Engine Hacks

160 Articles

3D Printed Engine Chugs Away On Balloon Power

March 10, 2017 by 32 Comments

So often, 3D printer owners buy their machines with the promise of freeing themselves from the shackles of commercial manufactured items, and making all sorts of wonderful and useful things to improve their lives. Then they proceed to print a menagerie of good luck cats and toy elephants, that little tugboat, and a host of other pretty but ultimately useless items in garishly colored filament.

Perhaps this is an unfair assessment, but if you have the sneaking feeling that it might just describe you then could we point you at something that while it still has little use is at least interesting to play with. [Gzumwalt]’s single cylinder air engine is as its name suggests, a piston engine that runs on compressed air. You don’t need a shop compressor though, your lungs or an inflated balloon will suffice.

It’s a simple enough design, but it does incorporate two connecting rods, one of which drives a sliding valve. All the files are available for download, and there is a video we’ve placed below the break showing it chugging away nicely from a balloon. It might not be the most useful of engines and it may not bring you good luck, but it beats a plastic menagerie in the interest stakes.

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Cordless Drill Uses No Electricity

January 16, 2017 by 43 Comments

There are few projects on how to make your own cordless drill, but what sets [Johnnyq90’s] amazing project apart is the fact that his power plant is a nitro engine. Not an easy task of course, but he makes it look easier than it is, and we really enjoyed the construction process.

He uses an RC Kyosho GX12 engine that was previously modified, changing the cooling head with a larger one. The engine drives a gearbox that was taken from another drill. All other parts were hand made. The clutch was carefully machined, and the cooling fan was made in a 3D printer. Other necessary parts were the frame, brass spacers to adjust the engine height and alignment, throttle arm and handle. In the end even the gearbox had to be modified for higher speed. The finished drill sure looks and sounds terrific, and seems to be perfectly capable of doing its job.

As with other mechanical projects from [Johnnyq90], the video has good timing and attention to detail. His channel is definitely worth a visit, specially if you like turbines.

Thermoacoustic Engine Has Only One Moving Part

January 3, 2017 by 19 Comments

Modern internal combustion engines have around 500 parts, with many of them moving in concert with the piston. But have you seen an engine with only one moving part, out of four in total? In the thermoacoustic engine, the power piston is the only part in motion. [YTEngineer] has built a very simple prototype that works on power provided by a tealight.

His little engine, slightly larger than a cigarette lighter, is composed of a test tube that serves as the cylinder, a smaller tube, called the choke, that fits inside the test tube, the stack, which is nothing more than some steel wool, and the power piston. [YTEnginer] nicely explains how the engine works: basically a temperature difference is used to induce high-amplitude sound waves that create the piston’s back-and-forth movement. The engine can be easily converted to an electricity generator by adding a magnet to the piston and a coil surrounding it.

The thermoacoustic engine is a particular type of Stirling engine. They have been proposed as electricity generators for space travel using radioisotopes as the heat source, among other applications. You may be interested in the history of Stirling engines, or perhaps even build a simple one.

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200 Years Of The Stirling Engine

December 27, 2016 by 56 Comments

In the early years of the nineteenth century, steam engines were at work in a variety of practical uses. However, they were still imperfect in many ways. One particular problem were the boilers, that had a tendency to explode, causing injuries and fatalities. Reverend Dr. Robert Stirling, a Scottish clergyman, was concerned about the death toll from exploding boilers. Based on previous work by George Cayley (known for his pioneering work on aeronautics), Stirling filed his patent for a safer engine in 1816. That makes this year the bicentenary of this engine. The Stirling engine has the highest theoretical efficiency of any thermal engine. It is also a relatively simple machine. Unlike other types of engines, there are no valves, and that makes the mechanical design much simpler.

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Miniature Engine Model Made Of Paper

December 11, 2016 by 18 Comments

You can make a lot of stuff out of paper, but a single-stroke engine model less than an inch across? That’s a new one, courtesy of Russian hacker [Aliaksei Zholner], who built a quite remarkable model of a single-stroke engine out of paper (in Russian, translated version via Google Translate). Measuring less than an inch across, it is driven by compressed air and accurately models the rotary action of a single-stroke engine, where a piston in the cylinder drives a flywheel that creates the engine cycle.

The creator has managed to run it at up to about 60 revolutions per second, or about 3600rpm. That’s an impressive speed for a few bits of paper and glue, and there is even an input restrictor that can control the airflow that drives the model.  We’ve featured some interesting paper creations before, such as this papercraft robot and a Strandbeest, but this one is a step beyond. [Aliaksei] has also made the plans and template for this available, so those with steady hands can go ahead and try to make their own.

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Solenoid Engine With Woodworking Chops

September 25, 2016 by 28 Comments

Simple, elegant, and well executed. This solenoid engine build is everything we’ve come to love about [Matthias Wandel]’s work. If you don’t recognize his name you probably remember the name of his site: Wood Gears.

In what feels like an afternoon project he put together a solenoid engine. It translates the linear motion of a small solenoid into the circular motion of a flywheel. The only specialized part in this hack is the solenoid. It has a pretty long throw and includes a hinge pin at the end.

The rest is crafted mostly of wood — it is admirable how he uses that table saw like a surgeon uses a scalpel. The wooden components include a base, flywheel, very interesting bearing blocks, and a few mounting brackets to hold everything in just the right place. Add to this a coat hanger for the cam shaft, the internals of a terminal strip for the cam, some heavy gauge wire, and you’re in business. The latter two make up a clever electrical switch that synchronizes the drive of the solenoid with the flywheel.

It’s amusing to hear [Matthias] mention that this engine isn’t very practical. We still think the project has merit — it’s great for learning about how simple an engine can be, and for developing an intuitive appreciation for how great commercially available motors and engines actually are. Plus, if you can mimic these fabrication techniques you can build anything. Great work on this one [Matthias], another thing of beauty!

Check out his video below, then go back and check out his air-powered engine and of course, a hack that actually uses wood gears.

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Megasquirting My 1983 Datsun Z

September 8, 2016 by 97 Comments

When Dinosaurs Drove to Work

Back in the mid 1980’s I worked at a company called Commodore Business Machines, a company that made home computers where our annual Superbowl was the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the first week in January.

Some time in November a Datsun Z would get parked in the front lot and then not move until whatever snow mounds that got plowed over it melted sometime in early spring. Ultimately I would have it towed leaving behind a sad little pile of rust and nuts and bolts. With a bonus check in hand for finishing the newest computer on time I would go buy another used Z and repeat the cycle.

Climate Change and Rust

These days the old Datsun Z’s; 240Z, 260Z, 280Z, 280ZX, are somewhat rare, probably because they were real rust buckets even when new. After having sacrificed a few myself in search of the next home computer I set out to rescue one for old times’ sake. I really did love the car so I made it my project to restore one. Now I have a total of three Z carcasses, an engine, and a transmission all sitting out back and an almost finished Z in the garage.

Since I had torn the engine down to its bare components I took the opportunity to make some changes: increased the size of the turbocharger, increased bore and stroke of the cylinder/piston, improved the fuel distribution, and improved the flow of air with things like porting the heads and an inter-cooler.

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