2 stirling engine kits I built

[SolarFreak]

I built 2 stirling engine kits over the past few days.

the 1st one is Low Temperature Differential Stirling Engine. I found this kit about a year ago, I have built a few of them for testing. I used one to test on my solar parabolic but the solar power out was to much for it and melted it.
http://heliospheric-labs.com/gallery...irling+engine/


it comes in a monthly science magazine here in Japan Otona No Kagaku is the name of the magazine. a nice kit but could be better if they used some bearings. it runs for about 1.5 hours on using a cup of boiling water.


The 2nd one I got from JAXA Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. its a free piston stirling engine. It arrived last night, I think its a very cool type of stirling engine. It has givin me lots of new ideas on how to think about stirling engines.
http://heliospheric-labs.com/gallery...ng+engine+kit/

I ran it 2 times so far it ran for 1:25 on the 1 cup of boiling water.

[cwes99_03]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

The Stirling engine works by the repeated heating and cooling of a usually sealed amount of working gas, usually air or other gases such as hydrogen or helium. This is accomplished by moving the gas between hot and cold heat exchangers, the hot heat exchanger being a chamber in thermal contact with an external heat source, e.g. a fuel burner, and the cold heat exchanger being a chamber in thermal contact with an external heat sink, e.g. air fins.