Smells of some sort of publicity stunt. Nevermind the fuel, just the oil required to lubricate the pistons couldn't possibly still be viable.

That is a valid concern, and it's very difficult to address.

Certainly, bionics for injury victims should be made available through your health system. I'd agree with the speaker here when he says that is a human right.

But voluntary augmentation is a much harder sell. On one hand, the situation you describe (where we have an augmented "caste" and a baseline caste) is certainly undesirable. But equally, it's not really practicable to fund everyone for every augmentation they want.

Tricky question.

Although as Yahtzee says "if there's a conflict between people who have ocean liner pistons for forearms and people who insist that everyone be as shit as they, I know which side I'm on!"

The pump would still be there. It's just the two vavles that would be replaced. The actual piston would be (almost) the same in it's form and function.

So there would be no moving parts in the VALVES. The pump would still be a major, important moving part that would need to be serviced. But you are eliminating two points of very common failure with tesla's design.

If they were able to produce a prototype valve that was 5x to 10x the size of the one in the video, I might be interested in buying...

That is really really really cool. Videos do need audio though.

This isn't an exercise in engineering so much as marketing.

The pneumatic motor is limited by the extreme lack of energy stored in compressed air. All inneficiencies in translating that stored energy into motion are failures in the system. The goal is to carefully remove all unnecessary sources of energy loss from the motor.

So there's an interesting engineering challenge in making this work 'at all' using Legos. There are design compromises that must be made, given the restrictions on form imposed by available parts; as well as the stress limitations of the material. It's like someone giving you a pile of reeds and asking you to build a Manhattan 5-Story Walkup. Can it be done? Is there enough stress resistance in the material for something of that scale? A fun challenge with no practical implications. Manhattan low-rises have been built before, you're not innovating architecture and you're definitely not contributing anything to the future of construction.

The question is, does it require a "technology genius" to accomplish? Someone tell me what a "technology genius" is first. Whatever it is...I suspect you don't need one on your team in order to search the internet for pneumatic piston motor schematics and copy/paste a parallel series of 256.

This exercise is inspiring and fun...until you add the marketing entrepreneur, casting hyperbole around and spending other people's money. It is unsettling to think that the new generation of capitalists are chasing the specter of Elon Musk; self promoting egotists who create nothing and take credit for everything. As a longtime member of the internet in good standing, I reject every stealth intrusion of marketing and entrepreneurship into my sandbox.

Hooray for Raul Oaida, engineering buff and hobbyist. Down with Steve Sammartino, marketer, entrepreneur, "brainchild" originator, keeper of secrete locations, crowd funder, project contact and fathead.

Prepare for uniformed speculation!

This is what I think is happening. The ridged cylinder has an inlet near the bottom with a cover connected to the piston. As the piston goes out, it sucks the burning alcohol vapour from the flame through the inlet. This is the "flame gulping" bit.

When the crank rotates, it pushes the piston back in, slides the cover closed and compresses the burning alcohol vapour which then pushes the piston back out and the cycle repeats.

Essentially it's a very simple two stroke engine where the fuel is already ignited on intake, so it doesn't need a spark. Clever, but it would suck for fuel efficiency.

I am not an engineer, so there's a pretty good chance I'm wrong about this.\\

edit: Apparently it's a vacuum engine

All this talk about rods and pistons...

I'll be in my bunk.

Pistons vs Pacers fight

It's connected to a piston that pulls a string that's tied around the finger of the troll that lives in the water under the bridge.

gasoline vapor + spark = spontaneous piston movement

>> ^savethecirclepit:

I am in the cylinder head business. This issue and overheating are the top reasons to prompt an engine to be torn down. I have seen some pretty catastrophic engine damage when these things break. We actually have units that come in where the valve hits the pistons, breaks and on the next stroke takes the broken pieces and jams them into the cylinder head.
Don't stretch the mileage out on these things if the book says 60,000 change it at 50-55. Also don't be cheap and just get the belt changed. I know it seems like video is just trying to sell you extra parts but it is good advice to change the belt tensioner and the water pump. Always go for the "timing set" rather than just the belt. It will seem like a lot of money 300-500 bucks to get this done but when you figure the alternative 2000-4000 bucks or maybe even an entirely new engine, that cost will be minimal. I have seen too many people get burned by trying to cut corners and be cheap. Don't let this happen to you.
If you have any questions about this: dovernpc@aol.com


I prepare cars for the track but in a previous life I was a grease monkey and I can confirm everything ^savethecirclepit wrote.

That and chains stretch over time so even if the book says its a non serviceable item find out when others have had to change it and do the same.

I was driving my '87 VW Scirroco home when it suddenly just shut off. The motor just stopped producing power but made no noises of any type. I rolled to the side of the road. The timing belt had snapped and the motor had proceeded to jam the pistons into the valves. It was totaled.

I am in the cylinder head business. This issue and overheating are the top reasons to prompt an engine to be torn down. I have seen some pretty catastrophic engine damage when these things break. We actually have units that come in where the valve hits the pistons, breaks and on the next stroke takes the broken pieces and jams them into the cylinder head.
Don't stretch the mileage out on these things if the book says 60,000 change it at 50-55. Also don't be cheap and just get the belt changed. I know it seems like video is just trying to sell you extra parts but it is good advice to change the belt tensioner and the water pump. Always go for the "timing set" rather than just the belt. It will seem like a lot of money 300-500 bucks to get this done but when you figure the alternative 2000-4000 bucks or maybe even an entirely new engine, that cost will be minimal. I have seen too many people get burned by trying to cut corners and be cheap. Don't let this happen to you.
If you have any questions about this: dovernpc@aol.com

Hmmm, never thought about it before, but hydro pistons make a lot of sense. Water doesn't fatigue, or rust, or really break down in the typical metal fashion. And if it gets corrupted in some sort of way, flushing an area free of water would be a easier than replacing an entire metal rod. Problems would include excess pressure from evaporation as well as how do you extract rotational energy from a water piston. Throwing my thinking cap on the thinkgeneering this for a bit

From Cosmic Variance
Predictions for 2012
by Sean Carroll

So you don’t enter the new year completely unprepared, here are my most secure predictions for 2012. Unlike other prognostication websites, these predictions are based on Science!

1. Freely-falling objects will accelerate toward the ground at an approximately constant rate, up to corrections due to air resistance.
2. Of all the Radium-226 nuclei on the Earth today, 0.04% will decay by the end of the year.
3. A line drawn between any planet (or even dwarf planet) and the Sun will sweep out equal areas in equal times.
4. Hurricanes in the Northern hemisphere will rotate counterclockwise as seen from above.
5. The pressure of a gas squeezed in a piston will rise inversely with the change in volume.
6. Electric charges in motion will give rise to magnetic fields.
7. The energy of an object at rest whose mass decreases will also decrease, by the change in mass times the speed of light squared.
8. The content of the world’s genomes will gradually evolve in ways determined by fitness in a given environment, sexual selection, and random chance.
9. The entropy of closed systems will increase.
10. People will do many stupid things, and some surprisingly smart ones.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Would you like me to change the title or description to fit your personal projection? I did not tell you anything other than a video description. But as a loving Jehovah witness I would love to change everything about the videos educational wording to suit you.

In reply to this comment by Enzoblue:
This is one way someone makes pistons. You can't tell me BMW makes them this way. Too much human involved and at 4-8 cylinders per every car you see on the road, way too slow a process.