Stirlingengineforum.com

That diagram still shows a large space behind your diaphram, which will be detrimental to the performance of the engine - make that as small as possible, so that the pipe essentially just goes straight onto the back of the diaphram.

I can see this kind of material being useful for displacers, particularly if you are using an inert gas, but surely not very useful for "open air" applications (such as round the hot cap, as suggested). Basically, what you have is open-cell graphite, so given enough heat, and any amount of...

So if the power-to-weight advantage is due to the 1:1 ratio, why isn't that used for the other configurations?

Running two engines off a single flame is not the same thing - the flame isn't dependant on the output of either engine. Unfortunately, every type of engine has an upper-limit to efficiency - this is often described as being a "Theoretical Limit" but that isn't really good grammar, as ther...

Is that a double displacer there? and 180 degrees out of phase with each other?

So, if no heat ever goes into the ice, what effect does it have on the system???? I think what Tesla was really getting at, (probably incorrectly) was that if the engine was 100% efficient (no chance) then the _output_ of the engine could be used to cool the ice/cold end. Which sounds to me rather l...

What info are you looking for? I'd have thought that the problems involved in building an eight cylinder engine are pretty much the same as for twelve cylinders, just with different angles. (And not necessarily then - sometimes multi-cylinder IC engine designs are merely two/three/four cylinder desi...

That picture shows the cylinder being vented at the right hand side - is that a mistake in the drawing, or how you've built it??

Even in an ideal Stirling Engine the piston has to move to draw power, which will result in a small change in volume.

Do you want enough power to run a computer, or just enough to be able to charge a device - there's a massive difference between the two figures.

Sounds to me like you are talking about a variation on what is currently known as an "Air Source Heat Pump"
I can't say I understand it well enough though, to do the maths to check whether it is theoretically possible or not.

For the record, you can also get small ball bearings out of certain types of computer back-up tapes - I've grabbed a few from DLT tapes.
But am I reading you correctly - the 'proper' ball bearings have _more_ friction than your 'hand made' bearings?

Of course it's _possible_ - though you might find it easiest to build a farm of smaller engines, or a single large engine with a large number of pistons. Whether it is in anyway financially viable is a different story, but it seems highly unlikely. Most people build Stirlings as a hobby, or to get a...

That sealing looks to me like it is going to introduce an awful lot of friction.