I Made A Solenoid Engine!

less than 1m read

·Nov 10, 2024

I built a solenoid engine. Unlike most motors out there that hide how they work, this beauty bears all. A solenoid is a kind of electromagnet. When electricity flows through this coil, a magnetic field pulls the magnet-topped piston inside up. But when the piston reaches the top, a cam on the axle it’s turning cuts off the flow of electricity, and the flywheel's momentum pulls the piston back down.

But once down, the cam disengages, electrical flow resumes, and the piston goes up again. You can see how it turns electrical energy into rotational energy. To make this happen, my team and I got to design a bunch of custom cross axle compatible parts that I had been wanting for a long time: special cams, pistons, arms, wires, a heavy brass flywheel, and of course, the solenoids themselves.

We even made elliptical gears, Nautilus gears, and a Geneva mechanism. If you’d like to build one yourself and add these parts to your arsenal—too bad, so sad, psych! You can buy one! ABS plastic, ooh, and look at those colors! The first 500 people to use code "I love you Michael" will get 10% off.

Ray Dalio on how the pandemic is impacting the economy | Homeroom with Sal

Insurance-funded stateless military: a defense

View All

These Rare Giraffes Were Killed Just for Their Tails (Exclusive Video) | National Geographic

[Music] Seeing these giraffes from the air was really exciting. Seeing them anywhere is exciting, ‘cause there’s so few of them left. But this was my first shot, and there’s a giraffe standing in this small clearing by a small tree. And then the next thin…

He Hears Music in the Quietest Place on Earth—Can You? | Short Film Showcase

I like to say that silence is the think tank of the soul. Listening is something different. Listening means taking all sounds in with equal value. So instead of listening for a sound, I simply listen to the place. Today it’s the echo of the whole river br…

Innovative | Vocabulary | Khan Academy

Ah, hello wordsmiths! You found me in my workshop, coining new words— a little soldering, a little welding, and there you are, a brand new word! Let’s take it out of the forge and see what I’ve made. Oh, well, this word already exists—it’s Innovative. In…

Knights Templar | World History | Khan Academy

We’ve already done multiple videos on the Crusades, but what we’re going to focus on in this video is how the Crusades helped catalyze the start of what many historians consider to be the first international financial institution, and that is the Knights …

Changing Glaciers of Iceland | Explorers in the Field

(Slow piano music) I walk into a room and I tell someone I’m a glaciologist. Usually, someone looks at me and says, “Well, soon you’ll be a historian because the ice is going away.” We have the ability to turn this around, and I think we’re going to. We …

Proof of the derivative of sin(x) | Derivatives introduction | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

What we have written here are two of the most useful derivatives to know in calculus. If you know that the derivative of sine of x with respect to x is cosine of x and the derivative of cosine of x with respect to x is negative sine of x, that can empower…

I Made A Solenoid Engine!

More Articles