Air Powered RC Car 

Now, to get an even longer run time on it, try putting some dry-ice in the bottle, as the dry-ice sublimates it will continue to build up pressure while the air motor is using the pressure and run a lot longer, hopefully not getting to catastrophic levels.

Hope you will revisit with your own design

Could you print a plastic sleeve to strengthen the syringes?

Tom, an idea for a future video. Water rockets! Multi stage ones with remote controlled launcher and recovery chutes

Airpowered go-cart with a 300 bar 50L bottle!

Excellent modification. That ran for ages, would be fun to see it outdoors on a bigger circuit.

I love this video! I didn't know you were working on this project again. I discovered back when you did the first car that syringes wouldn't work. I was designing my own version of the air engine, using a syringe as the cylinder, and ran into the same expansion issue you did. I thought about printing a reinforcing sleeve for the cylinder the way +Neil Griffiths suggested below, but settled on printing the cylinder slightly undersized and then boring it to the exact spec with a drill and polishing the inner surface. In my research I analyzed the "air hogs" engine and determined how their seal works, and I suspect that the car you bought has a similar seal system. The air hogs use a rubber seal that is tapered such that it almost (but not quite) touches the cylinder walls at the outermost edge of the seal. Since the seal doesn't really touch the wall, the piston is free to move with little friction from the seal, and air can flow by the seal so it doesn't have to compress air on the up-stroke. When the high air pressure is in the cylinder the flexible seal rapidly expands to seal perfectly against the cylinder walls. When the cylinder is on the negative stroke, the air inside the cylinder escapes around the edges of the seal which has collapsed back to its original shape. I did some tests with ninjaflex filament seals but got distracted with other projects before I finished the engine. I should really make a video showing my progress. Let me know if my explanation wasn't clear, if you want to pursue this further. I think you could easily make your car work without "cheating" ;-)

Sorry you couldn't explore your first design, looked so promising. Hats off to the toy designers!

Use glass syringes, im sure those can do more pressure and they are really air tight without lots of friction from the rubber. The only problem will be cutting the holes for which you'll need a diamond bit or cutting wheel for your dremel.

I love your projects with pressured air! Historical fact: For the construction of the first direct tunnel through the Swiss alps (1880 Gotthard), the engineers developed locomotives driven by pressured air. Coal driven steam engines would have poisoned the air with co2 in the middle of the 15km tunnel. In addition the used compressed air was comparable fresh and welcomed by the miners.

that slider valve thing is what steam engines did about 100 years ago. also, if you found a way to apply pressure to both sides of the piston, it would work better(steam engines did this as well about 100 years ago)

‘It won’t stop!’ - 3 days later... 😂 great job mate! Just shows how efficient those manufactured pistons can be. Any chance of modifying them for an aircraft? I guess you’d need some more torque though 🤷‍♂️

This right here is the future of automotive transport

Consider adding tape to the walls of the syringe to allow it to hold the pressure. Also you will probably want to add oil to the rubber seals to reduce friction. The oil should make a big difference, and if you choose grease instead of oil, it might even increase the pressure before the piston leaks.

Well done dude. Thiner tyres equals less friction, more speed and longer run times. Plus thin silicone oil for moving parts. Thanks for sharing!

Tom, your air powered videos are the reason I subscribed and follow your channel. I enjoy your other stuff but this is what I'm here for. I'm sure I'm not alone

never clicked a video so fast

get some soda bottles pre forms, use that vs syringes, you will need to find a suitable rubber washer

"3.5 ml of air in each syringe" That begs the question, 3.5 ml of air with what density and pressure? Would a pressure regulator make sense, to enhance your "milage" (at least you could easily figure out the needed volume of air for a certain distance at constant pressure)? As always good video ;D.

Man, that was awesome! You gave me a great idea for the valves!!! Thank you!

Its nice to hear that your having a blast building things. I love channels like this.

Ok, that was super impressive. Had no idea that thing could keep going that long!

You've made a triple expansion engine, but in reverse. this literally how old triple expansion engine paddle steamers work.

You can wrap the syringes with a spiral of copper wire then cover the whole bit with epoxy and that will eliminate the stretching and bulging. I love what you have done.

Now all you need is regenerative braking, a CVT and an electric or gas engine to make a hybrid that would be the envy of all the car manufacturers.

Tom, parabéns por sua excelência com idéias inovadoras! Você futuramente aperfeiçoará essa tecnologia de forma absoluta. Abraços!

What a great run time ! Thank you for sharing.

I like these kinds of projects. Lots of fun to be had for cheap.

A plastic bottle pumped to 60 psi with what's basically a bullet mounted to the end of it. You crazy, man!

Very cool stuff. We had toy cars like this in the 80's, not controllable though. They were more like a pneumatic wind up car.

Wow, this thing runs forever.

Glass syringe’s are available on eBay uk, they’re about £3 each

I would recommend making 3D printing a bracket that goes around the large diameter bottle and conect a 360 servo so it keeps pumping it up! Like the crank of a engine

Tom this is some amazing stuff man! I feel like more people should see the work you do! Keep doing what you do best! 👍

Next time you try this, consider making your own o-ring seal, try using Felt, cut out a small disc that can be secured between an upper and lower “piston half” lubricated with light sewing machine oil.

8:20 you should print a part which fits tightly around it, so the 3d printed part will make it strong

Great fun! You could still use siringes, if you slide a tube or pipe over it, to reinforce the siringe wall.

Soo great love this concept.

Beautiful work Tom, I will try to do something similar with my daughter.

What I'd LOVE to see is use your own design and either put a pressure regulator in that only allows the pressure your syringes can work at (if possible). Or even better use STEAM POWER. You know how cool it would be to have a steam powered RC car? The steam will build pressure slowly so you could keep it at 15psi and leak out any excess. Of course your piping and pistons would have to withstand high temperatures so maybe a full redesign would still be needed. But STEAM POWER, imagine that!

That little car was quite impressive! :) Definitely will check out your mod project. Keep up the great work Tom!

Hey how about using Lego pneumatics? I think a good engine design would could make it work

It's like an old fashion steam engine! You should design it with high-pressure and low-pressure cylinders to increase efficiency!

You sir are a flippin genius! Great job!

That worked awesome!

That worked great Tom!

I'd enjoy watching videos where you take existing products, do a break down and explanation of their working and then upgrade and improve them for better performance.

3D printed piston + Perspex cylinder + Orings for seal + oil for lubrication I've found do very well! For future projects!

Nicely done Tom

There are regulators you can use to store a lot in the tank, but have the line pressure low enough for the syringes.

Very well done by the way!!! Thank you for your videos!

Mr.Stanton you could use clear ridgid acrylic tube to make you initial design it should hold up to the pressure you were trying to achieve. Great video. Cant wait see more.

Great video, this slider valve is great !

Awesome, try adding another bottle for longer distance, a valve throttle system and maybe an on-board camera!

to prevent syringes from expanding, put them in some metal tube that will hold the walls, thus pistons will still hold pressure.

Time to revisit your air powered plane using these slider value motors from the car since they appear to be much more efficient and work well

A five cylinder radial would be self starting. Neat car!

Maybe if you used polycarbonate pipe, they wouldn’t bow out and you could use the same syringe cylinders.

Great work man!👍

I reckon if you found a way to drive the rear wheels through a differential, it might mitigate the slowing down issue when it corners

you should try to use glass syringes and if the pressure is too high maybe create 3d printed mounts for it to hold it together

Did you consider adding some kind of regulator so that you'd have ~100psi in the reservoir with a regulated lower pressure being fed to the pistons/motor?

Imagine taking giant metal bottles, a real chassis and a very powerful valve system to make the fastest 1:1 air powered car

So you've designed some kind of BMW's boxer engine, thats awesome :D

now you need a transmission system..gears will help you run even at very low pressures thereby allowing you to use up all the pressure

I just started laughing when an image of full size cars with ginormous air tanks zooming around crossed through my mind; this is the future gentlemen.

Nice video Tom. I thought you were going to use the syringe to meter the air for an air-jet type of motor.

Great video Tom

You could wrap the syringes with a string that does not stretch, in a nice tight single-layer spiral. Mix up some epoxy and coat the string. That'll hold a lot of pressure.

Fantastic work, Tom!!! 😃 A lot of people already gave you suggestions (like 3d printing a syringe sleeve, using epoxy and so on). So the only tip I would give you is: DO NOT use glass syringes. Because, if they explode... Well, safety glasses won't help a bit.

I like the three cylinder sound.

I would have just printed some sleeves for the syringes so that they could hold higher pressure. Hell, you could even just wrap them tightly with duct tape.

If you are still doing cars, I recommend putting a differential between the rear wheels.

Wow that ran for a long time! Surely there's a way you can convert this to run some propellers! A similar design could potentially be the furthest flying air powered plane you've done yet!

Wow that's impressive! ...If only you could get your air powered plane to run that long

Very cool! You could also try to recover extra energy from with secondary piston that is fed from the outlet of upstream piston. It maybe wouldn't work at these lower relative pressures but it might be worth looking into!

Hey Tom, very cool stuff! I've made piston air engines using brass tubing from the hobby shop. The dimensional accuracy is great - they make reasonably tight fitting, low friction pistons. I'm sure you could seat the cylinders well in a 3-D print. A little bearing grease would make the piston airtight.

I wish I can give you two thumbs up, with your vids I starting to get my son interested in engineering

Couldnt you 3d print an air engine that accepts an O-ring on the piston, or even better, 2 O-rings? Then lightly oil the inside of the cylinder so theres very little friction. I feel like that would make it leak very little air.

You’re a certified smarty pants because I wouldn’t ever even come close to thinking of a design like that

Very beautiful

Air C car. Thank you, I'm here all week.

Toy Upgrades!!! Love it.

You could have made sleeves to go over your syringes, turning the syringes into cylinder liners, or you could have used glass syringes, which would possibly take the pressure, and have much lower friction.

Tom, with your design you can use PVC tubing with 3D Printed cylinder gaskets as the PVC can resist the pressure especially if you use pressure pipe, but you would have to build your own cylinders using PVC pipe

Tom, you should take science toys (like this air car) and mod them to make them even cooler more often!

Sometimes the best engineering principal is simply to not reinvent the wheel and use something that somebody else has already optimized.

I’m early in the video so I don’t know if it works but wow what a cool idea! I particularly love the center syringe’s design and how it releases pressure.

Your idea with the syringes and big rear wheels was really awesome, I really really wonder if you strengthened them syringes - how far would you have made the car go?! :) Sweet

Large glass syringes, configure it with a V8 config (yes 8 syringe), add a regulator that is controlled by a gas pedal, add a large tank, add a clutch and a manual transmission, install it on a go cart or maybe a homemade vehicle

Nice mode. I can't believe for how long it just kept going and going and going. You should name it the Energizer Buggy.

I'm sure you could reinforce those syringes by wrapping something around them, maybe a durable sting/fibre

Way to go Tom, I'd still like to see your creation run a : 1- generator, 2- car, 3- generator driven plane. - You are very inventive

You should build a gas generator, maybe steam, a burner, or something like the reaction they use for the emergency oxygen for airplanes. With this you could power all your gas powered contraptions a lot longer.

New variation - build an alternator into the rear axle to charge a super capacitor or 3 to power the electronics for the steering.. making it completely air powered!!

Finally a project i can comprehend!

Ground glass syringes are fairly inexpensive and can take the higher pressure as a bonus they also have lower friction. Im currently using them as mini hydraulic actuators

Here's a challenge for you Tom. When I taught science we'd make soda bottle water rockets. Students would pump them up with a bicycle pump, but none of the bicycle pumps would last more than about 40 minutes before the bases were loose, overheating would screw up the gasket seal... Cost of the pump made no difference. We could use an air compressor, but the thrill of teenaged boys frantically pumping up their rockets is lost. Can you design and make a pump that can be maniacally pumped without wearing out in a matter of minutes? The problems are 1. overheating 2. The movement of the whole pump. I thought perhaps caging the pump in a frame with handles on opposite sides -- like the old horse drawn fire wagons. Then wrap the pump cylinder with a water jacket made from a larger tube filled with water. Ideally it wouldn't require any 3D printed parts.

Glass syringes have very little friction, i just don't know how they would handle the pressure. I assume the power pistons connected to the wheels don't take the full pressure, so glass would work well there.

Very good for the pneumatic system. regards