3D-printed engine parts

What it is: Using additive manufacturing, also referred to as 3D printing, we developed the first certified,
flight-critical engine part.

Why it’s innovative: By 3D printing critical parts, manufacturers can produce parts more quickly and in
smaller quantities. Using a laser, layers of powdered metal are fused on top of one another during this
process, which involves building components from the bottom up.

Engines are pretty complicated pieces of machinery, making it no wonder that many
people don’t know how they work. As 3D printers have become readily available to the
public, they’ve opened the doors for creative minds to turn their ideas into reality, and
more people can learn about engines by 3D printing and assembling the components
manually.

In this article, we’ll go over our top picks of engines that you can 3D print – even if you
may need extra parts to fully set them up – and a few projects that show where the
technology may be headed. Since the engines are made out of several 3D printed
pieces, you can 3D print each component in a different color. This lets you clearly see,
for example, where the valves are and how they move.

While some of these models are even functional (no, you can’t replace the one in your
car with it, but you can use it on a toy car), they’re great ways of both learning about
engines and testing your printer’s capabilities. If the latter isn’t perfectly tuned or you
don’t want to go through the hassle of printing so many parts, consider Craftcloud. With
manufacturers all over the world offering a variety of materials and colors, you can have
the components delivered to your doorstep so that you can focus on assembly.

But before we check out our picks of the most advanced 3D printed engines, let’s take a
closer at what engines are and how they work.

Engines are designed to transform one form of energy into another, usually chemical
energy from fuel or batteries into mechanical energy (motion). The term “engine” is
sometimes used interchangeably with “motor”, but the distinction is that motors operate
on electrical energy while engines run on the combustion of fuels. Furthermore, there
are various types, such as reaction engines, electrical engines, thermal engines, and
more.
A type of thermal engine, the internal combustion engine is one of the most commonly
used. It transforms chemical energy (in the form of fuel) into mechanical energy that
can power most vehicles, including bigger machinery like airplanes and trains, and it can
even be used to generate electrical power.

The way an internal combustion engine functions is quite simple. First, air is taken from
the atmosphere and mixed with fuel. In a gasoline-powered engine (such as what you’d
find in many cars), the piston squeezes the air-fuel blend, a spark plug delivers a spark
to the mixture, and combustion occurs. The resulting explosion causes immediate
pressurization in the combustion chamber, forcefully moving the piston which
subsequently turns a crankshaft. The leftover gases and particles are then ejected from
the chamber to be expelled via an exhaust system.

This process can happen up to several thousand times a minute and can be used for
various purposes, such as driving the wheels of a car. And if you want to physically
represent this process, a great way to do it is with a 3D printed engine! So let’s take a
look at the most advanced 3D printed engines.