3D-Printing Wankel Engine From Mazda’s Beloved “Rotary Rocket”

December 30, 2018 by Al Williams 30 Comments

Although there was briefly a company called Rotary Rocket, the term is much better known as a nickname for the Mazda RX-7 — one of the few cars that used a Wankel, or rotary, engine. If you ever wondered how these worked, why not print a model? That’s what [Engineering Explained] did. They printed a 1/3 scale model and made a video explaining and demonstrating its operation. The model itself was from Thingiverse, created by [EricThePoolBoy].

One thing we really liked about the model was the use of lights to show the different stages of combustion. Cool air intake is a blue light, hot air is red, and so on. It really helps visualize what’s happening. You can watch the video below.

If you haven’t seen a Wankel before, it is a clever design. It has very few moving parts and offers very smooth power transfer and high power to weight ratio. The downside, though, is that the engine deliberately burns oil to lubricate and seal, so it is difficult to meet emission standards and requires a lot of oil. The fuel efficiency of current designs is not very good either, especially since manufacturers will often trade fuel efficiency for better emissions.

If you’d like to read more about the Wankel, check out our earlier post (and the 165 comments attached). We also looked at — or rather through — another Wankel earlier this year.

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4-Stroke Clock Fires On All Cylinders

February 11, 2018 by Kristina Panos 8 Comments

We love a good clock build around here, especially if it tells time in a unique way. This 4-stroke digital clock designed by [lagsilva] takes the checkered flag in that category. As it displays the time, it also demonstrates the operation of an internal combustion engine. The numbers take the form of pistons and dance an endless repetition of intake, compression, combustion, exhaust.

The clock’s digits are made from two LED matrices driven by an Arduino Uno and a couple of MAX7219 driver boards. The dots that form the digits move up and down the matrices in 1-3-4-2 firing order. As each piston-digit reaches top dead center, its number lights up. This makes it easy to see the firing order, even at higher RPM values.

Our favorite thing about this clock is the variable RPM setting. There’s a 10k pot around back that adjusts the speed of the pistons between 100 and 800 RPM, and it’s configured to accurately represent piston movement at each increment. Floor it past the break to watch the clock rev up and slow back down.

Although it’s difficult to read the time at 800 RPM, it’s awesome to see a real-time visualization of cylinder movement at the average idle speed of a passenger car. We think it might be neat to rev the engine another way, like with an arcade throttle lever or a foot pedal.

If you like the idea of a constantly-moving clock but prefer an analog readout, take a minute to look at this clock without a face.

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Garbage Can RC Car Engine Powers Ridiculous Pencil Sharpener

December 30, 2015 by Dan Maloney 19 Comments

Christmas has come and gone, and no doubt garbage cans are filling with toys that got but a single use before giving up the ghost. If you scrounge around, you might get lucky and score a busted RC car so you can be like [Mike] and build a completely unnecessary nitro-powered pencil sharpener.

This is one from the [Tim The Tool Man Taylor] “more power” files. To be fair, [Mike] acknowledges as much right up front, and as a learning tool for these super-powerful internal combustion engines, we think it’s a pretty cool project. After dealing with a seized cylinder on what looks to be a VX .18 engine rated at about 1.1 horsepower, [Mike] learns the basics of starting and controlling the engine. Once coupled to a pencil sharpener that clearly isn’t engineered to work at a bazillion RPM and jury-rigging a damper for the clutch, [Mike] fires up the engine and races through a pack of 10 pencils in record time.

As silly as this hack seems, it could come in handy if you decide to go into the colored pencil jewelry market at production levels.

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Retrotechtacular: The Diesel Story

September 23, 2014 by Kristina Panos 50 Comments

The diesel engine was, like many things, born of necessity. The main engine types of the day—hot bulb oil, steam, coal gas, and gasoline—were not so thermally efficient or ideal for doing heavy-duty work like driving large-scale electrical generators. But how did the diesel engine come about? Settle in and watch the 1952 documentary “The Diesel Story“, produced by Shell Oil.

The diesel engine is founded on the principle of internal combustion. Throughout the Industrial Age, technology was developing at breakneck pace. While steam power was a great boon to many burgeoning industries, engineers wanted to get away from using boilers. The atmospheric gas engine fit the bill, but it simply wasn’t powerful enough to replace the steam engine.

By 1877, [Nikolaus Otto] had completed work on his coal gas engine built on four-stroke theory. This was the first really useful internal combustion engine and the precursor of modern four-stroke engines. It was eventually adapted for transportation with gasoline fuel. In 1890, the hot bulb oil engine was developed under the name Hornsby-Akroyd and primarily used in stationary power plants. Their flywheels had to be started manually, but once the engine was going, the bulb that drove combustion required no further heating.