Homemade Nine-Cylinder Radial Engine Is Beautiful, Short-Lived

<<Initiate Curmudgeon Mode>>

Another tinkerer almost successfully builds something that quickly fails after two minutes of operation. Where is the engineering here? I wonder what will fail after ten minutes of operation with a mechanical load attached?

<< End Curmudgeon Mode>>

Redfred,

I see a lot of engineering here, particularly in the failure analysis. If you are looking for the esoteric straight from theory to finished product, forget it--that is so unlikely to be the norm. Look back to the earliest attempts to create a compressor for refrigeration, or look at the original machine built by Edwin Land to make his polarized film (key component was a heavily-modified wringer from an old-fashioned washing machine). How about the first digital message sent between two computers on different campuses (they only got a portion of the single word sent before it crashed). Need I go on?

--John M.

Sorry but I still just see tinkering. The disassembly and fragmented parts revealed where the machine had failed but I see no analysis of why it failed. Were the one or two sleeves defective (micro-cracks, irregular machining, etc.) in some fashion? Do any of the other seven cylinder sleeves exhibit a pre-failure condition that produces any tell tale signs about what happened? How much force does it take to shatter these parts the way they broke and what were the anticipated force magnitudes? I realize that once things go out of alignment the force from the other cylinders will drive parts into locations they're not meant to be, crunch. What was likely the sequence of events leading to this failure?

Don't get me wrong. Many tinkerers have built wonderful, fascinating devices. Technological progress would slow to a snails pace if all new machines had to be engineered fully from scratch. However, when a significant failure happens in a new machine design I would like to see a more in depth analysis of the failure location, both anticipated conditions and actual conditions to call this real engineering.

Most men?

I'd rather have an Ugly one that keeps my tail in the air!

Anybody that spends 4 years building something that can be purchased for a few thousand, is more interested in the building of the device than the owning of the device...He may have sabotaged his own work subconsciously so he could build another...

http://www.rotecradialengines.com/