Simple Air Vane Motor by svale

Description

After seeing some kids playing with a little air plane powered by compressed air from a soda bottle, I decided to see if I could make a laser cuttable version of such a motor.

This is not a very powerful or efficient motor, but it is a fully working printable ("cuttable"?) air vane motor. My next goal will be to make a full printable bottle-powered park-flyer.

A video of the motor in action: youtube.com/watch?v=reaB0R9ALHs

More on air vane motors:
hydraulicspneumatics.com/200/TechZone/FluidPowerAcces/Article/True/6422/TechZone-FluidPowerAcces

Matt made a version for 3D printers. You can find it here: thingiverse.com/thing:620

Instructions

The laser cutter ponoko used to produce this left small "pixelated" indentations along all curves (see image). No big deal, except the vanes need to slide unimpeded along the inner ring, so it had to be sanded and polished manually for the motor to work.

The screw holes are superflous as the acrylic does not really seal well by just screwing the three layers together. I had to glue them with generous amount of Faller Expert Plastic Cement anyway.

I also sanded the sides of the rotor slightly to decrease friction.

For propellant I used a can of common Dust Off.