Yeah, the copper fuel can was way over the top. Anyone with that degree of obsession can't possibly make for entertaining company. I can just imagine that that guy's poor wife must dread having guests over for dinner.
+1 for the mechanical engineering and craftsmanship
-1 for the implicit yawns at social gatherings
That's just plain cool. I've always wanted to make either a sterling or fire-eater engine. About as close as I got was a few years ago when I made this "finger engine" for my dad. I really enjoy working with CNC tools, even though I haven't been able to turn on my CNC mill in almost three years now I'll be back, I'll be back!
And you can bet I'm the dinner party nerdy entertainment around here. Lately it's been quadcopters but now we're moving into Ozzy Osbourne-playing Propeller Boe-Bots.
There's also a video of Carson pumping the finger engine lever but seems that *.wmv files are not allowed by the forum software.
"Finger Engine"? Never heard of such a thing. That looks like a scale model of the treadle mechanism of my grand mother's sewing machine:)
By the way, that is the mechanism, crank shaft basically, that James Watt was not allowed to use in his steam engines because some other guy had a patent on it. So James had to invent other ways to get circular motion from linear. Like the plannet wheel system.
Given the prior art on treadle wheels I wonder how the patent was allowed and realized the patenet system has been broken for over 200 years!
While that engine is an example of fine metal working. There are many easy to build Stirling Engine plans on the web which can be built. Here's one that uses a sweet tin, a CD flywheel, some hobby plywood, and latex diaphragm.
A diaphragm piston is fairly low friction and I've seen this concept scaled up to much bigger engines using thicker rubber sheets. People have also cast pistons out of JB Weld inside a copper pipe which works even better.
I was going to post a video of my stirling engine - but then I discovered it was lost when my W9GFO YouTube account was deleted. I'll have to remember to re-upload it. Last year I got some video of it running on liquid nitrogen too.
@Martin_H, JB Weld is a good idea to make the piston. I've been toying with the idea of building or buying a model steam engine because of the wide choice of fuels.
@Martin_H, JB Weld is a good idea to make the piston. I've been toying with the idea of building or buying a model steam engine because of the wide choice of fuels.
It looked pretty easy too. The only trick is making sure it doesn't stick to the walls of the mold while ensuring any compounds used to ease unmolding don't contaminate the epoxy.
One person coated the inside of the copper pipe with a thin film of oil to prevent the JB Weld from sticking to mold. He heated the JB Weld in warm water to make it flow better. Mixed it outside of the mold and poured it in. He also placed the crank shaft attachment into the epoxy during curing so it would be firmly attached.
The resulting piston was well matched to the copper pipe cylinder. His other gotcha was that you shouldn't cut the pipe with a pipe cutter as it squeezes the pipe and makes it slightly out of round. The resulting piston and cylinder will bind, so he cut it with a sharp saw.
erco
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_engine
+1 for the mechanical engineering and craftsmanship
-1 for the implicit yawns at social gatherings
-Phil
And you can bet I'm the dinner party nerdy entertainment around here. Lately it's been quadcopters but now we're moving into Ozzy Osbourne-playing Propeller Boe-Bots.
There's also a video of Carson pumping the finger engine lever but seems that *.wmv files are not allowed by the forum software.
By the way, that is the mechanism, crank shaft basically, that James Watt was not allowed to use in his steam engines because some other guy had a patent on it. So James had to invent other ways to get circular motion from linear. Like the plannet wheel system.
Given the prior art on treadle wheels I wonder how the patent was allowed and realized the patenet system has been broken for over 200 years!
A diaphragm piston is fairly low friction and I've seen this concept scaled up to much bigger engines using thicker rubber sheets. People have also cast pistons out of JB Weld inside a copper pipe which works even better.
It looked pretty easy too. The only trick is making sure it doesn't stick to the walls of the mold while ensuring any compounds used to ease unmolding don't contaminate the epoxy.
One person coated the inside of the copper pipe with a thin film of oil to prevent the JB Weld from sticking to mold. He heated the JB Weld in warm water to make it flow better. Mixed it outside of the mold and poured it in. He also placed the crank shaft attachment into the epoxy during curing so it would be firmly attached.
The resulting piston was well matched to the copper pipe cylinder. His other gotcha was that you shouldn't cut the pipe with a pipe cutter as it squeezes the pipe and makes it slightly out of round. The resulting piston and cylinder will bind, so he cut it with a sharp saw.
If any machinists want to be humbled check out a model engineering exhibition, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=SknCpQyB2pk&NR=1 (not such good quality vid but there are many more). Not much CNC in use there.