Collaborate Disseminate
When mowing the lawn, you generally have a choice of pushing power, electric or gasoline. Thanks to the nutty inventor [Colin Furze], you can now add wood gas to the list, as long as you don’t mind some inconvenience. He built a wood gas generator on top of a formerly …read more
As a work of art, solenoid engines are an impressive display of electromagnetics in action. There is limited practical use for them though, so usually they are relegated to that realm and remain display pieces. This one from [Emiel] certainly looks like a work of art, too. It has eight …read more
There’s always something to be learned from taking things apart. Sometimes the parts can be used for other things, sometimes they can be repaired or improved upon, but sometimes it’s all in good fun. Especially in this case where extremely high temperatures and combustible gasses are involved. This is from …read more
The humble automotive alternator hides an interesting secret. Known as the part that converts power from internal combustion into the electricity needed to run everything else, they can also themselves be used as an electric motor.
These devices almost always take the form of a 3-phase alternator with the magnetic …read more
Continue reading Car Alternators Make Great Electric Motors; Here’s How
The economies of scale generally dictate that anything produced in large enough numbers will eventually become cheap. But despite the fact that a few thousand of them are tearing across the sky above our heads at any given moment, turbine jet engines are still expensive to produce compared to other …read more
The earliest piston engines typically had only one cylinder, and at best, produced horsepower measured in single digits. But once you have a working engine, it’s a relatively short step to adding cylinders and increasing the power output. [Emiel] made a similar upgrade to one of his engines recently, upgrading …read more
With the latest craze of electric vehicles, it might be tempting to take an old project car and convert it from gas to electric. On the surface, it sounds simple, but the reality is there are a number of pitfalls. It would be nice if you could find a drop …read more
High volume commodity products are a foundation of hacking, we’ve built many projects around popular form factors like NEMA 17 stepper motors, 608 bearings, and 280 DC motors. Their high volume led to lower cost, which further increased popularity, and the cycle repeats. A similar thing happened to a style …read more
Continue reading A Modular Ecosystem That Evolved Around A Simple Diesel Engine
Typically, we associate Vespas with Italians, riding their posh scooters midday under the heat of the Mediterranean sun. In one community, however, the riders and vehicles are pretty different – and by that we mean a whole lot different. Think Mad Max: Fury Road meets The Jungle Book.
The …read more
A solenoid engine is a curiosity of the electrical world. By all measures, using electricity to rotate something can be done almost any other way with greater efficiency and less hassle. But there’s just something riveting about watching a solenoid engine work. If you want to build one of your …read more