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Sorry no pics, I don't think of stove tops as low temp, low temp for me is boiling water, and the stove top would be 3 or 4 times that at a guess, and a bit more when really stoked up. There is a motor on the net some where that uses the glass from a gas lanten as the displacer cylinder, can't remem...

Can't help with the expansion rate, my only worry is the friction, I have had thoughts of combining the JB weld or similar with gaphite powder, but I'v never got round to trying. Friction is proberbly the biggest killer of little hot air engines, the other is air leaks. As long as your design is in ...

Hi Spandit, I'v got two of them, the first one I made is a Ringbom type, but the displacer bouncing up and down without the control of a crankshaft made too much noise, ti also was a bit too powerful, the torque of the fan causes the whole motor to turn slowly on the stove top. Next I made a Gamma m...

The article is called Why Pistons by Geoff Bartlett. 1992 Vol 167 no., 3932 part 1 page 567, part 2 page 693 Model Engineer. You may be able to get a copy, or find it at your local library. Don't know how a JB weld piston will do as a hot piston, it should be OK on the cold side, although you could ...

Shanex-2, some people have trouble with the ALPHA motors because of the two fitted pistons, although I had no difficulty in my Ross Yoke ALPHA, just the extra time spent lapping the bores, the Heylandt crown on the hot piston is held in place with a high strength, high temp glue, the top of the hot ...

By fire box, I take it you mean the displacer cylinder, the cylindrical bit just above the burner. I'd tend to make it from stainless steel tube with a stainless disk TIG welded in the end, the top end brazed/silver soldered into the flange. Or if you have a lathe, and time, you can make it by borin...

I agree with you Carnot, I was looking at a simple way of doing it without heat, and your idea of using predrilled bar is a good one, the idea is to use whatever you can find. I suppose you could use the aluminium bar with glue, could be worth a try if nothing else was available. There are many ways...

you could make the crank webs out of flat metal, say 1/4" thick, drilledin pairs the diameter of the shaft. Feed the long shaftright throughan the crank pinwith the bearing in place, and maybe the conrod to. Loctite the shaft as is, and when cured saw the bit out of the main shaft between the w...

Don't know if this counts, but most of my hot air engines can do something, one has a water pump, used for pumping water from one place to another, cooling the motor on the way. That motor also runs a small generator. Tthre larger motors run generators, one uses the power from this to run a cooling ...

Did you manage to get the bends OK on the crankshaft, I never seem to get bends like that just spot on, I machine My crankshafts, that way you can get a more compact design. I must look into the water bottle idea. Ian S C

Ferraccio, do you mean "Christchurch", if you do the temperatures here on a few days during winter the temperature goes down to pehaps a little below minus 10 deg C, every few years (10 or so) we get a bit of snow and it gets a bit cooler for a few days, inthe summer the temperatures can g...

Hi Jim, thats small, but did you look at the smallest, I wonder which has the most power, the motor, or the house fly? That one is now the smallest I'v seen a photo of. I believe that there have been ones built at microscopic size. Ian S C

Paulie, I read some where on the net a ratio of 20:1for LTD motors, for yours I'd try something like 6 mm to 8 mm, the volume ratio can be adjusted by altering the stroke, as I did on my 6" dia LTD. It would be great to see a little motor like yours running, you don't happen to make watches in ...

A short stroke is advocated to reduce friction, another thing is to have as greater length of connecting rod as possible, this reduces the angular thrust. The result is an increase in RPM.

I think you have to E-Mail him on his work site, not his private one, not sure what it is, but its on the web site on google. Ian S C
Just been and had a look, I think this is it. khirata@nmri.go.jp
Good luck