Society of Robots - Robot Forum
Mechanics and Construction => Mechanics and Construction => Topic started by: lemontree on December 01, 2009, 09:35:08 PM
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I am kind of interested in powering a linear actuator using internal combustion. I haven't found much on the internet about that. Sometimes if you don't know the right keywords you don't get any worthwhile results. I once went looking for blank pcb material, and found next to nothing. If you search using copper laminate you'll find plenty. Any ideas?
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I would attach a model airplane internal combustion engine to a gear box
and the gear shaft to a long threaded rod with a matching nut soldered at the end
of a copper plumbing pipe with a slightly larger internal diameter to fit over the threaded rod.
Reverse would be a problem, unless the gear box had an electro-mechanical gear swap for reverse.
On the other, a long piston, slow, Stirling engine could do push-pull. That is not internal combustion.
It is external.
Maybe the egg suction technique could be used: That is internal combustion.
Egg Suction Into Bottle Experiment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb8xEo1kZUw#)
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Your idea reminded me of a Myth Buster's episode where they tried to reproduce engines that ran on blackpower.
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My idea was to use an electric solenoid to compress a mixture of air and butane up to its auto ignition point. Then let the combustion products expand against a piston (ie the solenoid core) and extract work from the linear motion. Maybe for a jumping robot or you can generate electricity from linear motion.
I guess it not possible to do that in a very simple way, or at least you would need some electrically actuated valves and things.
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Look up SPUD guns, Potato Guns and Pumpkin guns. These all operate under the principle of expanding gas (burning butane or propane and air) to push a piston (spud).
Just be careful with your experiments as we do want you to be able to report back.