Nitinol Heat Engine Kit

Heatmobile - Nitinol Metal Engine driven by hot water.

Heatmobile - a successor of the famous Thermobile of Frederick Wang - is back on the market. The Heatmobile is a very special kind of heat engine that demonstrates the conversion of heat into mechanical energy.

It uses the unique property of Nitinol alloy to generate mechanical motion from heat. Nitinol has trained into a straight shape at high temperature (about 600° C) and allowed to cool to room temperature, where it can be easily deformed and welded into a loop.

When heated above a transition temperature (in this application about 50° C to 70° C) the Nitinol object abruptly returns to its high-temperature shape with a substantially force that is able to drive the two connected plastic wheels.

Construction Manual (.pdf file 185K)