I Actually Built the Strongest Piston Powered Engine I've Ever Done!

Today we're back in Scrap Mechanic with torque challenges! It has been a while since we attempted the torque challenges before but now I've learned so much about proper piston mechanics and so decided to try again with a proper engine this time.
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#scrapmechanic #kangaming

[@kANGaming]

Make sure if you have any tips on how to make stronger and faster piston engines to leave them in the comments! I find your suggestions are always super useful in making my engines better!

[@William_Kyle-Yuki_Yuuki]

I am not sure but I think if you put bearing on the toilet rolls on the trammel that would lower friction a fair amount and might aid on mitigating the slight skipping you have.

[@animalmango6499]

You have 8 pistons. Why not double up a 4 cylinders power by having 2 pistons per cilinder for more torque?

[@futurefirefighterjustindar9727]

Kan when's the next derail valley episode

[@WynterLegend]

27degrees. Increase leverage through V design instead of in-line.

[@maxkummer1640]

you can make a dual layer timing disk with a bearing in between, so you can adjust the timing of when the pistons turn on and off seperately. this could def improve the efficienty so not just one fase is dead on precise but both are. use one full disk with a small part painted and a quarter bit of a disk on top that you can rotate back and forward (painted fully), make sure they are overlapped with the painted parts. hope this has some potential not only for the torque challenge but also for higher max speeds. good luck!

[@thecaptainnoodles]

kan, honestly i dont mind what challenge you do when it comes to these recent videos. i love the focus on engineering

[@Alfred-Neuman]

It's funny how he's supposed to have studied engineering but young kids are better than him for building piston engins... lol

[@jancarson5027]

@Alfred-Neuman idk man if you've ever been in the scrap discord server you'd know the difference. They no life the game Kan has a life

[@loneside4912]

Just because someone majored in engineering does not really mean that they would know how everything works, especially in a video game. Took me a couple years to figure out piston engines fully in SM. Also I wouldn't say that there are necessarily "young kids" building better piston engines, I know for damn sure that I wouldn't have understood them, let alone be able to build a basic one when was a kid. lol. I mean, all power to them if there are kids doing this stuff, it's a really fun introduction to engineering. A good reason why I agree that the youtubers here should do more engineering focus stuff because that is what SM is good for, great way to build interest on the subject.

[@jancarson5027]

@loneside4912 it's just a comically toxic community in a lot of areas for no reason. I'm sure it contributes to the dwindling player base in one way or another

[@apersunthathasaridiculousl1890]

@@Alfred-Neumani thought he majored in programming

[@scullsglory6573]

I feel like a four cylinder Boxer would do much better. Just because you always have two pistons pushing at the same time.

[@addmix]

Well, even just balancing the piston strokes as toyota and honda inline-4s do would improve it.

[@techno1561]

Or maybe a dual-quad radial? Since he has 8 pistons, and might benefit from being able to use the extras

[@outandabout259]

@@addmix real life engines are balanced the way they are to minimize vibrations, not to maximize power or torque. Also, scrap mechanic pistons are basically 1-stroke so copying what real life 4-stroke engines do would probably not be ideal.

[@projectdeveloper9311]

@@outandabout259 Haven't thought about it but yeah, the pistons are kinda of 1 stroke, since they create power whenever they move, up and down, so yeah it wouldn't be necessary

[@spacewalk3046]

@@outandabout259vibrations are energy loss, real engines makes more power because of primary and secondary balancing, also the pistons are not 1 stroke

[@Ben_Bingo]

Just some tips for timing, Timing is all dependent on what speed you plan on running your engine at, as less timing will result in higher torque typically at lower rpm, and the other way will allow your engine to gain speed. The main thing you are doing with the timing setting at high speeds is combating the delay between the sensors seeing the timing plate and activating the pistons, as advancing the timing will make the sensors see the coloured section earlier therefore the firing point of the piston can return to a more optimal position. The problem with this is since timing is fixed, if your engine starts running at lower rpms while having a timing setting geared for a higher rpm, you will experience the pistons fighting each other as you experienced when you were first messing with timing in a vid. Also there is actually vanilla variable timing systems to combat this issue as you mentioned in the vid. I recommend checking out "The Nova" on the workshop, its a piston powered car with vanilla automatic variable timing built by Kein Anderer who was also the guy who made he challenge pack. Very good friend of mine and super talented.

[@keinanderer9930]

Epic and very talented lad here aswell.

[@ig-rd5923]

+rep

[@spacewalk3046]

yes also with these bigger stroke engines you need to advance only very little usually because the ''delay'' will only really increase at higher rpm, at low rpm it will have way less delay and indeed fight itself

[@paulkanja]

instead of an auto gearing system, you could build a simple manual gearing system where each gear sets the encoding wheel to a certain angle (You could have a low gear, mid gear, high gear, and rev gear - basically low gear but reversed, because the rev doesn't really need to be as efficient)

[@Omletboi77]

Kan - let’s go back to zero Creation - completely breaks

[@crispybacon4240]

Would gearing it down further help? I feel like the engine should be spinning more freely than that, even under load.

[@georgioreshkov5624]

There arent enough materials to make a second trammel. I wonder if there are any other gearing mechanisms one could do?

[@davidaugustofc2574]

More pistons = smoother power delivery Make it 180° for natural balance

[@alvman8749]

Hi kAN, i love your piston engine videos and you inspire me to make my own piston engines and learn new things, keep it up man!❤😊

[@zachtalongamesyt9981]

Glad you finally came back to the challenge, ive been waiting for this!

[@Wheeliegan]

If you can then make it a 5 piston engine, it should solve the problem of the 2 pistons fighting in the top and bottom positions 😄👍🏻

[@blueflame_sm]

Fun fact, with proper camera alignment you can place a bearing on the tip of a 2x1 wedge, add a pipe/block on the bearing and place a pipe such that it goes through the wedge to the other side.

[@terror8354]

I love these piston engine videos but I am also excited for an update on the robot arm as the first video genuinely helped me for my math studies.

[@falcovg2]

You might want to try to remove the piston on your output shaft to reduce springyness. Instead of pushing in the coupler with a piston, remove the piston and push in the entire engine using the same mechanism you used to lock yourself. I've never played scrap mechanic, but I suspect the long extended piston is acting like some sort of torsion bar.

[@3verstorm]

In some cases (i.e. kinetic ropes) this can somewhat increase your output energy in relation to energy put in. I could be wrong, deserves a test.

[@Spargeltarzan49]

If you want to build a through shaft, there is a really cool video on how to bug one into the holding block do you don't loose too much power and male your engine more janky by having the piston one block away from the center of the shaft

[@cameronhunt5967]

The comedic timing when it glitched into the floor 5:37 Perfect

[@greentheem-aiden9215]

Perhaps have the horizontal supports (the concrete) at the front end, putting the weight stabilizing bits closest to the point of contact with the wheel , less chance of losing that torque

[@Spargeltarzan49]

You could also just replace the back three pistons with like one and a line of blocks

[@yoshikagekira8040]

when you first did that challenge you motivated me to do it myself, so I managed to design 8 piston engine that I'm really proud of making now. Thank you kAN for giving me the motivation I needed to make the piston engine

[@EpsilonRosePersonal]

Given how difficult it was, I definitely want to see each of the torque challenges, though alternating with the speed challenges could be interesting. I'd save all three hill climb challenges for the end, just as a sort of culmination of the other two challenges and so you can see how much easier the early challenges are after acquiring the skills necessary to beat the latter ones. Also, for the timing, could you use a button to cycle through multiple timings, on the same controller, to manually account for different speeds or operating phases?

[@Hadeks_Marow]

Hell yeah! The training montage arc is finally over! We at long last return to the main plot. GG.

[@renn2210]

7:20 The "skip" in your engine is most likely being caused by the unbalanced firing order. Most inline 4s have the order of 1342, whereas you have 1234, meaning the engine slowly tips down at number 4 before jolting back to 1 when it fires again.

[@3-valdiondreemur564]

I ended up finishing the challenge in 47.250 seconds. My engine was actually really similar to yours (learnt a bit from it) but the two main differences are the sensor wheel (the leading edge had an extra block, and a reversed wedge colored to sense) and two bolts adding some more space on the second and third locks starting from the sensor wheel. Otherwise, the actual layout is almost exactly the same. The only other difference is that instead of using a pusher to keep myself in place, I use the thing the wheel is behing held by as an anchor by looping some wood around it from the base of the engine. To set it, You need to place the lift close by to the "key hole" and aligned so that when I lower it, the wood phases through the bar holding the flywheel and sets down around the base of the "key hole". Often this will result in the "key hole" being glitched out, though thankfully resetting the challenge fixes it whilst also keeping the wood loop around the "key hole"'s base. My design also had quite a fair bit of juice left in it and wasn't really struggling, so I'm pretty sure it would be able to handle the medium flywheel at the very least. Gonna be a pain to rebuild it there tthough.

[@thighgamingalexo28]

Honestly the challenges are cool but the piston engines are what truly glue me to the screen. There's no cooler thing in scrap mechanics than those rn

[@levibruner7553]

For timing, I use wedges to get perfect 50/50. I don't need a controller at all and I attach the encoder to the power to the wheel so the encoder is always perfectly in line with the wheel. I used a boxer engine (that is the term for 2 pistons being across from each other, right?) in a 4 piston cycle. I didn't gear down and it beat the challenge fairly quickly.

[@terryandhelenhobbs6692]

You could have used the pipe loops on either side of the challenge area to force the concrete under them. That would have helped with the torque issue. And when the lock extended, it would have pushed the engine back into the pipes preventing it from popping out.

[@necroasnight]

been looking forward to seeing you come back to this challenge. Cheers Sir!

[@kevinking1002]

You should make your encoder wheel bigger to make it more precise.

[@blueflame_sm]

Kein Anderer made a vanilla system to advance the timing wheel, but that is a discrete system meaning that it'll only advance to a new angle at set speeds. It's also only 3 speed due to how piston engines tend to snap to certain RPM when they perform optimally. This is however a very complex system which even I'm having trouble recreating (to my own standard, which may be the problem). If you want to experiment with advancing timing wheels I suggest starting out with the modpack, this is much easier given that the relationship between RPM and timing advancement is linear.

[@N0V-A42]

So cool to see you back at this challenge!

[@kilbymorgan8626]

I'm proud of KAN taking up the challenge. Blowing off the dust and learning about Piston engines again. He was who I learned Piston engines from and he is worthy of teaching again.

[@chickensaur5973]

for dynamic timing you could use a spinning weight that is sprung inwards, the faster it spins the further out the weight is. thats how governors on small engines work

[@twigiee6019]

I am enjoying all these engine videos SO much, love this kind've stuff. more!

[@goose_knife]

Seeing the piston engine move so slow helped me you understand how it actually moved SO MUCH BETTER😭

[@kyleknudsen2131]

My and my friend Tim have spent HUNDRRDS of hours making piston engines in scrap mechanic and if you use the x-o meter from the modpack you can use the angle sensor and add 180 to it so instead of reading -180 to 180 you get 0-360 and use greater than and less than math blocks to fire each piston individually one will fire 0-170. Don't go a full half rotation because it still tries to press as you get to bottom dead center. Second cylinder 90-260 ect.. I don't remember the math specifically but my friend Invader Vim, sorted how to get past 0 and fire the Pistons properly. As well as use the crankshaft speed and calculate how many logic blocks/math blocks it takes, therefore how many in game tics it takes to actually calculate when the piston will fire and use that value to advance the angle sensor on a smart bearing to get perfect ignition timing. Look at his creations or his KZbin Invader Vim. We have done several piston engines as well as an engine with rockets as the Pistons instead of the hydraulic pistons

[@teekteekteekteek]

Awesome Vid. Need definitly more!!! Piston Challenges and testing in creative are awesome!

[@AgentWest]

"In a real car pistons don't tilt, they stay up-and-down" True, however there were, and still are working miniatures models of, steam engines where cylinders _do_ tilt. In fact, that tilting motion is used to guide steam pressure to the proper side of the piston. Intake passages are a part of the cylinder so they swing with it, passing over the steam and exhaust ports. Simple, yet effective method.

[@josephplum8491]

"OK that's worse let's go back to zero" CLANK! Jump cut 😂

[@germanasf9612]

You can directly build into the cross to connect your engine, and also build all the way back to wedge it on that sign. Sou could use all pistons for the engine itself -2 for the through bearing (which the dev should really add, a through bearing block).

[@TheDizzyRabbit]

I can't wait until the water is so advanced that we can make piston powered boats

[@bjrnfrederiksson2505]

Now we are moving you really did make that wheel turn fast compared to your first try 🙏🏻 I'm looking forward to the next piston challenge 💪🏻

[@TheKingreiko]

such a funny and interesting video, i loved watching you figure it out. keep it up.

[@royallyblue348]

You should try building a transmission for it to multiply the torque, it’ll also allow your crankshaft to spin faster

[@nighttyrant6667]

I wish we could build actual turbine engines in these games. It would be cool setting it all up

[@Rigidbody.AddForce]

Your success makes me so happy

[@The_Tactical_Taco]

Have you tried placing "brackets" over the legs of the engine? You insert the cross into the receiver. Next you place blocks attached to the floor to create a bracket over the legs of the engine. Finally start the challenge and the engine. This should prevent the engine from moving both backwards and rotating itself, sending all power into the challenge.

[@Pystro]

4 Suggestions: A: You can increase the length of your torque lock pieces. The further away from the axle they interface, the less force is pushing them into each other. B: You can make a piston engine with a number of pistons that isn't a multiple of 4. You'd just have to change the design of the torque locks to allow for an offset of less than 90° between the axle pieces. (Which will also be easier to adjust the further from the axle the torque locks interact.) C: Also, I would try jamming against the back of the interface wheel. Attach a 2-pronged fork pointing down to the end of your axle that slips over the rear end of the interface wheel. And then push the little "+" into the receiver with a single piston attached off of that piece with the fork end. Since the fork and the "+" shape spin together, you don't have to worry about friction between the fork and the receiver wheel. D: Finally, at 21:08 you see 2 pistons within 3 blocks of each other on the right side. If you remove the bearing that attaches the right half of the trammel axle onto the right side of that frame post, you can use the trammel piston (which currently only provides the intangibility) and use it to extend the "+" piece as well. Sadly, ideas C and D won't work together, though.

[@jet3347]

Yes!!! finally more piston powered stuff!!

[@lacoflife]

Been waiting for this epsiode for ages lol love the vids.

[@robotxavy2132]

YAYY. I was waiting for another video about this!

[@crimson3274]

Answer for the real piston engine coupling: it depends on how good your scrapmechanic handles it. It may bend around and seize up in weird positions.

[@adamshults9810]

Loving this challenge and the technicality

[@erumaaro6060]

An idea for a no-mods dynamic timing mechanism: use centrifugal force to determine the speed.

[@personzz1789]

This is super interesting. I'm not familiar with pistons in sm, but maybe a challenge like this would benefit from a geared flywheel system to help store momentum?

[@Silentsouls]

I did the 3rd one with a huge lever, adding a lot of weight to add even more torque, and quickly ratchet it.

[@alexistaboada5759]

if you set the piston to the slowest speed it wont glitch out and actually work it may seem too slow but the heavy wheel gets going pretty fast, just past the first one

[@harveyacklam1516]

I feel like a 4 piston in a square formation would be more ideal, 4 points all connected at the centre would put more direct torque and less stress and loss over a longer crank and maybe around 26 degrees would work slightly better

[@zaharenkoe]

kAN is really good at painting bearring. I am forgetting to paint them half the time.

[@braydonfisher9273]

"I really need those toilet paper rolls. I don't have extras." - Kan 2023

[@sebi8012]

kan pro tip: use a cross pipe for the conection from piston to cracnk so u balance the piston out with a pipe on the other side of the conection with the crank

[@ShawnF6FHellcat]

One thing that I should point out: You know how physics are a little different between Creative and Survival? Well, the same is true between Challenge and Creative. I made an engine that spun smoothly in Challenge, but it skipped pretty bad in Creative; and I also tried an engine I made in Creative, but in Challenge it skipped... Scrap Mechanic really do be throwing the wrench in annoying ways...

[@keinanderer9930]

Love seeing you actually come back to the challenge pack, would explain timing more but my good friend Ben Bingo (Mc_433) covered that in great detail. One more thing you may want to know about is wedge passthroughs, reason why you get those 2x1 wedges. If you place a bearing with a pipe on them and put the cursor in just the right place, you can actually place a pipe over the wedge, making a solid link while being connected to the bearing. Saves you some pistons you may want for power. Would also love for this to turn into a multiepisode lets play.

[@sonorangaming4450]

SM needs a feature where you can define speed and torque separately on objects.

[@payong5426]

I literally built this engine a few days ago. I based it on the one you've built in a previous video and it's my first piston engine I've ever built. I found out that the timing wheel should be rotated 35 degrees. Yesterday I built a working differential and paired it with my engine, tested it and it worked pretty well for a scrap's physics.

[@Korinrl]

Offset the pistons. To the right. Engineering explained has a video on why offset cylinders work. Maybe it’s applicable here !

[@Charles-7]

'bout time you got back to it, I've been waiting for a continuation for like a month already/

[@ScottaHemi440]

I only just built my first piston engine so i don't think i have any advice xD but this was pretty cool to watch and learn from!

[@whippCrookRacing]

ls do all the piston powered challenges :) super enjoy ur content

[@Spargeltarzan49]

I have been waiting for this, YES

[@TinaGloria2012]

Just do all the challenges from this pack. I like watching you work this out. I think you needed to set the timing on the last piston just a little more so it goes smoother. Also your supports for the torque challenges just needs to be a wide as possible. Your original key was fine too, but when you use a wider support platform u wont have to waste pistons on jamming the key in place.

[@szeoretical]

I have not played scrap mechanic, so I don't know whether it will work, but I was thinking that reducing the output speed/upping the torque output with additional 2 or 3 trammel gears in series might help, because it should not only create more torque but also allow the engine to move more and faster before being influenced by the inertia of the wheel getting back to the engine and causing it to stall.

[@nathanmcintyre5811]

Man I really love these vids

[@dylanhobbs372]

The term for the top of the vertical line and the bottom is top dead center (TDC) and bottom dead center (bdc)

[@EhmedCousCous]

If you offset the piston in relation to the crankshaft you have more leverage on the shaft, I managed to build it in scrap mechanic but I’m not sure how much of a difference it does

[@CandyPopKitty]

"Let's go back to 0..", famous last words.

[@roccov3614]

At the very first test I'm like "Why doesn't he move the bracing arms closer to where the torque is applied? Why are they so far back?". That's why it's levered out of the hole.

[@masterdragon2698]

If you weld the engine to the ground and double up the pistons for each cylinder, you might get more torque

[@ChirpoGuy]

Have you tried adding bearings to the toilet paper rolls to reduce friction?

[@marcoowskyy]

yeah, thats the video I was waiting for!

[@aaronhastie830]

The 4th piston on this engine with the 30 degree timing is wigging out because of a tolerance stack effect of the crankshaft. Each piston is ideally set at a 90 degree offset but you can see it's slightly more than that as the shaft has a twist, which causes each piston to engage earlier and earlier going down the line. Retarding the timing further past 30 degrees should stop the skipping with the 4th piston, but it would in turn cause the 1st piston to engage too late. You would need individual timing adjustments for each piston to truly correct the problem which would be interesting to see!

[@brianmiller1999]

Could you use those metal arches as flex support on the sides? I've never played the game, but love watching the videos.

[@yuvrajbanerjee8578]

Hi kAN, i think that you should make a video series making the most realistic car you possible can. Maybe do 1 or a few parts in each video to make them as detailed as possible.

[@sex_official]

An useful tip, you can use cheat engine to slow down your timescale a lot to check what's going on on tick level

[@patrickscully9195]

instead of using an encoder wheel, use the angle of the pistons. you get consistent pushing on the piston without the jumping back and forth like your design. I don't think an encoder wheel is high enough resolution to make it smooth under load.

[@theredstormer8078]

I really like all the engine challenges and stuff, but I do miss things like the logic challenges lol. I only got to participate in the last one. I know that was a long time ago, but those sorts of viewer challenges were one of my favorite things on the channel alongside when script modding picked up and experimenting with pistons when they were added.

[@101seaking]

Couldn't you use the trick with the component kits in the locking hole as well so the engine gets geared down again to give it more torque? Love your content btw

[@kikelibotond6511]

What if you doubled up just the starting pistons? Maybe the extra power will get the wheel to gain some momentum at the start, and the other pistons will have an easier time

[@TheJerseyNinja]

Should mess with firing order. Have pistons 1 and 4 firing at the same time, same position in the stroke, then switch to 2 and 3 at 180

[@TheMostUt]

This would've been a good time to add the variable duration timing wheel (dual wheels). Ideally you want the pistons turning on about 8-15 degrees AFTER TDC, just because you have no leverage right at TDC. Similar to Otto cycle reciprocating piston engines IRL, where you want peak cylinder pressure ATDC for best efficiency and power.

[@Madnessnunky]

To do a dynamic timing system, you could have a sensor that enables/disables a second controller based on an automatically-resetting memory bit based on RPM. Activating the second controller would delay the circuit reset by an amount of time consistent with the rpm it works at. So once you hit 2-3 points in the memory bit, the new controller turns on and the delay timer no longer makes any changes to ensure your new speed is maintained. As to the piston engine, would decreasing the piston speed help at all? It does decrease your torque, but it could possibly help with the quirky soft physics and the weird timing issues it keeps having. For a torque test, I'd think you want something that's consistent rather than fast... but I've not done piston things.😅 What if you expanded the encoder ring so the timing is more precise/adjustable? If the wheel was larger, you could possibly even set the sensors on their own bearings and rotate them into an ideal position not entirely dependent on the grid. (Like a ceiling fan with each blade set into a bearing.)

[@b1a1e48]

I love these recent vids so much

[@jaidenculver2100]

You should make a spud engine if search on the workshop there are some that power by shooting the piston

[@BMH781]

I may have an idea to help with torque and speed, double up pistons, and halve the range on em.

[@senorporko3299]

I can't wait to see the next challenge and isn't there a way to move a bearing by like 1° or am I remembering wrong I haven't played in ages

[@ianantunez5104]

You have to try ''besiege'' with the sparkplug mod. In that game you can make other interesting types of engines too.

[@C481likestrains]

try changing the piston offset angle to 45 so it acts more like a circle than a square (metaphor)

[@redfally4]

I honestly thought you forgot about this challenge and just wanted to make your piston engines better.

[@DB4KK]

you should make a ratcheting mechanism so the engine never goes the other way

[@stevenandres9824]

have you tried using the timers in-between the controller and the logic instead of the coder wheel thing, might have to do that in creative if you don't have the timers in the challenge mode.

[@Baer1990]

Make the support closer to the connection Also, I wonder on this slow moving creation if you could do the timing with memory cells

[@captainsnekk]

Needs some more wedges