Your Comments are Welcome, Except When...

I have received several comments recently that I deleted from the blog.  The content was obviously generic enough that the same comment could be cut and pasted onto just about any website, and they all ended with an invitation to visit a website.

I would be glad to help any of my friends promote their website, but please make your comments appear as if you are responding to a subject on the page.  Any comment that appears to be an effort to boost your SEO ranking, and not part of our conversation, will be deleted.

If  you are interested in boosting your SEO standing with reference links, here are a few tips from my own experience promoting the StirlingBuilder website:

1. Place a link to your website in the first paragraph of your YouTube video descriptions.  There are many hundreds of websites that copy the content of YouTube, and their piracy can work to your advantage if they are also broadcasting the link to your web page.  This simple trick can result in thousands of reference links back to your website.
2. Place a link to your website in your email signature.  Join the most popular discussion groups related to the topic of your website.  Participate in the group discussions and use the email response option to post your discussions to the group.  This has several advantages for your SEO. Every response that included your email signature creates a reference link to your website.  Those links are especially valuable because the context of the link is relevant to the topic of your website.  If the most respected sites for mechanical engineering discussions have links to your engineering site, that is more valuable as a reference than links from unrelated locations.
3. Create a Google Alert.  Google Alerts will monitor the web every day and send you an email daily that shows new references showing up on the web for your alert term.  If people start talking about your company or your products by name, you will know almost immediately.

One of the reasons I delete the junk posts from my social media sites is because I want to maintain a focus on the topic.  Keeping things focused makes your site better for your reader, and improves your SEO score too.

LTD Stirling Engine Success!

I am very pleased to see another one of my new designs working on the first test.  I have set some lofty goals for my next book of Stirling Engine plans.  I am exploring how to build the pancake style LTD Stirling Engine without using a machine shop.  The goal is to make an LTD Stirling Engine that will run from the heat of a warm hand, and to do so without spending a lot of money and without using expensive machine tools like a milling machine or a metal lathe.

My first book accomplished this by making some radical changes to the engine design, basically turning it on its side to reduce friction.  This proved very effective and created an engine that will run from the heat of my hand.  I believe I have now solved several of the engineering puzzles required to make a traditional looking Stirling Engine that does not have to be turned sideways in order to run from the heat of a warm hand.  Both of the engines I have tested to date have successfully run from hand heat with the addition of an ice cube to the engine top.  I am confident that under the correct conditions these engines can be made to operate on hand heat without the addition of any ice.

This is great news for those of us who have always wanted a heat-of-the-hand Stilring Engine, but wanted to build it on a budget.  The keys to this new design are the bearings.  I have found some material to make bushings that is easy to work with, very affordable, and available for ordering online.  I have also found an easy way to make clear sidewalls for round engines that uses bent acrylic which can be custom fit to any dimension needed.

Here is a video of one of the recent test runs for this latest engine: