Hey, any_contingency:

[xiphias]

This is the little Stirling engine I was telling you about. If your German is a bit rusty, here's a Google translation of the page. As always with machine translation, the translation is a bit. . . awkward in parts ("affectionately arranged gold pressure"?) but you get the gist of it.

About thirty bucks, American.

Comments

I love these rough translations!

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

It is real for being astonished!

[yehoshua.livejournal.com]

That's cool. I wonder how hot the coffee has to be to get it to work (you can really tell where my priorities are).

Make Magazine had an article last year (issue #7) on building your own Stirling engine using, among other things, empty tin cans for the pistons and cylinders. It was very cool looking, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'd like to do a hack of this project combined with a solar concentrator to provide the external heat source.

[any-contingency.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Ian, that is truly an awesome thing! I'm reading the Wiki article and it's just fascinating. The problem with specializing in automobiles is that I don't catch up with old tech like this very quickly.