Stirling Engine

Been quite busy with other things recently, but thought I had better post something, a university project for a change.

Since the start of the course, we have been working on a design for an eco-friendly boat (not by choice...don't get me started on the lack of interesting engineering occurring these days!) and have elected to go for a bio-gas powered Stirling engine as our main power source with waste heat recovery from a thermo-couple. Anyway, we have a presentation day towards the end of the year where we set up a stand, we get marked and visitors from industry come and view our design proposals. It was decided we needed a working Stirling engine on the table!

Here at MBI, we aren't big fans of planning our projects, but with the laser cutter at my disposal, some degree of planning had to be done! I started doing the frame components in Solidworks for putting into the laser cutter - it's not a proper assembly of components, there are no axles or bearings and the cylinders are missing, but as these will be made by hand, I didn't draw them! The assembly was really just to check all the tabs and cut outs lined up correctly.

The Solidworks drawings should be fed into the laser cutter tomorrow, and a kit of parts for a Stirling engine should come out!

The Engineer.