Hello I made this stirling engine in freshmen year in tech high school a year ago, it took me 3 months to make but it was worth the speed and efficiency of this stirling engine. Sadly the glass test tube that covers the displacer (the round end part) broke after I dropped it so it doesn't work anymore. Sorry I don't have much pictures of me actually lathing and milling all the parts because it would take forever to do and at my school they don't allow electronics in class/shop. If you want to make this yourself the prints will be at the end.

Step 1: The Lathe Parts

All these parts were made or mostly made on a lathe with a 3 jaw chuck or collet chuck, most are aluminum (the shiny silverish metal) but there's a few made of brass (the goldish color metal) and steel (the dark gray color metal). all the surfaces were polished with 2000 grit sand paper and lubricated with tape magic oil (I know that's not what you're supposed to use but it provides a nice loose movement between parts and it doesn't blacken with use)

Step 2: The Mill Parts

All these parts are aluminum and made on a manual mill with end mills and a drill chuck. and polished to 800 grit (a lot larger grit compared to the lathe parts because its alot harder to sand anything by hand). the engraved shield was actually a coincidence because i just got that piece from our shops scrap bin and I thought it would look cool as the base).

Step 3: How a Stirling Engine Actully Works

I can't really explain how it works to well but here's my understanding of it. the heated air expands pushing the piston outward moving a flywheel to keep the momentum, and at the end of the stroke moves the displacer inward cooling the air, causing the piston to move inward. and it just repeats itself as long as there's a great enough heat difference.

Step 4: Prints

note I didn't make the original prints for this but i heavily modified them to look more modern and work with imperial system (inches, feet, miles) i also removed the candle holder from the original print because I thought it was some what useless, i didn't have enough brass to make the whole thing out of brass so i used aluminum, I also didn't have a 1/16th" end mill so the smallest cut i could make was1/8th".

original prints- http://www.machinistblog.com/downloads/Striling_6...

also here is a video of the original design running, mine worked just as fast as this one just before the glass broke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL-YWNYp7zd I tried embeding this video but I couldn't get it to work please watch it as it looks really cool while its running.

If you like this instructable please vote for me in the metal contest i would really appreciate it.