Air suply

[Allan BParticipant @allanb]

[Allan BParticipant @allanb]

This might be a daft question, but I am building my first horizontal mill engine, and I am planning to give it as a gift and want an easy way of supplying air to it so it can be shown working, now at home I have a ready supply of compressed air upto about 120psi but it’s I bit big to carry round (its a 250L industrial compressor unit) so I need a smaller unit, and here comes the question, would a fish tank air pump supply enough air and at a high enough psi to run the engine?

Thanks all in advance for your wisdome

Allan

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Really depends on the displacement of the engine, bigger the bore/stroke the larger the volume of air it will need per rev.

Pressure is less of an issue as a well built engine should tick over on less than 5psi.

J

[Allan BParticipant @allanb]

The cylinder has a bore of 16mm and is 44mm long, with the valve gear it pushes from either side as it works, it doesn’t have to run particularly fast, just a nice show piece 😀

[Paul LousickParticipant @paullousick59116]

A fish tank air pump would not deliver enough air to run your engine. A car air compressor for pumping up wheels would work but very noisy. An old refrigertor compressor could be converted to pump air.

A similar question was posted on MEW at **LINK**

Edited By Paul Lousick on 29/01/2017 21:46:52

[PaulRParticipant @paulr]

How about an airbrush compressor… should have enough oomph and depending upon how much you want to spent could be fairly quiet.

[Mick HenshallParticipant @mickhenshall99321]

Or one of those small compressors used to inflate footballs etc

Mick

[Allan BParticipant @allanb]

I did think about an air brush compressor, but ideally I wanted something small enough to build into a box beneath the engine itself, not looked into football inflation compressors

[Stuart BridgerParticipant @stuartbridger82290]

I have an entry level Sparmax Arism 1A airbrush compressor. Rated at 14-14 lpm. Fine for airbrushing but not quite man enough to run my Stuart 10V.

[PaulRParticipant @paulr]

I bought one of those small tyre inflator type 'compressors' a few years back – totally useless, just made a metric f* ton of noise with no puff. The oft-quoted standby, which I admit I've never tried, is a (lorry?) inner-tube. Lots of air and squeezy fun to boot.

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

There is quite a bit of info about compressors if you put Compressor in the search box, and all topics.

Ian S C

[Geoff TheasbyParticipant @geofftheasby]

I was told a fish tank pump would do it, it doesn't. I bought a dual feed pump, it still doesn't. An electrical tyre inflator doesn't, either. An old fridge compressor does. I used one for some years. My Clarke compressor is noisy, so I located it as far away as possible, and piped the air to the show bench to run my, now 4, models. A model engine globe valve restricts the supply, in order to feed the models and run them at slow speed.

Geoff

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

It may seem an odd thing to say but the easiest solution may be to make a simple oscillating cylinder engine and drive it with a small electric motor. This will act as a pump similar to the Hy-flo (Medcalf) aquarium pump that was available in years gone by. There is the matter of sizing everything to suit your needs but unless you are after speed that blurs the motion it should be doable. There are micro vacuum pumps available that could be used as pumps but they may be too weak but if you look them up it may give you an idea of what is needed to make something.

Martin

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