I wish someone with the skill to do this would use their time to push the state of the art in small generator design. Here is a sampling of parameters, all of which I think could be improved:
(there are ~33440 Watt-hours of energy available in a gallon of gasoline).
The most recent innovation seems to be the inverter/generator. It means that the engine does not have to run at any specific speed to get 60 Hz, so it can be run slow to make it quiet. Perhaps an extension to this could be the generator equivalent of a "hybrid"- supply power from a battery to cover surges, but use the engine to supply the average usage.
It will be interesting if any recent work on engine design ends up in small generators. For example, there is the OPOC engine from the Bill Gates backed startup http://ecomotors.com
You would think there would be more competition from micro-turbines, but I don't think they scale down so well. There is this 2.6 kW "Dynajet" micro-turbine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8kS8EZWmQ
>using a Silicon Graphics Origin 2000 supercomputer with 32 processors it took more than two weeks of continuous operation to find an optimal set of parameters.
>Dr. Senecal's test engine consumed 15 percent less fuel than a standard engine while producing one-third as much nitric oxide and half the soot.
Unfortunately I have no idea if anything ever came of this or not. I can't find anything. It'd be incredibly sad if this actually worked and then was never implemented.
This was done just with a dumb genetic algorithm on 2000 era computers, a population size of 5, run for 50 generations, and only tweaking a handful of parameters. I believe there is more potential in stuff like this.
This guy built a fully functional scale model of a Ferrari 310 including the V12 engine all from photos. He built every part. He tuned the car so that it makes the sound of the "Ferrari Music."
It's interesting how most of the comments focus on the technical aspects of what the guy built.
What I found interesting and inspiring is the time and passion that he puts in what he does. I really hope to still have something that makes me so passionate when I will be 72. It's a great way to live your life.
There are more people that care about things like this than you'd think... I worked on a 31 Alpha Romero gas tank a few weeks ago, with a friend. There are old cars that people really care about, as well as old boats and airplanes. There are machinists who make miniature engines, just like this guy, and all sorts of other things. That type of craftsmanship is hardly dead (although it is getting very hard to find!)
I'm into black smithing, which is an even more rare type of craftsmanship. There are all sorts of resources online. Check out ABANA [http://abana.org/] to start. But whatever it is that you're into there is bound to be someone else into it. Try the SCA [http://www.sca.org/] if you want some really old-school stuff.
It's bittersweet. He talks about how engineers now don't care about making things robust and repairable, or making things by hand, and he's probably got a point there. But he's also missing out on the opportunities of the Internet, where he could share the stuff he does and exchange ideas with people who do or want to do similar things. Especially with the increasingly prominent "maker culture," I think he would find there are a lot of people out there who share his passions.
As a warning to the HN community who are a little neophilic, machinist web sites are much like ham radio web sites and numerous other technical hobbies, in that the cruder and less trendy the web design, the more likely the content is worth reading and vice versa. If the site includes something as trendy and modern as jquery or runs on node.js then its almost certainly content free and vice versa. So just brace yourself for the culture shock, ok?
Interesting observation about the inverse relationship between crude web design and technical hobby content. I've been scratch-building vacuum tube musical instrument gear for about 10 years. 90% of what I initially needed to know was picked up from 1990's style hobbyist websites. I document all my projects for others to build on my html-only website, maintained with SeaMonkey Composer. It takes hundreds of hours to produce the artifacts themselves and many more hours to produce checked and finished documentation that others can build from.
I occasionally think about rebuilding my site with 21st century web technology, but I haven't convinced myself that it adds more value to my work than producing more and better documentation. I have an infinite list of things to understand, design, build, and document. Chasing web tech trends competes for the available time.
I design and implement embedded software for optical metrology and fabrication equipment all day, so I have no technical barrier to web tech, just a lack of interest.
I can't think of a single hobbyist site that I get information from that has improved after a tech refresh. It's like a signal that the maintainer's interest in the hobby is waning, and no further content should be expected.
I agree that github-pages would provide all that's needed for maintaining the docs online, and make the publishing nearly effortless. The change history is of definite value. I'll give it a go.
You might like the first link other than operating about six orders of magnitude higher frequencies and solid state instead of hollow state.
The first example doesn't have any CSS or javascript at all! But there is a lot of excellent content on those examples.
The early adopter syndrome is if someone has been doing this stuff since the turn of the century, they're quite likely to continue doing stuff that works. This creates a self selection effect.
I love this video and I'm glad it's getting attention on HN. It captures a bunch of stuff - pride in your work; actually making something non-trivial; etc.
There's a point in the posted video where they demo the V12 and you see drops of condensation forming at the ends of the exhaust pipes. Some kind of combustion is going on. Maybe it's running on propane instead of gasoline, but it's internally combusting. In the video of the guy with the model Ferrari, he mentions it is fuel-injected, and when he revs it, it sure sounds like it is an IC engine.
Condensation happens with air compressors, too. I had a small oilless compressor that when heavily used would put so much water in the air line a mist would spray out the exhaust port of the air tool I was using.
My point was about the 72YO Spaniard. One big clue was the lack of means to cool and rid waste heat. Here's another video of his V12: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YfTtGCsiD8
Search on Patelo for more.
Re. the Ferrari, that one definitely has signs of being a Otto cycle engine.... Exhaust gases, loud, etc.
Cheapest: Harbor freight's "Storm Cat" $129, 2-stroke, 700W, 91 dB, 63cc, 38.2 lbs, 18.3 W / lb, 1818 Wh / Gal.
Best power / weight, most efficient: Honda "EU2000i" $1000, 4-stroke, 1600W, 53 dB, 98cc, 46 lbs, 35 W / lb, 6737 Wh / Gal.
Quietest: Honda "EU3000is" $2000, 4-stroke, 2800W, 49 dB, 196cc, 134 lbs, 20 W / lb, 5939 Wg / Gal.
Lightest: Honda "EU1000i" $800, 4-strike, 900W, 53 dB, 50cc, 29 lbs, 31 W / lb, 5700 Wh / Gal.
(there are ~33440 Watt-hours of energy available in a gallon of gasoline).
The most recent innovation seems to be the inverter/generator. It means that the engine does not have to run at any specific speed to get 60 Hz, so it can be run slow to make it quiet. Perhaps an extension to this could be the generator equivalent of a "hybrid"- supply power from a battery to cover surges, but use the engine to supply the average usage.
It will be interesting if any recent work on engine design ends up in small generators. For example, there is the OPOC engine from the Bill Gates backed startup http://ecomotors.com
You would think there would be more competition from micro-turbines, but I don't think they scale down so well. There is this 2.6 kW "Dynajet" micro-turbine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8kS8EZWmQ
Edit: also.. what ever happened with small fuel cells? http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2013/01/31/why-a...