The Turbo Keychain has been a constant evolution for many years. We’ve completely lost our minds with this version. It’s been an entire year and a half in the making. New for 2017, the TK10-R has been engineered, re-engineered, and re-engineered again from the ground up to be as realistic as possible, and yet, provide maximum durability. Below are the primary advanced features in this new family:
The Cold Side / Compressor Housing
In order to keep up with recent times, new anti-surge has been incorporated. Although non-functional at this time, a quick lathing operation could complete passageways for added realism in the future.
One of the biggest questions was “Is this functional”? The answer has always been “No.” This is a keychain. But that didn’t stop us from trying to make it throw as much air as it can. One way to increase airflow is to align the impeller with the outlet. This is a major improvement over prior generations.
Inside a real turbo housing has a variable diameter hollow snail which captures and directs air to the outlet. Duplicating a “real” turbo compressor housing isn’t practical due to mold complexity and cost limitations. So we compensated with a couple serious improvements. First, you’ll notice the inside of the housing is clean. There are no more posts for bolts, which obstructed airflow and caused turbulence. Bolts have been eliminated and replaced with snap rings to hold the housing to the center cartridge. Secondly, to encourage air to flow in a rotational direction, a ramp is used in conjunction with a blockoff plateau just after the outlet. Initial testing with and without this design is night and day. It took a few months to perfect due to the very close tolerance the impeller wheel is to the housing. In some areas it’s as small as half of a millimeter!
Impeller & Turbine Wheels
3D printing has come a long way in recent years. Initially as of late 2016 only 3D printed acrylic impeller and turbine wheels are available for the TK10 family. Several blade count and designs have been tested, and these are the cream of the crop. The 10 blade turbine cups and directs air with as much leverage and efficiency as possible. The 14 blade Impeller incorporates 7 external and 7 internal blades. This not only throws a decent amount of air, it creates a wicked super high pitched spooling sound with minimal rpms. Custom blade counts are available on request! So if you’d like a 12 blade turbine, or 6 blade impeller, please let us know! 3D printing is amazing!
We are having some Q/A balancing issues with our metal impellers, but they will be available in sometime early 2017. They aren’t as realistic due to mold design limitations, but can tolerate higher heat, and spin for much longer.
Center Cartridge
Something completely new is a separate center cartridge. There are multiple reasons. First, it allows interchangeable parts and the possibility of upgrades. If you started out with a TK10-S and want to upgrade to a TK10-R. or would like to change the color of your compressor, turbine housing or style? No problem! The entire TK10 family is modular.
The RC community had a popular request to have a keychain dogbone delete option, so now you can have a TK10 without keychain attach.
O-rings serve multiple purposes. Primarily, it prevents chatter or slack between the housings and center cartridge. We all know boost leaks suck, so it creates a fantastic seal. Since we’ve replaced bolts with cir-clips, you can clock the housings somewhat. Some assembled units are really tight, so it could take some effort and wiggle. The RC community has tight packaging requirements, so clocking the housings gives more flexibility.
Dual floating ball bearings are critical. it absorbs some of the vibrations of slightly imbalanced impeller/turbines (although the 3D printed wheels are a close to perfect as you can get). Upgraded ceramic bearings will be an option in the near future. We’ve tried over a dozen bearing suppliers, and settled on a particular (more expensive) supplier that allows us to do some customization to the bearings during the manufacturing process to give us the fastest spin rate. Generally these bearings are used in heavier applications (wheel bearings for RC cars), but our customization requests allow for much higher rpm spin rates with very little loading.
The Hot Side / Turbine Housing
RC community demanded an easier way to attach hoses to the turbine side, so we listened and delivered! You get two options; the traditional T4/T6 housing which is the most popular, or the new V-band style! Okay, so v-bands don’t exist this small yet, but maybe someday. Eventually we will have custom attachments, reducers, and bends for the v-band housing. We need some requests please! Just let us know what inner diameter hose you need to attach, and what angle bend you’d like!
Connectors and Attachments
Compound turbo setup anyone?
Attachments are available through us, Shapeways, or if you have a 3D printer, print them yourself! Download the STL files here: TK10-connectors.zip