Stirling engines‎

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Tin Can Stirling Generator plans

Here's a simple Stirling engine generator that I built. It's made out of coke cans and tin cans. It's a fairly standard coke can Stirling design except that I added insulation and a larger cooling jacket. The output is currently around 30mw but I'm hoping to improve that with a few little tweaks. The diaphragm is a balloon and the cranks are made out of thick copper wire. The cranks have bushings for all of the connections that are made out of electrical terminal blocks drilled to the crank size. The displacer is moved by a fishing wire connection that runs through a bicycle inner-tube reinforced hole. You can see my plans for how I built the basic engine here Don't forget to check out Stirling Generator MK2 here! Construction details : This is the firebox and insulation. The firebox is a large tin. The chimney is made from a piece of scrap steel pipe that already had a nice bend in it. The insulation I used is not fire proof so it must be supervised at all times, though I tried burning it and it doesn't burn well at all which is good news!     This is the alternator bracket which clamps through the coke can with two screws, It's made from 1.2mm steel sheet. I just cut the shape out with tin snips. This is another shot of the alternator bracket, you can see I bent two tabs to keep the alternator steady. This is the displacer being tested in the can. You can see the fishing line connection. The displacer is just wire wool which acts as a moving regenerator. The second picture show the displacer being formed. This is the crankcase and cranks, Copper with brass terminal blocks. The terminal blocks are drilled out to 2mm for the bearing pivots. This shows the bearings that are made out of spoke nipples drilled out to match the copper wire. YouTube Video Read More