Since forever I’ve wanted to own a small Jet Engine and build something cool, have some fun and explore the physics of a turbine.
I started by purchasing a Jetcat 220RXi and I had the unboxing at the university where I am a professor. It was a great surprise to all my students and colleagues when I slowly removed all the supporting components from the box and then finally revealed the jet engine.
The unboxing.
I wanted to fire it up and hear what this little beast sounded like so I built a sturdy test bed. The Jetcat RXi idles at 35,000 rpm and maxes out at a a whopping 130,000 rpms. In this video I only had the nerve to take it up to idle as my hands and knees were shaking. It was an exhilarating experience.
I wanted to put this into something real cool, and I decided to make a Jet Powered Kids Batmobile. Where to start? I purchased a Kids Batmobile and scoped out how I could pull this off. It had to be durable and have a high performance level, so I decided to design and fabricate a chibi racing go kart frame out of Chromemolly tubing and racing go kart parts. This had to fit within the cool plastic kids batmobile and not distract from the design intent. the batmobile was 3d scanned and I used this for reference for my Solidworks design of the frame. It all came together better than expected and here’s a video of the first run (taking it easy) at the Orlando Maker Faire.
The sound is absolutely amazing!
More build pics to come.
