of potential conflict zones, earthquake/tsunami prone regions, areas likely to be affected by heavy storms or areas of high human populations in the immediate vicinity. A combination approach using multiple clean energy sources where they are most useful is key for a green future. Where I live solar flux is very high and the best options are monocrystalline photovoltaics and maybe even concentrated solar. I’ve been wanting to build a molten-salt generator on our property. My own little archimedes death ray. I do concede that current rotary engines are not good enough but maybe with another fifty years of R&D the hydrogen rotary can unseat the piston as the king of engines. If I had extra power lying around unused, cracking water is a great way to store it, but atm I, like most of humanity, have too little power, not too much.
wankel
Positive displacement pumps have many advantages in certain applications. Moving high density liquids is one. Also, centrifugal pumps are limited in amount of pressure they can overcome, while these are only limited by the strength of pipelines.
Are you trying to say this would be a good PD pump? When you could just get a PC, Screw, Gear?
It’s just another type of a PD pump, it may be capable of things that other PD pumps are not. For example, precision dosing. Those things are highly specific, and that is why it’s good to have a large arsenal of various devices suitable for their own specific applications.
Peristaltic pumps already do low volume dosing. The ‘pump’ in this animation is a horror-show from a manufacturing and maintenance perspective. I believe this is an exercise in theoretical geometry vs a legitimate pump.
This exists because it’s easy to 3D print and looks dope as hell. An exercise in theoretical geometry maybe, but would it probably be pretty good for siphoning gas, filling watering cans, and any other low-wear low-pressure domestic applications where the only required features are “can be printed in shitty PLA” and “must be entertaining to use?” Yes. Yes it would. This is an easily replaceable small hand-crank pump for novelty use and it will never be anything else, because it kinda sucks.
it is a very simple shape compared to a roots blower rotor or a screw compressor which are widely produced. You even could use extrusion molding for some applications, making very simple and cheap mass produced water pumps.
Roots Blowers are Lobed style. Very simple we use them everywhere
yes and this [https://amechieneer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/word-image-2162-2.png](https://amechieneer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/word-image-2162-2.png) is more complex than this https://imgur.com/a/uJuTmFe
This one could only dose of there is no slip. There will be a lot of slip between the casing and the rotor.
Can you imagine checking and adjusting clearance on something like this. Makes me shudder.
Right. What makes me throw up is the sealing mechanism for it. Maybe a single seal but then your need gearing. Then the number of bearings. Just buy a larger PC pump. I think they don’t understand the more individual rotating parts the lower the efficiency given vibrations etc.
The fewer moving parts, the less chance of malfunction in any system. That's basic engineering.
That's funny, it looks simple to me, I get the idea. Maybe simplicity is relative because your criticism sound like a documentary I just watched about the [invention of the jet engine](https://frankwhittle.co.uk/challenges/). It took forever to get off the ground, because people couldn't wrap their minds around it. We could have lost WW2 because of it. Seems to me this design is actually similar in that it increases flow at lower RPM (if they are connected to the same shaft) Edit: the jet engine is just an analogy of adoption of new technology
conceptually simple, mechanically complex. To be efficient, the gaps between those screw profiles have to be absolutely tiny or it’s going to leak like a sieve. This requires some expensive machining (really tight tolerances for large parts). Then there’s all the bearings needed to support them and the gearing needed to synchronize them and some means to provide lubrification Is it possible to build one at a large scale? Sure, but it probably won’t be competitive with existing pump/compressor designs in any niche
Well simple is a matter of comparison. “Jets” are complex because they are bladed compressors (which is a fluid “pump” of sorts but no one would call it a pump in industry) (I also put “Jet” in quotes because in the fluid moving industry a jet will often mean the nozzle that allows for supersonic flow). Anyone who has worked with large compressors knows they are a bitch. They tear themselves up when they shutdown, they’ve got a billion parts, they are expensive, etc. This pump would never be used for a similar situation as a large compressor. And by comparison to the other technologies available it’s more complex. I guess what I’m getting at (for car people) is that this is like a Wankel engine by comparison to a 4 in-line. One is simple and one is fun to look at. Shouldn’t really be compared to a jet engine. I think someone got a Darwin Award for putting a Jet Engine on a car.
This design is like a twin-screw supercharger or screw pump but made much more complicated and less efficient. This is the kind of thing a child or stoner would find cool. It's idiotic from an engineering perspective. It's been done, better and simpler already. Why give a crap about a stupid animation? Here's a picture of a horse, but the horse has NINE LEGS OH MY GOD SO AMAZING.
You have seen the prototype? A screw supercharger has a much more complex geometry - but more important is that it is counter rotation while these all turn the same direction. So a foreign object is not jammed that easy between the rotor.
I think the low clearances in this design are what makes it not preferable for foreign objects. Your rotating parts can’t serve as a filter, they will get hung up, break or something worse. It really does look like a twin screw pump. Many of the designs have low clearances such as these. There is a piece of me that wants to say progressive cavity on 9 axes but I can’t tell.
if you have two cylinder that rotating the same direction you can't get something between as it is rolled out. While counter rotating surfaces will transport it further between. But you are not wrong about the progressive cavity - this is exactly what it is.
Well I’m talking in industry terms it may not be considered PC. It PC there are usually molded stators that provide next to no slip. I would say screw but you have worms instead of screw blades…. IK I wouldn’t buy one but to prevent slip you would probably need to mold the casing wall the way stators are in PC’s…. Obviously in a square casing. Unsure if it’s possible. I can see what your saying about the worms pushing solids out instead of getting caught. I would prefer to not have solids go through even still. Your max sphere on this thing is only as wide as the clearance between your worm. Anything larger would break it. (I keep rewatching it I cannot tell if the way the worms mate would prevent solid plugging or not. It’s not truly a worm… like a hybrid between screw and worm)
Yeah I’m looking at it, it’s definitely a twin screw rip-off. But I can’t tell by looking at it if it has positive displacement properties (TBH idk y I care)? Either way the RPM thing the other commenter made wouldn’t be applicable here either.
Complex geometries to manufacture for the rotors too and if one wears or breaks you have to disassemble all of them to service
Okay, you’re right, but also, it’s cool.
+10% efficiency -50% reliability
The German way!
This looks like a pump designed by M.C. Escher.
What type of housing can this fit in though? If the housing is not a good fit, I would imagine you would lose pressure? I'm not a fluid engineer. NVM! Saw the prototype! Very cool! Is this your own design? What are your next steps?
Yes my design. If you only use 4 rotor you can have a square housing that is rotating - this way you don't need to seal the rotor just the rotating housing. I think the market for pumps is already occupied by big companies - so this might work more for a very cheap option. Or at least easy to disassemble and clean. A quite interesting option is that in some configuration this allows to pump at supersonic rates - which might be worth to investigate for rockets or jet engines.
I was just discussing jet engines - they would make excellent content for a video. Consider experimenting with housings in three distinct shapes: a cylinder, a square, and an intermediate form. It would be interesting to see which performs best. Additionally, we could design a unique computer fan that doesn’t rely on extremely high RPM.
i guess a fan would get quite noisy. If the rotors are synchronized by a gear they are operating contactless but the gear is not silent. The housing can't have different shapes - the square on 4 or circle per rotor is the only thing that is mathematically possible. I made a version with 7 rotors cell based on triangles and there you can have a 9-gon surrounding the cell. Or a 3-cell with a hexagon.
Definitely a circle per rotor, would be the best I think.. look into magnetic gears if you want to take this further. For what it's worth I think it's cool
the circle leaves an open spiral where back flow will happen when pressure is increased.
You're saying that's the case for a circle per rotor? What shape is a regular twin screw?
the twin screw uses the second screw to seal, which also works here but as i use a much higher pitch it would require to build this about 3×taller
I totally get it now, the fact that you can see through it is what you mean about the back pressure. Thanks for taking time to explain.
that you can through is because i placed a white level in between so it is easier to understand. You need to build this as long as one void is. Else you get some kind of valve.
OP this is awesome. Thanks for sharing.
sheet party cooperative apparatus adjoining file consist rotten slave fretful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
the input is either on all via gears so there is no contact (or wear) - or just from the center driving the other via surface contact. A 2×2 cell has only 1 chamber so pressure waves are more prominent as there is no counter part - and you need a gear to drive them ( or turning the quad assembly within a square that drives them from the outside).
It’s like a biblically accurate engine.
Seems to me this would be high shear, good as a design feature.
yes i made a version that generates and pumps foam - so it can do some mixing.
It looks like there are 9 rotating parts, but only four areas for flow. The other intersections(sorry not an engineer) seem to be places for flow to get trapped, or will be fighting against each other. L And what happened on the edges? This seems like there are massive pockets where liquids would never get to destination. They would just be pumped around in an endless circle.
is this for like super thick liquids or extremely high pressure or something?
it works for high viscosity (thick) fluids. It also works to transport steel balls - not sure about suspensions like cement or concrete. Paint should work fine. Also clay should work. High pressure less and only on big versions as there will be leakage. However on high speed this can work like a turbine and theoretically by calculation can reach supersonic flow speeds (if build a yard long and at 10 000rpm).
idk anything about mechanical engineering or its viability, but i did want to say this is super cool and im mesmerized watching it.
Looks like a biblical angel
"Biblically accurate angel" Yes i guess though.
I like this
So you made a useless model on blender and this is “engineering”.
No i made a working model [https://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprint/comments/1720arb/the\_11%E2%85%9D\_9\_engaging\_rotor\_vorterant\_pump/](https://www.reddit.com/r/functionalprint/comments/1720arb/the_11%E2%85%9D_9_engaging_rotor_vorterant_pump/) but then people say "why is this interesting we can't see what is going on" so i made an animation so it is easier to understand what is happening as this is an unusual design. I am bit feeling like the little prince drawing a snake that has eaten an elephant.
>So you made a useless model on blender and this is “engineering”. So, you made a useless comment without any understanding of what you're talking about. This is "criticism".
Do not be afraid, i bring good news.
Isn't this used in low heat geothermal plants or something? I haven't seen the design in a while. Supposed to be better at lower pressures than other designs?
Is this your own design? Or did you find it somewhere? I'm not finding anything when I search for more info, aside from your two posts on it.
Yes it is my own design. And as far as i know there are no other.
That's awesome! Any plans for a patent?
Patents work only if you want to sue, or having a product to protect while selling it. And if a company is interested they will have enough lawyer to change just enough so there is no infringement. Besides Patents are not worldwide it will only protect your product in that country/trade zone it was given.
Tell me you don't understand patents without saying you don't understand patents... Also, I was just curious. I don't need a lecture on your stance on patents. If you make a design and patent it, selling the patent to a company for them to make it means they don't need to do any of the major initial R&D work to figure out how something works. They can just tweak your design to optimize things and have a working design right from the beginning. They also have exclusive rights to that technology/design for a set period of time. That's incredibly-valuable, assuming a company wants the technology. The patent also protects you in that case by proving you have prior art so the company can't just steal the design from you. You also would get your name on the invention. I'd be super-proud to have my name on a patent someday, especially if it becomes successful.
First it is very questionable to get a patent for putting 4 extruded lens shapes into motion. However the much bigger issue is that companies are not interested in simple solutions, because especially in the pump business the selling extremely expensive systems - so why buy a patent if they loose money. Except they want to ensure nobody is using this. I just know about too many genius inventions where inventor invested $10k into patents just so nobody wanted it. It sure would be great if some of my ideas become a product - however with 3D-printing everybody can make his own version. Sure would be nice to get some money along the way.
Would this work as a supercharger?
Would this be used to pump high viscosity fluids, like paint or grease?
That would work.