# Another solenoid engine  ..... with a twist



## black85vette (Mar 14, 2009)

Went off on a bit of a side track after the post by cfellows about his solenoid engine. I found some solenoids on a surplus electronics site for cheap and got some on their way so I can get that engine project underway. I also went out to YouTube and did a search and found a wide variety of designs that people had made. One of them used an old hard disk drive. That got me thinking because I have a bunch of surplus computer stuff. I opened up a hard drive and found that the head assembly was moved by a coil between two magnets. Hmmm, I thought that looks a lot like a solenoid. When I hooked up wires to the coil and applied 1.5v from a battery the head retracted, when I let go it went back. Then it was just a matter of getting some pins in place where the head used to be and on the hub. That even worked out well since the screws in the hub were 2-56 and I have a bunch of those. Then I made a connecting rod out of a piece of 1/4" brass strip. Finally, to time it I used a safety pin rubbing against the mounting hub for the disk and put some tape half way around the hub to create the timing for solenoid. I know it is not a machined engine, but I had some fun with it and it only took a couple of hours to complete.

Here is the video:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yVJKdgnWEQ[/ame]


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## cfellows (Mar 15, 2009)

Pretty cool!

Chuck


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## Noitoen (Mar 15, 2009)

Just happy, the 2 drives in my NAS have a different type of motor :big: :big: :big: :big: otherwise nobody could sleep with the noise. ;D ;D ;D 
Nice work


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## Metal Butcher (Mar 15, 2009)

Very clever, I'm impressed! :bow:

Slicker than a watermelon seed!


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## deere_x475guy (Mar 15, 2009)

Very cool, I have 3 old Western Digital hard drives I was going to grab the magnets out of. Thanks!


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## BMyers (Mar 15, 2009)

that's pretty cool !


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## shred (Mar 15, 2009)

That's a cool little piece of kinetic art!


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