Running stirling engine

Elias · Jan 19, 2014

First Stirling engine running!

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erV7f0AxxmU[/ame]

Takes quite some heat to get it running but i can see some improvements like just a tiny bit tighter fit om the cold side piston and maybe try and separate the hot and cold side better.

I have already turned a "waist" on the hot cylinder so that it does not have that big contact area to the hotter cooling flange

The cold cylinder or really the complete engine gets rather hot after some running.

Some thinking gives me that i shall try and "isolate" the cold side from the hot side by making "weight saving" holes in the plate on the left side of the larger beam, to allow the complete base to act as a cooling flange for the hotter side. Is this correct of am I thinking wrong?

Longboy · Jan 20, 2014

Your Stirling is going to get hot with a blow torch no matter how light and hole-E your frame is with a small fin radiator. It should run on an alcohol flame. The large 1/2 in. frame is a heat sink itself and with alcohol the radiators will (per plan) do the job. The displacer pushrod should have some WD40 to lub the gland bushing. Disconnect the connecting rods one at a time from flywheel and move the pistons in/out of the cylinders, try to get a feel for sticky joints and rotating masses. ZZ type bearings kill friction in Stirling models like Raid kills bugs. Pull the displacer out and note any rubbing inside its cylinder. You will get, if any friction noted and addressed.... twice the speed with half the heat input.

Nerdz · Jan 21, 2014

Where did you get the plans for such a beautiful thing?

Elias · Jan 22, 2014

Hello!

I'll put alcohol burner on the to build list, thats a good benchmark to know that it should run on that, it might already do. I was very eager to see it run so I gave it all the heat i could

About plans, I might lack googling skills but I could not find a decent set of plans that did not include glass syringes so i googled for the proportions instead and made my own design!