Complications

For the past few days we've been trying our absolute best to try and get our coke can Stirling engine running, but have had no such luck. The coke cans have proven to be extremely frustrating to work with as they have proven to warp and split far too easily when trying to work with them, this may be one of the key factors to the huge amounts of friction we get when turning the cranks as well as how taught the balloon is. Friction is one of our worst enemies when working with these engines as well as making sure everything is airtight. These are probably the most frustrating things to have to work against, as any small  amount of friction can stop the engine at any point. Everything has to be extremely precise and extremely smooth and personally I just do not see us being able to achieve this while using such rubbish materials. 

I suggested trying a more reliable set of materials and following a guide we found on youtube, we have started gathering materials to begin construction as soon as possible. I have a lot more faith in these designs as they allow as to achieve the precision we need far easier, as well as the container we will use will already be airtight so we wont have to combat that as much.