Exhaust Turbine Attempt

A few years ago, I built a gas turbine engine from an old car turbocharger with my friends Chris and Ken. Chris happens to work for a jet manufacturer for a living, so he knows a great deal about such topics. Chris and I have been plotting for some time to design a very simple two-stage axial flow single combustor engine, and the biggest thing holding us back is the ability to actually create the parts we design.

I spent some time playing with Aluminium (6061-T6) on my lathe to see if I could make a simple exhaust turbine wheel by separating a disk into fins and twisting them then sanding the edges into a semi-airfoil shape. First I roughed out the general shape I was going for, and drilled the hole through the center (my lathe bed isn't long enough to do so).



I then made the finish cuts to the exterior and with the boring bar to the interior to get the shape and approximate surface finish I was looking for.



Unfortunately, as I feared, the metal was too brittle to make the bend, and several fins broke off.



Oh well, at least now I know that method won't work...