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Franken-engine Plays Its Own Swan Song at 15k RPM

3 December 2025 at 16:00
Two four-cylinder engines mechanically linked and exhausting into a trombone.

Back during WWII, Chrysler bodged five inline-6 engines together to create the powerful A57 multibank tank engine. [Maisteer] has some high-revving inline-4 motorcycle engines he’s trying to put together too, but unlike 1940s Chrysler, he also has a trombone… and a lot more RPMs to deal with.

The Chrysler flatheads were revving at a few thousand RPM– their redline was almost certainly in the three-thousand range. [Maisteer] is working at 15,000 RPM, which is where the real challenge of this build lies: the trombone in the image is just for fun. He wanted to use a heavy chain to link the crankshafts, but at that rotational speed, a heavy chain becomes really heavyβ€” or at least, it feels a force many times its weight due to centrifugal force. The lietmotief of this video is a quote by an automotive engineer to the effect that chains don’t work over 10,000 RPM.

That leads to a few problems for the intrepid β€œnot an engineer” that take most of the video to deal with and ultimately doom the engine linkage– for now. Not before he gets an iconic 8-cylinder sound out (plus some fire) out of a trombone, though. Of particular note is the maker-type workflow Hackaday readers will appreciate: he 3D scans the engines, CADs up parts he needs and sends away to have them CNC’d and SLS printed.

Hacking motorcycle engines into cars is nothing new. Hacking them together into franken-engines is something we see less often.

Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip! Remember, if you want to toot your own horn– or toot about someone else’s project, for that matter–the tips line is always open.

How to Make Big Cabinets on a Small CNC Router

By: Lewin Day
30 November 2025 at 10:00

It’s easy to build big wooden furniture if you have a massive industrial CNC router, but few of us are so lucky. However, you can still build sizable stuff with a smaller router if you know what you’re doing. [Aribabox] shares some useful tricks and techniques for building large workshop cabinets on smaller machines.

The key to doing this well is modularity. [Aribabox] shows off how to build excellent workshop drawers in pieces using a stackable design. Rather than having to cut out one huge side panel to cover the whole stack of drawers, each drawer can have its own side panel that easily fits on a smaller router. They can then be stacked into a stout assembly that still does its job perfectly well. Assuming your CNC router is trued up properly, you can whip up a lot of furniture quickly, just assembling everything with screws.Β  You’ll still be able to work faster and make bigger things easier on a big machine, but a small machine can do a lot more than you think.

[Aribabox] supplies design files for a cost if you’re eager to replicate their work. If that doesn’t suit you, you can always just use the video as inspiration to work on your own modular furniture designs instead.Β We’ve featured other modular furniture designs before, too, that rely on 3D printed and lasercut components.

[Thanks to Hassi for the tip!}

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