Woah, I got a lot of stuff done!

Here’s a layout of what I finished:

• Designing the real layout of the Stirling engine (linkages that don’t overlap)
• Cylinder and base
• Gear holder
• Holes for screws
• Completed power piston
• Completed displacer piston
• Flywheel

However, after printing the first few parts, I realized a few issues at first:

• The linkages were too thick for the screws
• The displacer piston couldn’t be threaded through the hole of the power piston (that was my mistake)

So, I made the linkages thinner and adapted them to be more screw-friendly, and sliced the displacer piston into multiple pieces so that it would be possible to build and use.

On the second iteration, I printed out the base and an official gear holder to attach. There I found more issues:

• The power piston had too tight of a fit. It couldn’t smoothly slide into the cylinder.
• The flywheel wasn’t heavy enough. The goal is to have the gears spin for an extended period of time once the flywheel is spun, but the gears only rotate about twice.
• The connection between the gear holder and the base had bigger screw holes for smaller screws, so I have to make that connection thinner.

For the future, I think I should add a cavity in the power piston for something like a rubber band. Since I have no o-rings, that’s my cheap alternative for sealing, haha.