8 Cylinder Radial Solenoid Engine

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• published: 04 Mar 2016
• views: 18578

Here's a video about my solenoid engine. It uses 8 solenoids that I made. They're all either 4 or 6 ohms, I don't remember. Although a traditional 4 stroke solenoid engine can't have an even number of pistons, I chose 8 because doing the math for the measurements and the angles is a lot easier. I built this in the summer between my junior and senior year of highschool, because, I was bored. I didn't follow any tutorial or anything. I designed the engine in inventor before building it, but as always, my design changes once I actually start building. In all it cost me about $60. All of the metal parts are hand machined, and cut out of 1/8th inch aluminum. The pistons are just 1/4th inch iron rods. The solenoids are made out of 28 AWG magnet wire that I bought from eBay. They are wrapped around a copper pipe that has an inside diameter of about 3/8th of an inch. I would have liked to get the pipe smaller, but I couldn't find any. The edges are made of aluminum, and they are held onto the wood with right angle brackets. I'd love to remake this project using laser/water cut steel, but I am a poor man (high schooler), so that'll have to wait. Oh, and it's also really unstable because the couterweight should be made out of steel, but all I have is light old aluminum. I'm not too concerned with it because once it gets spinning fast it smooths out. That and I don't feel like changing it.