Lego ‘Steam’ Engine 2
Posted on : 27-04-2010 | By : cherexposed | In : steam vacuum reviews
This is another Lego engine I made that is powered by a vacuum cleaner, a little like my older engine. It has a much larger piston (8 Lego dots x 8 lego dots x 7 brick heights) which equates to a swept volume of about 275cc. The valve is 2 lego dots by 6 lego dots by 1.3 brick heights. There is alot of friction in this engine and the piston was a little too large for an engine made out of lego. Running the vaccum cleaner too high would cause the connecting rod to be pulled off of the rod connected to the piston if the engine ran too fast. In hind sight I would have made 2 cylinders with 2 valves each 90 degrees out of phase with the other so as to encourage smooth power delivery much like my previous engine.
Incredible! Absolutely astounding! I admire how you used the older standardised pieces and not the newer custom ones. Good show!
How fast does it spin?
same design as mine, same bricks as mine (near enough!) not bad. now you just have to up the rpm. my one runs at about 2000 rpm. try using a lubricant like olve oile or somthing.( olive oil/ sunflower oil can be corosive with lego, so b carefull!)
I had a look at your engine and it is very fast! Having the valve sweep a smaller area is a good idea as it will reduce losses. However for the power piston it’s important to maximise the swept volume as much as possible. Whilst this will reduce the maximum speed, it will greatly increase the engines efficiency and torque output.
i have a new vid of my engine. iv modded it so it runns alot faster. i kept the stroke length the same as i decided to have a huge amount of speed and a little torque is better because then u can gear it down to a usaable speed, with alot of torque.
steam?