Steam Punk - For Real
This may come across as a little off-topic, given what I usually write about, but I never said this here little blog was intended to be exclusive to career specific ramblings about web technology hoodoo. It’s my blog. I’ll write about whatever the heck I darn well please.
So I woke up the other day thinking about steam engines, for some reason. I caught the tail end of the horrible “Wild Wild West” movie some time over the weekend, so that’s the likely culprit. Whatever the cause, I had steam engines on the brain.
When things like that happen, I tend to look at it as my subconcious mind giving me a challenge. It’s happened before, like when I made the crossbow a few years ago (something I’ll write an article about someday). I have no doubt that I could do some googling and find detailed schematics on how to build a function steam engine from common household items, but the challenge I embrace is, can I figure out how to build a steam engine based purely on the knowledge I already have in my noodle? In other words, can I solve the engineering puzzle all on my own, without researching what’s been done before?
True to form, I took my waking thought and came up with the following schematic:
Steam Piston
Now this is pretty crude, given I that spent a whopping 30 minutes or so, but the general idea is to construct a steam actuated piston, which could then be attached to a fly wheel, or some other assembly. The boiler is some kind of sealed container with water in it and a heat source applied that would, well, boil the water and therefore generate the steam pressure.
The boiler has a single outlet pipe for the pressurized steam which attaches to a slide valve assembly. This valve runs parallel to the actuation of the piston itself, and has 2 ports. One for intake of the steam, and one for exhaust.
The piston itself also has two ports for intake and exhaust, and is retained in its “resting” position by a simple spring assembly.
So, when the piston is at rest, the port for intake is opened, allowing steam pressure to build in the piston. Once enough pressure is built to overcome the tension of the spring, the piston is actuated forward, closing the intake port in the slide valve. Once it reaches it’s maximum open position. the steam is vented out of the exhaust port via the slide valve, and the spring returns the piston to its resting position to allow pressure to re-build and start the process over.
Sounds simple enough in theory. The next step is to actually build it.
A few years ago, I think it was Christmas of 2006, I got a plastic model of the Millenium Falcon, which sent me on a scale modelling kick for a period of time. In my pursuit of building super detailed models, I got this product at Hobby Lobby, which is essentially a bag of various sizes of small copper, brass, and aluminum tubes. It’s intended to be used for making little guns, or pipes, or whatever you might need in a scale model. So, armed with all these cool little parts, a mini butane torch, and some solder, I started working out the plumbing. So far, I have the piston itself constructed:
The Piston
To give an idea of scale, the piston housing is 1/2 inch copper tubing, and the rod is 1/4″.
I’ll post more later when I actually get it working.