Customer Reviews

Build a Two Cylinder Stirling Cycle Engine

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I own a micro-lathe and milling and it's my dream to build an engine by myself. So I order couple of books from Amazon include this one. I haven't built this yet, but at the first glance, layout and description of the book is clear with step-by-step guidelines. Not really detailed but for sure, it's enough for you to make one (I assume you have engineering background). But I can't guarantee it turns.

But sad to find out most critical parts demand you to have a foundry set-up, and the parts are quite impossible to make by lathe/milling machines. It is impossible for where I live (apartment) to have such set-up. Besides, from my experience, foundry is very hard to manage compared with lathe/mill, it needs a lot of practices. I wish I can figure out the work-around to have those parts made by lathe/mill.

One more reminder for non-US customers is that, American use imperial measures not metric. Should not be a big problem but you either have to modify the design or you have to buy another set of tools/parts if you're usung metric.

I own the book and have built two model Stirling engines from the plans. The plans and descriptions are of high quality. There was only one error of any significance in the book, and that problem was relatively easy to recover from. To build the engine you need a small foundry (for the aluminum castings), a drill press, a lathe and a brazing torch. I have a mill also- and that made certain operations easier. You cover a full range of metal working subjects. Match plate pattern making, casting, milling, turning, brazing, honing, etc. This is not a quick project and it probably shouldn't be a first project. You'd want to have some casting experience and maybe a steam/air-powered wobbler under your belt before you started this. Don't be afraid to buy the book and have a read. At a minimum you'll be entertained by Dave Gingery's do it yourself ingenuity. If you're like me you'll find the match plate pattern making intriguing and one thing will lead to another....

This might be good for practicing millwork and lathework. but the engine design is a particularly inefficient one, and will not provide much power. I recomend against it.

This book is very interesting and has many details in pictures very well illustrated. I recommend!

Gingery lays this book in a practical way so that you can easily follow his instructions for building this engine.