Marvelous machines

Precision machining at its best, painstaking measurement and shaping, long hours, unique vision – José Manuel Hermo Barreiro, known as Patelo, a retired Spanish navel mechanic creates functioning small motors that are both mechanical marvels and hypnotically beautiful moving sculptures. They are also not for sale, as his Facebook page Motores Patelo makes clear.

See him in fascinatingly detailed action here in this 17 minute video clip making “The drone that cannot fly” or watch the miniature W-32 engine pictured above being assembled in a 2015 Road & Track post. Those coins are staying almost immovable on top of the running engine. The Road & Track article includes an additional 7-min clip about Patelo in which he talks about his passion for making these small wonders and his skills being a lost art, “There’s no one to do it anymore.”