Stirlingengineforum.com

theropod2 wrote:...
If any of you are capable of translating the info I would be very appreciative.

...

There is not really any useful information, only general information for people who do not know the stirling engine at all. In example the last sentence is, that stirling engines can convert sun light into mechanical energy directly.

kind regards
Soeren

Litteral translation:
On his model, the inventor shows us the heart of his 'sun machine': The Stirling Engine. You can also say 'hot air motor'. Eckhart Weber has of course no sun in his working place, but a torch or a small flame work as well.
Stirling engines can also immediately transform solar energy into mechanical energy.

I have a question about scaling up Stirling engines.
I think there's no reason why a Stirling engine cannot be scaled up, but I'm not completely sure.
Imagine a very large gamma machine, f.i. 10 metres in diameter. Would it work completely the same as a coffee cup machine?

In the youTube video, a flat plate Stirling is shown, and I can imagine that you could make a plate so big that it covers a whole house roof. (And then of course adjust it in a way that it runs silently instead of the noise of the video.)
What could be the reason why almost all Stirling machines are so tiny?

I'm still waiting to see how the 55 gal drum "can" engine works out. There have been quite a few fairly large engines made and are pushing small tractors and small boats around but I've never seen a large "LTD" yet. It seems possible but I'm betting the increase in size would of course increase the weight of all the moving parts and you would still have what the hand size models achieve, just enough power to over-come the friction to function...if that. Up scaling non LTD types have trouble evenly heating the hot end cap and then you have the same old problem, you might as well use another engine type (IC) to produce more useful power from the fuel you are consuming. There does seem to be some promise with the large mirror reflector / stirling generators being built.

Hi RS,

If you have'nt yet got the german website translated, as a last resort you may want to try

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/

Just paste the german website's URL into the "Translate a webpage" field then select the "from and to language" as "German to English" then click on translate.

The translated page may not be an exact word for word translation and the grammer may be a bit way off. But I personally make do with this option many a times.