Cyclone Power Technologies, Inc. (fka CYPW)

[BuddyWhazhizname]

Tom makes many good points.

Here is some empirical evidence. The Cyclone waste heat engine (WHE) went through a long development with many promised delivery dates. It was also a 6 cylinder radial with the Schoell "spider bearing". Their customer for the engine required 200 hours of continuous running under load before they would pay for the prototype.

In early 2013, Cyclone hired an engineering group at Ohio State University to fix the design and get the engine to that 200 hour threshold.

From the press release (emphasis added):

POMPANO BEACH, FL, November 5, 2013. Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. (OTCQB: CYPW), developer of the all-fuel clean-tech Cyclone Engine, announced today that it has completed the build of its next generation Waste Heat Engine, in conjunction with The Ohio State University’s prestigious Center for Automotive Research (OSU CAR). The model engine, called the WHE-DR, is currently in testing and is expected to be ready to transition into limited production by the end of this year.

The WHE-DR boasts several important advancements over the previous engine model, meant to decrease manufacturing costs and increase operational durability without loss of performance. For instance, the new engine replaces six cylinders with three slightly larger bore cylinders, and utilizes more robust and less complicated admittance and exhaust valving systems, and simplified rod bearing connections. Overall, the WHE-DR has approximately 60% fewer parts than the earlier version. Initial testing has demonstrated significantly smoother and quieter operation, which is expected to result in the successful completion of durability tests over the next two months.

Dr. James H. Durand, Director of Testing, Engineering & Software Development Services at OSU CAR, stated: “We have made great progress in a short period of time, and are very pleased with the resulting engine design of the WHE-DR. We believe this is an engine that will ultimately achieve the reliability and durability expectations of Cyclone and its customers. We feel confident that together with Cyclone’s team we will complete our project goals in the short term.”

“We are very proud of our improved engine. This is a technological and business milestone that must not be understated, as we are fast approaching our transition into phase one manufacturing with our team that we have been preparing in Ohio. For small-scale waste-to-power applications, we believe this product has enormous market potential,” stated Harry Schoell, Chairman and CTO of Cyclone.

They designed-out the spider bearing, got "smoother and quieter operation" and predicted they would soon complete the durability testing. This strongly suggests the failure mechanism Tom described: the spider bearing banging on the connecting rods, causing noise and vibration, and fairly quickly breaking the rods.

They were confident of soon meeting the 200 hour run test requirement, but that never came to pass (still hasn't). In March 2015 the Ohio State people made a presentation in which they called bearing design a critical path issue. Their proposed future work was to build a bearing test machine and try to come up with bearings that would survive in this little low-power steam engine.

So we can infer that after connecting rod failures were eliminated, failure of the water-lubricated bearings became the show-stopper.

Cyclone then stopped funding this work and since then has continued with spider bearings and water lubrication. And no public demonstrations of working engines.

A later customer, FSDS, contracted with Cyclone for a prototype engine that only had to run for 10 hours before delivery. They never met this, either.

Cyclone's patents feature 6-cylinder radial engines with spider bearings and water lubrication. Some of the parts got patented separately (although the European Patent Office rejected all of these applications as non-patentable) but the main patents are basically for packaging the burner, boiler, crankcase and condenser in one unit. Each of these is well-known technology. There is a theory that Cyclone has stuck to their flawed design because that's what the patents covered. That's a trap to avoid.

There is a steam car club at https://www.steamautomobile.com/ with a discussion board, magazine and books for sale. Lots of info on what's been done before and what works. Could help save a lot of time and money.