Sunnytech Hot Air Stirling Engine Motor Model Educational Toy Electricity Generator Colorful LED (SC001)

I have reviewed other Stirling Engines and have had issues with them working as advertised, but this one works great, and the kids love it. Especially as it powers a small generator powering a LED multi-colored light.The manufacturer gives an extra heat bulb with the kit just in case the original breaks, which is nice, but I don't think is necessary as long as you are careful.The manufacturer stats to use alcohol for the burner which works well. If alcohol is used then use 91 to 99% so that it will burn fast/evaporate quickly. I have not tried lamp oil yet, but it may be a good as well as a safe alternative. Please check with others with the same engine before attempting to alter what the manufacturer recommends.PROS;This Engine is beautiful to look at (even without it running).It is well designed, polished (no kidding, it is shiny) :).It is Mechanically sound. (very quiet)Fun to watch working.A great teaching tool for young engineering minds.CONS:ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR CHILDREN ("DANGER" Will Robinson "DANGER")High heat issues/FIRE (watch over carefully)

If you are a nerd this is pretty cool. I like to talk about the external combustion engine. It does need a little help to start. It works great. It is very quiet and it easily powers the LED lights. The mechanical engineering is cool.

The media could not be loaded. I love this little engine! It's very compact and well made. I particularly like that it's all chromed out. It makes for a very good demonstration tool. It worked right out of the box. No assembly required. It even came with some replacement parts, like the glass tubing, and an extra LED.So now, let me explain the video and the excel graph. The video just shows my set-up of how I am collecting the data. Yes, I am well aware that the blinking LED affects my results. However, the LED is soldered on and I may remove it, but the kids like to see lights when it's running so I left it on for now.The excel data is where I collected the data after the video when the engine was running for awhile. Then I recorded the data on my Ti-84 calculator and transferred it over to a computer to run some very simple stats on it using excel. So it appears that with the LED attached, it produces around 3.75 volts within +/- 0.3 volts. I may investigate RPM or AMPS next.Also, the power piston has little holes in it so that the length of the power piston can be adjusted. One neat little project for calculus students, is to change the length of the piston, create a best fit polynomial (power piston length vs the averages of RPM, Volts, Amps or etc) of some fixed degree, and then find when that curve is optimal. That will answer which piston length produces the most efficient given your metric (RPM, Volts, etc). The flywheel piston length is also changeable. For my experiment above, you want to change both length at the same time so it's balanced. So there are lots of potential for experiments I can use in the class! Have the students guess what will happen if the power piston and the flywheel piston are different? How does that affect the engine's output? Plus, it's small enough to fit on my desk which is great.I just received this product recently, and I am having a blast coming up with ideas for students already! I would love to see how people are using this as a teaching tool!Before anyone asks: Yes, that is an Apple //c from 1984 hooked up on my desk next to a working dot matrix printer. I still use it to show students in computer programming how an older computer use to work with goto statements. Also, the user must type in ASCII values to simply print a page. (No drivers back then, remember Form Feed and that mess?)

This is a super cool little engine for the price. To the negative though, on a flat surface like wood or granite, the engine shakes itself more than the rubber pads can hold it, so it moves around a bit. Could be super dangerous if you don’t keep an eye on it, given the active fire and jar of fuel on it, but It moves slowly, so no big deal if you keep an eye on it.

This little engine heats up right away and functions perfectly. Sounds like a little sewing machine. Runs for quite a while on denatured alcohol. I recommend that over isopropyl as it doesn't leave soot on the heat tube. Extra parts were provided should they break or wear out. Not a toy for little children as you're working with flammables. If you're into Stirling engines I can highly recommend this one. Will order a few others in the future. Fascinating subject. If I can find out how to share a photo or video out of my gallery I'll update this review but I don't give many apps permissions to access cameras or mics on my phone.