A Giant Engine Needs A Giant Engine Stand

September 2, 2021 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

Engine stands are great to have on hand for when you need to work on an engine outside a vehicle. However, if your engine is particularly large, you might find off-the-shelf solutions difficult to find. [Liebregts] was recently contacted by someone in just such a pickle, who had an 8-litre Bentley engine from 1928 and nothing to put it on. Thus, constructing a custom engine stand was in order.

The original home of the hefty 8-liter engine.

The stand is built out of stout 50x50x4mm steel tubing in order to handle the weight of the gigantic vintage engine. It’s designed with an eye to ground clearance, such that an engine crane can easily slide under the stand when it’s time to lift the engine back in the car. It also allows the whole engine to be turned upside down, and even raised and lowered. This makes it easier to get to different parts of the engine, while keeping the center of gravity where it needs to be to avoid the whole assembly falling over.

It’s not a hugely complicated build, but it goes to show just how much of a difference it can make when you have the right tools for the job. With the engine out and on its stand, it’s much easier to work on and handle the many complicated tasks in its restoration. It also benefits from being custom built to suit the dimensions of the Bentley engine. Everything fits and it just works!

While few of us have rare 1928 Bentleys in need of an engine-out service, it’s a build that should serve as great inspiration for those working on similar tasks. Meanwhile, consider building yourself a custom engine crane to help out around the garage.

Japanese Rocket Engine Explodes: Continuously And On Purpose

September 2, 2021 by Lewin Day 62 Comments

Liquid-fuelled rocket engine design has largely followed a simple template since the development of the German V-2 rocket in the middle of World War 2. Propellant and oxidizer are mixed in a combustion chamber, creating a mixture of hot gases at high pressure that very much wish to leave out the back of the rocket, generating thrust.

However, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has recently completed a successful test of a different type of rocket, known as a rotating detonation engine. The engine relies on an entirely different method of combustion, with the aim to produce more thrust from less fuel. We’ll dive into how it works, and how the Japanese test bodes for the future of this technology.

Deflagration vs. Detonation

Humans love combusting fuels in order to do useful work. Thus far in our history, whether we look at steam engines, gasoline engines, or even rocket engines, all these technologies have had one thing in common: they all rely on fuel that burns in a deflagration. It’s the easily controlled manner of slow combustion that we’re all familiar with since we started sitting around campfires. Continue reading “Japanese Rocket Engine Explodes: Continuously And On Purpose” →

Game Development Hack Chat

August 16, 2021 by Dan Maloney No comments

Join us on Wednesday, August 18 at noon Pacific for the Game Development Hack Chat with Kyle Donnelly!

Chances are we all have fallen into the time trap of computer games at one point or another. It’s easy to do — the worlds that games put before us can be immersive and addictive, and even if they’re populated by fantastical creatures hell-bent on our virtual destruction, they offer a degree of escapism and relaxation that can be hard to come by with any other form of entertainment.

But what does it take to build these virtual worlds? How exactly does one come up with all the ideas needed to make a game fresh and exciting? And once you’ve got the ideas, how do you turn them into the code needed to make the whole thing work? Kyle Donnelly has quite a bit of experience with the game development process, seeing his idea through from initial prototyping to working with a publisher and even getting the game demonstrated at conventions. Along the way, he picked up a collection of tips and shortcuts to make the process easier, as well as developing a small suite of tools to help set up and test game levels quickly and easily, and to deal with the custom physics of his virtual world.

Join us as Kyle stops by the Hack Chat to talk about game development from an angle that rarely gets much coverage — from the software side.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, August 18 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Banner Art: Video Games Awesome Fanart by sacolin99.

Building A Stump Grinder From The Ground Up

July 27, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 8 Comments

Felling a tree properly is a skill that takes some practice to master, especially without causing any injuries or property damage. Getting the tree cut down though is sometimes only half of the battle, as the stump and roots need to be addressed as well. Unless you have a few years to wait for them to naturally decompose you might want to employ a stump grinder, and unless you want to spend a chunk of money on a stump grinding service or buy your own, you might want to do what [Workshop from Scratch] did and build your own.

This stump grinder isn’t anything to scoff at, either, and might even fool some into thinking it’s a consumer grade tool from a big box store. Far from it though, as almost everything down to the frame is custom machined specifically for this build. The only thing that isn’t built from scratch, including the cutting wheel, is the beefy 15 horsepower motor. Once it gets going it is able to carve stumps down to the ground in no time thanks especially to some gear reductions in the drive line from the motor to the cutting head.

Before anyone mentions safety, it looks like [Workshop from Scratch] has made some upgrades since his last project which was a gas-powered metal cutting chainsaw. Since then it looks like he has upgraded the sheet metal to something a little thicker, even though a stump grinder has arguably lower risk due to the slower speed of the cutting wheel and also to the fact that the cutting medium is wood and not metal. There are also brakes and an emergency shutoff switch. It sure seems like a fine addition to his collection of completely custom tools.

Continue reading “Building A Stump Grinder From The Ground Up” →

Building A Big Ol’ Powerful Wheelbarrow

July 10, 2021 by Lewin Day 16 Comments

Sometimes you’ve gotta haul big heavy loads around a wide area. Regular wheelbarrows are fine, but it can quickly grow tiring when one has to make multiple trips. [Workshop from Scratch] instead elected to build a powered wheelbarrow, with plenty of grunt to shift loads about.

The build is absolutely from the ground up, welded up from sections of steel RHS, and given rear steering for plenty of maneuverability. The actual job of steering is handled by a rack repurposed from automotive use, set up with a single-sided attachment to the rear wheel assembly. It’s quite a neat and tidy way of doing the job, and seems to work well. Drive is sent to the front wheels through a hydrostatic lawnmower transmission. A 17-horsepower engine provides plenty of grunt for the job at hand, even coming with electric start already fitted for the ultimate in ease-of-use.

It’s impressive to see just how much of the rig was put together from raw materials; even the fuel tank was fabricated in steel. We’ve seen similar builds from [Workshop from Scratch] before, like this tidy bandsaw. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Building A Big Ol’ Powerful Wheelbarrow” →

Can The Solenoid Engine Power A Car?

June 26, 2021 by Bryan Cockfield 12 Comments

[Emiel] aka [The Practical Engineer] makes all kinds of fun projects in his fully-featured shop, and one of his tangents has been building a series of solenoid engines. These engines mimic the function of an internal combustion engine, with each solenoid acting as a piston. The only problem with [Emiel]’s concept engines, though, was that he never actually put them into a vehicle to prove their effectiveness. This build finally proves that they can work at powering a vehicle.

The project starts with a new engine. [Emiel] chose a V4 design using four solenoids and an Arduino-based controller. After some trouble getting it to operate properly, he scavenged a small circuit board he built in his V8 solenoid engine to help with timing. With that installed, the solenoids click away and spin the crankshaft at a single constant speed. The vehicle itself was mostly 3D printed, with two aluminum tubes as support structures to mount the engine. Even the wheels were 3D printed with a special rubber coating applied to them. With a small drive train assembled, it’s off to the races for this tiny prototype.

While the small car doesn’t have steering and only goes at a constant speed, the proof of concept that these tiny electric engines actually work is a welcomed addition to [Emiel]’s collection of videos on these curious engines. Of course they’re not as efficient as driving the wheels directly with an electric motor, but we all know there’s no fun in that. If you haven’t seen his most intricate build, the V8 is certainly worth checking out, and also shows off the timing circuitry he repurposed for this car.

Continue reading “Can The Solenoid Engine Power A Car?” →

Toyota’s Hydrogen-Burning Racecar Soon To Hit The Track

May 13, 2021 by Lewin Day 90 Comments

With the rise of usable electric cars in the marketplace, and markets around the world slowly phasing out the sale of fossil fuel cars, you could be forgiven for thinking that the age of the internal combustion engine is coming to an end. History is rarely so cut and dry, however, and new technologies aim to keep the combustion engine alive for some time yet.

Toyota’s upcoming Corolla Sport-based hydrogen-burning racer. Credit: Toyota media

One of the most interesting technologies in this area are hydrogen-burning combustion engines. In contrast to fuel cell technologies, which combine hydrogen with oxygen through special membranes in order to create electricity, these engines do it the old fashioned way – in flames. Toyota has recently been exploring the technology, and has announced a racecar sporting a three-cylinder hydrogen-burning engine will compete in this year’s Fuji Super TEC 24 Hour race.

Hydrogen Engines?

The benefit of a hydrogen-burning engine is that unlike burning fossil fuels, the emissions from burning hydrogen are remarkably clean. Burning hydrogen in pure oxygen produces only water as a byproduct. When burned in atmospheric air, the result is much the same, albeit with small amounts of nitrogen oxides produced. Thus, there’s great incentive to explore the substitution of existing transportation fuels with hydrogen. It’s a potential way to reduce pollution output while avoiding the hassles of long recharge times with battery electric technologies. Continue reading “Toyota’s Hydrogen-Burning Racecar Soon To Hit The Track” →