Stirlingengineforum.com

Hi,

my Name is Marco. I'm from Germany. I have build five stirling engines for the moment and working on number six.

Best regards.

I'm new here (well, if I did have an account before I certainly don't recall what it was or what I posted, lol).

I'm your avg hobbyist/tinkerer and sadly don't have a machine shop but I've always been intrigued by Stirling engines. I do have a cheap kit that came from Asia together with a magazine. It sits on top of a coffee mug heater on my desk and keeps me company - along with the Drinking Bird. How many of you remember the famous drinking bird?

Anyhow, I've got the Stirling bug once again so I'll be posting a bunch of questions.

Thanks.

WG

G'day all, I'm Curtis based in Busselton, Western Australia. Found this site researching about stirling engines. I will have access to a metal workshop in March 2015. I'm Looking to build a stirling engine for a community base program to pump water by means of using solar thermal energy. I quite excited about Stirling engine, and have been getting of local community support for it as well. I will have questions to ask and progress to share as the project develops.
Cheers
C

Hi Curtis, We'll be ready when you are, so ask away. Welcome to the forum.
Ian S C

I'm here. I live off the grid and am looking for sustainable ways to git 'er done. We have a 200W solar array with a 12V 300(?)Ah deep cycle battery bank. It's not much, but it works for us.

I've been looking for a sustainable refrigeration solution that doesn't involve a consumable resource. I've done the math re radiative cooling, and I'm convinced that it will work. I just don't have enough practice with the table saw, so the prototype is a work in progress. For now, we have an icebox, but hauling ice over 8 miles of dirt road is getting old.

skyfridge, I read somewhere of someone running a refrigeration unit from a wind turbine. Ian S C

Ian S C wrote:skyfridge, I read somewhere of someone running a refrigeration unit from a wind turbine. Ian S C

Thanks, Ian. I guess I didn't finish the thought. I'm going to find a way to finish this prototype, and I am confident that it will work.

It is often very windy here. Someone in town told me that annually the airport records winds of 80mph. Some of the neighbors have turbines, in addition to solar. The local cattle ranchers have a windmill up the road to pump water, and the wind bent the blades. Now, they use solar.

Wind, solar or propane for refrigeration is pricey. Of course, they make DC fridges that are more efficient and more geared for renewable energy systems, but as I recall you're still talking an additional 400W in solar panels and the additional battery capacity. When we add on to the power capacity, Amy wants to use her coffee machine. (Yikes!)

Completely passive refrigeration would fit better into our energy budget. No fuel, no electricity and no external heat source. Just one big heat sink that is colder than the freezer needs to be.

To finish the thought in my previous post, I became interested in Stirling engines when I realized that the difference between ambient temperature and the effective sky temperature could be exploited to produce power. I am here to explore the potential of using an LTD Stirling engine to produce power from ambient heat. I am certain it is possible, but investigation is needed to determine if it would be more economical than using thermocouples or another device to exploit the temperature difference.

I look at it this way. If I was able to come up with the invention in US Patent 4624113 before I found the patent, I can devise a way to make a Stirling engine efficient and inexpensive enough to make it worthwhile.

Jack

hello
My name is Jorge Hugo Cordero, I am Electrical Engineer, I live in La Plata (Argentina) and between my hobbies are heat engines.
It is one of the activities that help me keep my mind active.
I can read English well enough, but I find it difficult to write.
So I write in Spanish, I translate (with Google) to English and back to Spanish.
I change the syntax of written so that the result is similar to the original.
The translation result seems intelligible (at least in the case of English).
It's not perfect, but it seems to work.

Saludos
Jorge Cordero

original-----------------------------------------------------------
Hola
Mi nombre es Jorge Hugo Cordero, soy Ingeniero Electricista, vivo en La Plata (Argentina) y entre mis aficiones se encuentran las máquinas térmicas.
Es una de las actividades que me ayudan a mantener la mente activa.
Puedo leer bastante bien el Inglés, pero me resulta dificil escribirlo.
Por eso escribo en Español, lo traduzco (con Google) al Inglés y nuevamente al Español.
Yo modifico la sintaxis del escrito hasta que el resultado sea similar al original.
La traducción obtenida parece inteligible (por lo menos en el caso del Inglés).
No es perfecto, pero párece funcionar.

Jorge, the translation seems OK, it's easily understandable, and there are English speakers that have worse English than you have. Welcome to the forum. Ian S C

Hello everyone, Steve here from Norwich UK (Better known as Swifty)...I do hope to get some knowledge, and help about my first Stirling engine, so you will probably see me around ...Thanks

Hello,

Bill-W retired 4 years ago and recently bought a metal lathe and interested in small projects to learn with

Stirling Engines seem perfect and they can become big projects too.

Currently googling and trawling the internet for any and all info available - that is how I found this forum

Was thinking on starting off small and simple and easy and then progressing to small and simple and lots of shinybling technical looking bits that go whizz.

Biggest I see me doing is a Moriya fan by Dr. Senft and smallest would be size of a coffee cup.

Save me some googling - any recommended downloads for newbies anywhere ? Plans Technical books Generally good web pages - I'v found a few stunning lookking dutch web pages and this one and a few with instructuions for using coke cans.



Regards

Bill

Welcome Bill, I see you'v found Dr Senft, another to look out for is James G, Rizzo, any of his books including "The Stirling Engine Manual" volumes 1 and 2. A free down load is "Making Stirling Engines" by Andy Ross.
Ian S C

Hi all, I am from Pretoria South-Africa. I have 14 years experiance in speciality composites fabrication. I would like to build a Alpha engine that can produce real usable power.

Thanks for having me

Andre

Hi all,
I've built a couple of pop can stirling engines and want to try something more ambitious that has a practical application.
I'm an engineer by trade and like motorcycle camping in my summer free time.

Hi,

Had some health issues, have 'some' reading to do here....

Chris