Making your own internal combustion engine may seem an impossible task to most, but it proved to be an exciting challenge for students in Jim Crenshaw's Precision Machining program at Central Technology Center this semester. Jarrod Burgett, a high school junior from Bristow, took great pride in demonstrating his newly acquired precision machining skills as he demonstrated his engine and spoke of plans to add accessories as well.

Burgett and his fellow students were given working drawings of how to make a single cylinder compressed air-powered engine as the final project before completion of their course this semester. Burgett was excited as he first powered his finished product to find that it worked as planned. In fact, Burgett now wants to proceed to add additional features to the small engine to further challenge his skills as a machinist. With the proper fittings, the small device can be used to power other equipment.

Crenshaw says the project was designed to demonstrate how critical the measurements are in the work the new machinists will be doing in the workplace and give each student an opportunity to demonstrate their own precision machining skills. Even the smallest miscalculations can result in the pieces milled from stock metals rendering the parts, even the engine itself, useless.

With only two weeks to complete the task, Burgett began with sections of flat and rolled stock steel. From those he crafted a small engine block, working piston, fly wheel and other parts to make a working single-cylinder engine. Only a spring, a screw and nut were supplied ready-made. Burgett even attempted to make his own rings for the piston but found that task more than he bargained for.

The Central Tech instructor says the engine making exercise is a perfect way to demonstrate to his students the practical applications of what he is teaching as well as test the learned skills of each new machinist.