I Built a Working Engine Using Only a Single Piston for Power! 

What else should we build in Scrap Mechanic?

I think you could avoid the controller if you had top dead center painted white and bottom dead center black, you initially had the opposite. Love the piston series!

Honestly I kind of like when you had to hit it with a hammer to start. It's very steam-punky and lends itself to the theme with that flywheel and the single piston. Super cool build. Curious if having the engine horizontal to save vertical space would affect anything.

I wish that the piston engine episodes will not come to an end. You have inspired me to actually give this concept a try myself. I love this series, keep it up!

The only issue with the dyno is your tuning the engine for that specific load. As soon as you change what the load is it reacts completely differently. So your rpm in a chassis wont ever be the same. But i love these piston engine videos, they are extremely interesting. Maybe on the chassis you can add an electric engine that you can activate when needed for a jumpstart. Will let you tune the engine while its rolling like you did in the video.

it needs a really heavy flywheel. just see very old single cylinder engines used in sawmills and stuff. the weight from flywheel make it power trough the dead spot acting like those old toycars you had to spin up before releasing it. there is a 1 minute video doing a short explanation. " Working of Flywheel | Theory of Machines " its basically a power bank

Not much to say from my end on silly, non-performane engines. Very interesting experiment tough. I can clarify why it only spins in 1 direction with the timing. This is because pistons deliver power throughout the entire stroke, but also only do so when power is received. Because the timing wheel is painted 180 on 180, one side of the rotation is always extend, the other side is always retract. If it starts going in the wrong direction itll immediately switch to retract, then carry through the deadspot to the correct direction.

Its really satisfying to see you learn that stuff man. keep it up and inhale the comments :) Might as well wanna interview some of the piston engine members in a video like a masterclass once you done with most of the learning

Hi kAN! I love your videos, also the piston engines are really cool.

About the steering, I have no idea how the tires grip vs slip angle curve looks like, but maybe it actually could benefit from antiackerman steering rather than Ackerman geometry, you should definitely try both

I actually made an identical piston engine the other day, interestingly enough. I would love to see you Edison some clutch and transmission concepts so that I can double Edison them for myself!

I love that that motor make me recall tractor classes.

i think you should try balancing mass like dampers and such to make the cycle smoother and add weight for extra inertia which might increase the capability of the engine

Found that one to be quite interesting and entertaining!

Interesting about starting it! I agree that it's probably the torque from the controller turning the concrete 3 timing wheel is enough to rotate the crankshaft off the center point.

it is actually pretty cool that you got a single piston working. im curious now what the sweet spot is with piston engines and the length that the piston extends to (crank offset). obviously its going to dramatically reduce rpm, but from the looks of how it worked in the chassis, it appeared more like it was struggling with torque than hp, as it didn't come near the maximum rpm as on the dyno.

please continue this engine making thing its fun to watch thanks

I remember seeing one of the old dev blog where he said he wanted SM to have a wacky and goofy theme and i think piston engines definitely achieve that. Hopefully in the future the physics gets updated to where they are more usable.

60 deg is better even if lower rpm because the lower your timing, the sooner/higher your piston start the stroke. Meaning you have much more engaging distance. Single piston engine tend to have big flywheel to keep enertia when engaging with the clutch. Now i'll tell you again, make a double or triple piston (one over an other) to double/triple RPM. You cant get higher than 300 rpm because you reach the piston deployment speed. having 3 one over the other would let you go to 900... assuming scrap mechanic physics can handle that. :P

I made a super simple one with the piston on a bearing. Offset from the crankshaft which was just the wheel for a vehicle. The engine was only 2 blocks wide and about 4 blocks long and connected straight to the wheel. Super simple and actually surprisingly fast.

I once made one with long stroke and tier 3 metal counterweight.

starting the engine with the hammer reminds me of a new biker trying to kickstart a 500cc

What you are seeing with the RPM ramping up is the timing wheel moving after it starts to run. Variable timing. I was trying to think of some method of connecting a second sensor to the same piston. If you could figure that out (maybe glitch weld two pistons in the same spot?) you could have a two stage timing and power stroke. It's funny that the extra flywheel mass makes it diesel at -10*. With the clutch, might you use a couple stages of wedge flywheels, with pistons that push them together? Think 3 flywheels with a bunch of wedges, push them one at a time into the next (this would simulate the intermediate state while the foot is still moving), then the last stage is just a gear/differential engagement. Something like that would be quite heavy, but might simulate a real world clutch.

Can you make a variable-length crank in a pistonengine? To maximise torque?

Can you test the efficiencies of the different gears & clutch designs? (As in connect an engine to a dyno directly and then through a clutch/gear to the dyno and test the power difference)

Hey kAN, I thought of a multiplayer Monday idea. The only connections that you can make using the connection tool are the seat to the engine, seat to switches/buttons, the engine to 1 drive bearing, and the seat to 1 steering bearing. Everything else is either gears or unpowered bearings.

I actually did an inline 2 and it also stalls and makes power at all strokes, it is my goto when i need a simple engine

Stil Kan do more stuff. I love watching you learn piston stuff

You could have used the single piston to push a wedge block into a wheel on a free bearing

ignition postilion's is 60 deegrees + 5-15. But the freewheel must be heaver to get an equal movement. its the same when you build an 2 stroke engine. So if u want to do an reverse engine u need to go base - 60 + 5-15.

Add a Lv4 suspension inline with single driver pistons- set it 2 notches from max tension. It will allow the flywheel to pass on energy smoother.

A crankshaft counter weight would probably helps with torque

hey kan, not sure if you saw my comment on one of your videos asking for suggestions but I want to suggest again, Bipedal walker races powered by piston engines :)

Something weird, what if you add a strong suspension to the piston? I think the reason it's not smooth is because the piston is always rigged. In real life the piston is not rigged and because of the fly wheel would fire every 3-4 strokes apposed to every stroke in scrap mechanic. This might be getting more into needing mods territory but having a sensor to mesure RPM and a little logic to just maintain RPM would be cool to see. Unless someone can figure out how to mesure RPM in the base game without mods.

You can stop any engine with a timing wheel like that pretty easily: you keep some space between the wheel and the sensor and then you put something in between 2 of the sensors (in a 4 cylinder) and the wheel (could be better 3, you can do that for example by putting something on a bearing that starts a block far from the wheel parallel to it and rotates locking around the shaft with a controller, you also just need one block between the wheel and the sensor cause when the engine is rubbing the stopper won't be anywhere near the wheel)

I would have liked to see the -20, 100 setup with the chassis and that quick and dirty clutch. Because you actually had decent weight on it with the chassis.

I wonder if you could make a friction clutch using high friction blocks instead of creating teeth. The blocks used for clutch wheel could act as the fly wheel also.

You can build a simple clutch with just a single bearing. Since u already use the modpack for the dyno, u can hook up a smart controller to a bearing and give it something like 10000 power or 0 power. When 0 the bearing is free spinning. With power on it will be stiff.

Kan you should start experimenting with moving the piston connection between the piston and block. I got my I4 to 101hp

fly wheel is cool, but you should also utilize its size, 1. maybe make bigger flywheel from other material, that will make it heavier 2. also since it will increase engine bay that much, you should also increase piston displacement/ crank size for better torque and powering through the dead spot.

You could potentially use the same concept you used for the clutch to disengage the driveshaft from the back axel.

Pistons extend faster when they are controlled by a controller. Try to activate a controller that extends the piston instead of activating the piston directly

This would be awesome in a sawmill build

Hi Kan, do you will ever do other streams?

I was reminded about ackerman steering on a lecture of my first course in mechanical engineering. I wanted to make a model about it to see how it works, and turns out that all those pictures on the internet where all 4 wheels are shown to go on concentric circles is kind of misleading. There is one point, only one point, in the whole steering range (well, one angle for both sides but you get what I mean) where all 4 wheels line up perfectly and at any other angle some of them are sliding slightly. The common ackerman geometry is just a decent approximation of the ideal situation where no wheel ever slides sideways. I was sad when I discovered that, things are never that simple :(

oddly enough I had just posted a 1 piston engine on facebook group powering a drill a few days ago. no timing with sensor on piston stroke

You should make a "steam" piston engine, when you have two piston in front of eachother when one pulls the other pushes.

Couldn't you connect the driving seat to the controller so that you can change the timing with w and s. To fine tune e it while driving. That could be really cool

This could potentially be used to make a piston-powered "steam" locomotive; just put the controller in the cab to act as the johnson bar.

this engine would work great as a single paddle wheel boat like one of those steam paddle boats

Would love to see a dod system attempt

try making a much larger encoding wheel, it will give a much greater resolution to the timing!

Oh, you sure can. You can even make it run at 1560 rpm

The single piston engine build reminds me of the old hit and miss engines

Bro, I just did this yesterday watching yesterday’s video.

I wonder if a comb gear works at all but maybe it's the wrong geometry for scrap mechanic or even has too much slip? If it works though, you could save on piston count since you no longer have an intersection. You'd just have to have an ac to dc convertor.(... I'm blanking on the concept for taking oscillation to rotation, planetary gear?), Only got electrical knowledge right now for some reason. It'd be cool to see an video full of experimental ideas for translating real world concepts into scrap mechanic physics.

21:13 having to advance the timing under load is very accurate to real life since its exactly what a real engine has to do. In older cars (pre-1930s) you would advance or retard the timing manually depending on whether you were idling or accelerating.

Can you try to tune it so it can go forward and backwards and then use it in the tank

🤔 dose pressing 2 small tires together work as an actual clutch? And try making a gearbox so the engine can maintain loads

Axolot should give us a dedicated passthrough block fr

Kan rod...Kan gaming...I didn't know you were a type of rod

Now THIS is more my speed.

Do you know how beyblades work with the sippline? I bet you can do that with a pistion. Just make it both ways to spin in the same direktion. You will need a mechanism to switch lanes because it would spin backward if it goes trough the same line.

This video is even more reason for you to build a piston powered motorcycle/moped.

4:57 **ignored the engine running without a flywheel**

For survival its not the number of pistons that's costly it's the number of level 5 pistons that is the costly part, so even with extra pass through pistons this is significantly less component kits

have you tried a magnetic drive?

CDI would go crazy on a piston engine

you should do a multiplayer Monday were they build piston engine and see witch has more power

for 90 degree cogwheels you can make a double passtrough

the magic school bus canonically only has a one cylinder engine.

Instead of a Ted Talk on flywheels, we could have a kANversation.

I built one with no chug by detectiing when the rod was down

19 mins lets go

Don't the pistons in SM apply both a pushing and pulling force. Does a modded piston exist that only pushes out and has no pulling force at all?

Connect the conrod to the crankshaft with a T.

If you can perfect a single cylinder engine, then you can carry those principles over to multiple piston engines

Ok i have a challenge kan can u make a small spud gun engine

i’ve always wanted to learn how to make piston engines, have any tips?

are you and Hyce going to play Railroads ONLINE with the new map

Moped can handle alot of moment one piston are cheap an good for the cause the reliability, cheap, weight And if ypu are driving with moped you dont care is it bad vibration. Honda crf 150r is 150cc and it has at stock 24hp and ints carburated and no turbos, and when they are tuned to race they are like 40/60hp and they are not dead at only single race

how to do this pass through????

Dont know how scrap mechanic caculates it but a internal combustion engine has the counter weights as well as the fly wheel The counter weight is to balance the weight of piston rings and rod Why when you get a bore out on a dirt bike they will order a pro lite piston Has the same weight but bigger bore weight is redistributed by removing weight in these port looking indentations

V16 piston engine

you can make the crankshaft like real life ones without the piston pass through.

Hi kan love vids first😊

Couldn't you use a electric engine to activly change the timing, and then use some logic to possibly have a makeshift governor.

If you're getting 200rpm with only one piston, how come 300 is as much as you can pull out of 4 pistons? Is it still in the timing wheel?

I'll just say i've gotten a truck that probably is slightly lighter not by a lot and has all brace wheels to go about 55 to 60 kph direct connection to rear wheels i would say thats about the limit without doing some really big brain stuff

you can technically put one motor for each wheel since its so small.

Can try and make the 24 cylinder engine Mercedes never built

A super lazy "clutch" would just be two pistons by the drive wheels to pick them up off the ground

Can you make an engine that can propel a plane or a helicopter using the flight mod

Smallest V-twin? pistons are double acting so a Vtwin should be the smallest kinda-smooth running engine. Edit: TIMING! trying to start with "ignition" like 80 degrees after tdc?! just stick to 45-60, get rid of the clutch, KISS

make a good boat motor

What happened to Zeepkist??

I want a radial 16

We need railroads online with new map

I don't know if you read my comment but thank you!

10:15 please do this tuning off camera this video does NOT need to be 23 minutes it should be like 15 mins max, this stuff is interesting but please for my sanity can we pick it up