Quote:
Originally Posted by mid_life_crisis
I find myself wondering about gearboxes, but I don't see anything capable of spinning at the rpm we need as being reliable or affordable. If you were to try simply offsetting the motor and using a couple of gears to increase the speed, I worry that the side load forces would make the turbine unstable. Could this be overcome by using three smaller motors as the points of a triangle with the turbine shaft in the center? The appropriate sized gears would ramp up the turbine rpm and the three driving gears might support the driven gear of the turbine and help keep it stable while three smaller motors added together could supply the necessary power to spin the thing.
Going further, a plate at each end of the assembly sandwiching the three motors could support a center shaft with a high rpm bearing at each end, allowing you to build it with the drive shaft diameter of your choice in the center. The output speed of the drive shaft would be established by the ratio of the gears. The design is simple and should be fairly rugged.
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Like I've said before, if you want to have step-up transmission centrifugal superchargers already exists and could be adapted. Designing a high-speed transmission is fairly simple, actually building it with the needed precision is a lot more difficult. The wear and tare is also something you need to keep in mind. Lubrication of a transmission like this is probably going to be very important.
I think for my extra power needs (which is really none) the direct drive is going to be just fine. But I would be curious to see if someone else comes up with a geared designed. I'd probably even be willing to help with the design/CAD if someone has a good concept, but I'll leave building and testing to someone else.
Edit: Also keep in mind as you try to get more compression that power has to come from somewhere. We're already talking about around 150 amps.