Regenerative compressors provide good pressure head and medium flow at low RPMs. I designed this 3D printed one from scratch in Sketchup to play with the concept for potential CPAP cooling on my printer. It starts to build pressure head at fairly low RPMs, but it needs plenty of power ... so after a lame smoke test with a 1 Amp DC motor from an inkjet printer, I decided to try out a 25-30 Amp cordless drill motor belted down by 3:1. Now THAT'S some BRRRRRRRR!

*8.30.2022 CORRECTION/UPDATE: the highest pressure I have MEASURED on this unit is 0.75 PSI at around 7-8k RPMs (estimated) with the flow nearly stalled.

I even posted the files this time, so if you want your own, head to [ Ссылка ]

I genuinely think this regenerative direction might be a viable path for higher-head 3D printed air compressors. The efficiency even on commercial versions isn't awesome, BUT you can get usable pressure without needing 50-100k RPM like a small-diameter centrifugal compressor needs, meaning the stress on the plastic parts is MUCH lower and there's little/no risk of exploding wheels or suddenly friction welding force-expanded parts and blowing up the motor. The sound on this one is pretty awful (or awesome, in small bursts), but it really does start working at very low RPMs. You can actually feel it start to work even just spinning the shaft with your fingers. I think a multi-stage version might be able to build a lot of head without needing these jet engine-screaming RPMs (which aren't actually all that high -- I would guess only a few K tops). And even if this one does scream, you'd need real screamer of a centrifugal / turbo compressor to get the same boost, and 3D printed positive displacement pumps like roots blowers and screw compressors seem to sound universally awful ... blah blah blah, but yeah, I'd have to figure out the noise issue before putting this to any daily printing use.

I will probably explore this direction further in the future, maybe with a proper brushless motor, and maybe even get a real pressure dial and a tach to quantify results! I may also play with printed intake/exhaust silencers, which some commercial versions use for reasons that are much more obvious after these tests (ha). Let me know in the comments if these (or other ideas) interest you, or whatever.

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