V8 Engine Crankshaft Constraints

[keeganlumley13]

I'm a senior in high school creating a V8 engine without any plans. All based off of what I know. I have made the engine block, piston head, connecting rod, and crankshaft. I've constrained the crankshaft to the center point of the engine block, now it rotates. Then, I constrained the center point of the connecting rod to the center of one of the crank rods and also contrained the piston head to the cylinder. Now the crankshaft rotates, the piston moves perfectly in rotation and stays in line with the cylindrical opening for the piston head. 

Now here is where the problem lies.. I am trying to make the engine run in an animation, but when I click play, the crankshaft shoots out of position as if it were being pulled directly out. I need to know what constrain I need to keep it in place as the engine runs.  

[CCarreiras]

Hi!

Are you doing that in Inventor assembly environment or in the Dynamic Environment?

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[keeganlumley13]

I have it in Inventor Assembly Enviorment. 

[graemev]

You need a constraint restricting axial movement.  Might I suggest a mate or flush constraint in an appropriate place like a thrust face on the crankshaft?  (You could also just "fake it" using the end of the shaft and an exterior plane or point on the block with some convenient value for properly locating the shaft.)

[keeganlumley13]

I attempted to use the flush contstraint from the center point of the crankshaft to point of contact on the engine block and still the crankshaft shot off the screen. Is there anything else I could try?

[JDMather]

Attach your assembly here.

[graemev]

Prior to animation, try just dragging.  This often highlights constraint behavior.  You may wish to constrain to an axis rather than a point.

[blair]

You are going to need a minimum of two constraints, the first would be the crank journals to the block journals for the axial alignment which will allow it to rotatate/spin and the second would be the to stop the crank from sliding through the journals, either a Flush or a Mate command depending on how you have modeled the block and crank.