After looking further at steam engines I found a far better alternative. An option for the steam engine is the stirling engine, also mentioned in the previous post.
The good thing about it is that it works with just heated air as well. As long as you increase the difference in temperature as much as possible, it would work efficiently (ScrapToPower, 2010).
I found two really easy to make ones from the same guy. It was from these I found on Instructables that I found the stirlings could run on air just fine.
I chose these two to be considered by my group because the materials are easily found and easily affordable. Resourcefulness, I think, is a good trait to go for.
The first is a tin can stirling engine (Specallez, 2010, April 22):
The second is also a tin can stirling engine but with slightly different design (Specallez, 2010, July 21):
The difference is that the first one is easier to build than the second one, but because of the second one's improvements it works better than the first.
Had a look at gears with the group as well since we need a way to use the engines to move our packages. A way to do that would be to use gears and pull along something like a conveyor belt to transport a packages. However, I can see things wrong with that. First of all, we want each engine to branch out into multiple pathways. Because of that we'll need to split the conveyor into different branches, but there'll be no way to automate it. Secondly, if it's a conveyor the stirling has to produce enough energy to move the gears, the conveyor belt, and the weight of the packages. In terms of energy, it's not very efficient.
Nonetheless, we found some pretty interesting stuff.
We found out the basics of how gears work in a tutorial about differential gears (Antoniobmartinez, 2011):
It's really clear on explaining how gears work and why they're designed the way they are. It's quite interesting.
We found a collection of amazing gears of different shapes and sizes working in unison as well (Quilty1987, 2010):
I thought it was pretty amazing how they could all work together.
Another I found uses a different sort of gear, it uses a worm gear at the end of the contraption which you can see in the video where the handle turns (5thwelder, 2009):
Next step is to see if there's another way to move things with the stirlings without conveyor belts. I'm sure there's a way.
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Reference List
5thwelder. (2009, July 13). When 17 Things Line Up [Video file]. Retrieved April 26, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLjI1t40pL4&feature=related
Quilty1987. (2010, July 1). These Gears Really Work? [Video file]. Retrieved April 26, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYcqJ5HdxA4
Antoniobmartinez. (2011, November 2). How Differential Gear works BEST Tutorial [Video file]. Retrieved April 26, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxHjKoB2vn4
ScrapToPower. (2010). Make a coke can Stirling engine plans. Retrieved April 26, 2012, from http://sites.google.com/site/reukpower/can-stirling/make-a-coke-can-stirling-engine
ScrapToPower. (2010). Easy to build Stirling engine fan. Retrieved April 26, 2012, from http://sites.google.com/site/reukpower/projects/easy-to-build-a-stirling-engine-fan
Specallez. (2010, April 22). Simple Coke Can Stirling engine [Video file]. Retrieved April 26, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PsvyO9chvS0
Specallez. (2010, July 21). Easy to build Stirling engine fan [Video file]. Retrieved April 26, 2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Heg3xaWUMks
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