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Elegant Stirling engines are powered entirely by the heat from candles
These awesome Stirling "hot air" engines are crafted by a designer from the Netherlands who goes by the mob-worthy nickname "Jos the Finch." They run entirely off of the heat generated by waxinelichtjes, or squat tea light candles, and, depending on the design and how many candles are used, some run for several hours. They are mostly built out of brass, which gives 'em that swanky steampunk look.
Click Continue to see a video of the Stirling engines in action, and be sure to peruse our picks of some of our favorites from Jos's designs.
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Heteluchtmachines, via Machine Thinking
By Enzer Miliard at 10:59 AM ON 02/12/08
So when will my house be run off of candle power?
By murray at 3:35 PM ON 02/12/08
Wow. Those things are sheer beauty.
By Laenerin at 1:55 AM ON 02/16/08
These look amazing. Oh, idea: could the candles be replaced with oil lamps to increase run time? I mean, fill up a few oil lamps, feed enough wick in, and the run time would be increased. The engine may even be able to have different speeds, depending on how much wick is fed through to the flame, making the engine run faster with more wick, a bigger flame, and, thus, more heat, or run slower with less wick, a smaller flame, and, thus less heat...
By Nick at 7:13 PM ON 02/18/08
They look amazing, but they don't seem to do anything except move spin. I think a scaled up verion of the water pumping engine could be made into a very artistic table top fountain though. Maybe with the candle power in the center, pumping the water up to a top spinning spigot to create a spinning arc of water around the outside of the engine would be pretty awesome looking, between the brass, water and candlelight should be quite beautiful and marketable.
By DarrianAshoka at 12:26 PM ON 02/29/08
It seems Hog Motors made some with the adjustable lamp idea and it seems to spin much faster. You can see it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuWubyArM8U
I can see where the flywheel could be made into a fan, or hooked up to a fan blade for form and function. It would slow it down a bit, but I see it has plenty of power to spare. One was hooked up to a mini marry-go-round. They refer to their web site: http://ministeam.com
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DarrianAshoka:
It seems Hog Motors made some with the adjustable lamp idea and it seems to spin much faster. You can see it on you...More »