When Stirling Engines Meet 3D Printers

Let’s face it, everybody wants to build a Stirling engine. They’re refined, and generally awesome. They’re also a rather involved fabrication project which is why you don’t see a lot of them around.

This doesn’t remove all of the complexity, but by following this example 3D printing a Sterling engine is just about half possible. This one uses 3D printing for the frame, mounting brackets, and flywheel. That wheel gets most of its mass from a set of metal nuts placed around the wheel. This simple proof-of-concept using a candle is shown off in the video after the break, where it also gets an upgrade to an integrated butane flame.

Stirling engines operate on heat, making printed plastic parts a no-go for some aspects of the build. But the non-printed parts in this design are some of the simplest we’ve seen, comprising a glass syringe, a glass cylinder, and silicone tubing to connect them both. The push-pull of the cylinder and syringe are alternating movements caused by heat of air from a candle flame, and natural cooling of the air as it moves away via the tubing.

We’d say this one falls just above mid-way on the excellence scale of these engines (and that’s great considering how approachable it is). On the elite side of things, here’s a 16-cylinder work of art. The other end of the scale may not look as beautiful, but there’s nothing that puts a bigger smile on our faces than clever builds using nothing but junk.

17 thoughts on “When Stirling Engines Meet 3D Printers

  1. Three labels on that image up top, and two of them are wrong!
    Should be “Displacer Cylinder” and “Power Cyclinder”
    Having that much tubing between the two will result in massive losses…

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