Stirling Generator

[Jellyf0x]

Beautiful!

[animebsd]

where can i get these gauges from?

very beutiful engine!

[BrokenChallengerWing]

it costs 400,000$ to play that awful music for 12 seconds

[kurisu925]

I would use this to power lighting in a room. Then I could light up an entire room by just lighting one candle or oil lamp. It would be pretty effective indoor lighting at night.

[JohnCBriggs]

Beautiful Engine man. Nicely done.

[vagitoe]

Rub it with cheeta blood to make it faster.

[QUICKDRAW0]

@vagitoe omg dude best comment ever

[dundermiflinpaper]

i love the look of that engine. both the fact that its all stainless( or is that aluminum?, still looks great) and its simle looking design, great job!

[joebro391]

hmmm...not to be nit-picky, and I REALLY LOVE THE DESIGN, but where do you get 500mW from?? 3V x .012A = 36mW

[PlaniTechnic]

You're absolutely right, it's only using 36mW electrical to drive the radio. The 500mW is the mechanical power which the engine is capable of putting out. To get this number I calculated the moment of inertia of the flywheel and then measured the acceleration of the engine. So I was able to calculate the max power of the engine.......

[joebro391]

ah, okay, i gotcha. thanks man!

[shorty40merza]

very nice but i was curious how much power is that flame rated? is 500 MW the mechanical power output of the engine ? or is it the electrical output of the generator ? because dont forget that generators also have efficiency... I am very curious to calculate the total efficiency,,, like is the flame rated 70 watts? and what wattage is the generator giving? is it one watt? that would make it an efficincy of 1/70

thank you

[fernandesilyt]

How many RPM?

[Stirlinggenerator]

Engine works very nice!

5 Stars

[GizGunnar]

That's nice, but a $10 solar cell can put out 1.5 watts and is only 100mm X 100mm.

[Toroer]

Thats not the point here... If you look at it that way, you don't even need the solar panels. Just plug it into your wall outlet. That radio would take a few years before it uses $10 of electric. This is a very neat stirling engine on works. Well done.

[afleececooper]

It can be made more efficient than current solar tech, check out SES stirling energy systems for a large Stirling solar generator.

Though it all depends on application too, panels are much more convenient for most uses, but the Stirling is interesting tech for large stationary generators,

[newton2013]

Oooh- smmmmart.

[vengencefrom1979]

yeah i know.

[pisby1]

I would love to build something like this. Do you pretty much need to own a machine shop to do it? how do you make the parts? do you build it in CAD first?

[1andy2]

I'm no machinist (just an amateur tinkerer) but for something small like this, I imagine you could do most of this with a manual lathe and alot of off the shelf parts.

A small aluminum or brass forge would probably help, too.

But you're not going to run your house on something like this. His energy source is a candle! As the author points out, you need an engine capable of providing that much power and you need an energy source capable of running it.

[mephil8800]

you need no more than jam jars and a rubber glove... and some wire

[imikewillrockyou]

Sweet!

[Arjenshenzhen]

wow, that is very wel done! the mechanics look very smooth, hardly any loss there, since you are an expert on this, what model stirling can run off of say 80 degrees temperature difference? Thanks in advance! PS, im looking for more than 2 KW :-)

[PlaniTechnic]

Hi

I think it would be very difficult to build an engine with 2kW power off 80 degC temperature difference. Because the smaller the temperature difference the worse the efficiency gets. So you would need a huge engine and as well a huge amount of energy to run it.

[edgeidore84]

@Arjenshenzhen Just buy a bunch and put them in series parallel.

[advenbbc]

Amazing! Grate job! 5 stars.

[phdecora]

even if the whole world runs on solar or wind power, nothing can save us from horrible music.

[plani107]

Amen....

[ibercaracole]

Where can I get a diagram or schematic on how to construct a Stirling Engine?

tanks

[cyborgtroy]

google?

[electrique527]

Hi,

very nice work!

The belt drive is somewhat inefficient though, if you manage to run the engine faster you should couple the generator directly to the shaft. Or use gears to spead it up.

I managed to get 1 Watt from a small tape motor, but it needs to go very fast.

Also, you can make some small fins on the flywheel to cool the cold end of the engine. Just a small bit of airflow will help a lot.

[bobbybutchey016]

you can run a stirling engine without using a flame im about to put up a video on how to make one. its called an ltd stirling.The way a stirling works is by temperature differentials. using hot and cold air to make the pistons move.

[joness105639]

any idea how to scale this up big enough to run off of a wood fire and run a radio station in the democratic republic of congo using a combination of local materials and things that can fit aboard a small plane?

[RHEAD100]

Really Sweet; Just think how long it would run on one of the gig candales you find in yard sales for less than a dollar and they burn for 18 or 20 hours. Really nice work.

[441rider]

I found this inspiring thanks! maybe try a brushless rc plane motor or cpu fan? I am trying to build facing coils and have magnets on the flywheel.

S

[desiredusername]

Interesting, thank you.

[desiredusername]

12 mA at 3V is 36 milliwatts. You should hook up a bank of radios to use the full power.

[PlaniTechnic]

Yes, 36 milliwatt is what the Radio is using. It would be possible to hook up some more load. But the Generator is actually a Motor out of a Tapedrive, and this one is not able to put out a lot more power than it does now.

[desiredusername]

How did you get the 500 mW figure? A different generator? Or is that calculated?

[PlaniTechnic]

It's calculated. I Calculated the Moment of Inertia of the Flywheel an then measured the acceleration of the Engine. So I was able to calculate the max output Power. That's not very accurate, but it gives an idea. For more accuracy it would be needed to measure torque and speed of the Engine.