Simple Homemade Solenoid Motor

This is a simple homemade solenoid motor. This has ball bearings for all of the rotating joints.

A cam with 2 lobes operates on the roller on the micro-switch and excites the coil when the piston is in the centre of it’s travel.

The cylinder and piston are both machined from ebony with small permanent magnets at the centre of the piston. The ebony piston runs very freely against the ebony cylinder. The engine only runs for small bursts and so there is no need to lubricate this interface, but I imagine a small amount of silicon polish would work very well.

A 9V battery is hidden in the wooden base and the engine is switched on by pressing the button that you can see in the side of the case. The flywheel is flicked and the motor runs.

The flywheel is turned from pewter, I cast a cylinder of metal in a block of wood with a hole formed using a hole saw. The hot pewter does burn the wood, but once it has burnt the outer surface it doesn’t go any further. Let the metal solidify and then remove it from the wood with a hammer. The flywheel was turned and then the outer surface was lightly hammered to give the desired finish.

In the next video I describe the solenoid motor and then take some of the parts off and show the action of the armature and small force it generates.

As you can see the force generated by the solenoid is quite small, some of this is down to the fact that the stator is just ebony, this would be much better if it was laminations of iron. Also, the armature could be improved in the same way. The plans for this engine could easily be adapted to this type of deign.

This is a simple homemade solenoid motor that can be made in a couple of afternoons and is a pleasing executive toy.

Don’t expect significant power, the motor runs smoothly, but can easily be stopped with some drag on the flywheel.

Single Piston Solenoid Motor Plan

The plan for this beautiful engine can now be purchased directly and simply on this site.

The plan is a downloadable pdf with 17 A4 pages of drawings, general arrangement and circuit diagram. It also includes notes and comments from the motor designer

Confining the Magnetic Field

Confining the magnetic field of the solenoid motor stator is a significant improvement. The force increases and hence the rotational speed increases.

This is the first of a number of improvements to the solenoid motor. 

More of my engines are in my gallery page.