recent purchases... building steam... ARRRRGH!

HeadSmess

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http://www.ebay.com/itm/301383654712

yup. im going camping :) petrol, diesel,kero...lpg...i can burn it all!

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/131349775063

not sure if that comes up cus i bought the last one...

wtf? whats copper pipe for? 3/16 brake line? with nickel? (i actually wanted stainless but this popped up and was a baaaaaargain :))

making the teapot for my camping stove to boil water so i can have tea breaks :)

erm. maybe.

no, im thinking more like this...



it occurred to me last night that its VERY easy to turn a 2 or 4 stroke into a steam engine.

that video was about all i could find with an eccentric... i dont want no stinking electricity!

4 strokes need the camshaft to be recut so it has two lobes for each valve, in out in out, every stroke.

max steam pressure is limited by the strength of the inlet valve, as it tries to lift under pressure...

a two-stroke, meanwhile...makes a perfect uniflow engine, albeit only single acting. just either a solenoid or a cam/eccentric operated valve where the magneto was, piped to the plug hole! maybe epoxy up the transfers...

you can also have a pin on the piston that smacks a lil ball valve near TDC, like co2 motors do. can you say rough?


lil drip oiler tapped into the side to lube the piston, set so its lining up between the rings at BDC. keep the crank closed with some oil in there...

make it work and then make a single piece cylinder/head with no fins and a ring of exhaust ports as low as possible, with fibreglass insulation :)

i shall have a go at the engine side tomorrow :) the first compressed air HT engine unless someone beats me in the next 24 hours or so...

the boiler bits have to wait for the postie and it being silly season... could be a long wait!

there is no way im wrapping copper pipe around the barbecue!...

actually...maybe that isnt such a bad idea either! can they really ping ya for riding a steam powered barbecue?


who wants a kit? (HT steamer, that is...)

no boilers! they (commercially and privately) (sort of)require certification (pump up to double pressure and if it dont explode...)...make ya own!

i could go do some maths first and give figures on torque and therefore HP with RPM... but beware that HP is meaningless on an engine with (virtually) constant torque!


as a basic idea... the 66cc 47 mm piston is just over a square inch.

at 100 psi, thats basically 110 pounds acting on the crank pin, minus losses.

it maynt be up to the peak pressures of IC engines, at 1000psi or so...but that is a brief spike...not constant.

100 pounds@20mm x 1000 rpm equals a fair amount of work .

a flash boiler can be safely worked at 600 psi, more even... they were using up to 1800 psi even back in the early 1900's!

600 pounds@20mm x 1000 rpm is even more work done!

1800 pounds@20mm x 1000 rpm is obviously going to knock the socks off of anything in the near vicinity...

last purchase? i got a new mill :) its fat :) took a week to figure out how to get it on a bench :)

now to use it!
 
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yay, a 1/10th of a watt model engine... how effective :rolleyes:

poop. he has modified his site...no longer there!

anyways. the plans for his engine are still there...http://www.stirlingsteele.com/stirling-engine-plans.html just not the picture i wanted, a perfect example of a stirling engine pumping heat... spin it up with an engine and the heat sink cools down...his was covered in frost. still the most efficient way to achieve cryogenic temperatures.

ima gunna email him and try getting a copy of that pic now...

and see the size of it? that 40 watts of output is pretty freakin good for something that uses air as the working gas...

to get any useful power from a stirling requires it to be huge, and use fancy compressed gasses like helium...

still an amazing concept...only a scotsman could invent such a thing! tight as always :giggle:
 
Why are you fixating on a steam engine? Eco Nazis are gonna be gunning for you, they're pollution hogs just belching black smoke. Al Gore is gonna put you on his hit list!
 
proves how ignorant you are...

your modern power station may use nuclear fuel...but guess what? its still using steam engines. be it coal, nuclear, geothermal...still relies on steam. strange, huh?

you probably think that stuff coming from the cooling towers is filthy dirty smoke? sorry. its steam.

black smoke? when was the last time you saw black smoke being emitted from a blue flame vaporizing burner? ie, a primus stove, an lpg blowtorch, the old school paint strippers, you name it...they only smoke when something is WRONG. or being lit, sometimes.



ERRRRGH!!! FILTHY BLACK SMOKE!!!

a steady fixed flame burning with the correct proportion of air, at atmospheric pressure produces little but co2 and water vapor. small amount of aromatics due to impurities, blah blah. like all flames do.

go find a video of a locomotive when its not under load, with a fresh load of coal dumped on the grate to get up steam for the next incline. maybe an oil fired one, where theres no smoke at all...

oh, look. my furnace, burning sump oil...sure it belches out black smoke... if you crank the oil right up. looks pretty good 99.99% of the rest of the time... by your theory, that one where the lids closed should be belching out smoke worse than detroit diesel taking a 45 degree hill!
 

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OK lets be cordial here. Why hasn't steam been the power plant of any cars or trucks yet? Why is coal being phased out? Steam is only efficient when used on a massive scale ie. apt buildings, nuke plants, other stuff too......back in Teddy's reign steam was started but never took off, that doesn't count. Even steam powered ships aren't practical or there would be a lot sailing the oceans.
 
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=sentinel+lorry&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=NCeGVN_GEsTTmgXQ_IHQCA&ved=0CDAQsAQ&biw=1360&bih=667

pretty succesful truck in its time, theres three down the road still running and capable of severing fingers with steam if people dont watch it.

yes...severing fingers... piping...heating things up, waiting... that was the bad old days.

imagine if the amount of research that went into making a v6 DOHC with efi and twin turbos was invested in making a super efficient flash boiler raising ridiculous pressures like 3000 psi, with a small, simple engine that would utilise the steam effectively? the flame... clean, unlike the variable combustions of an IC engine (wasnt efi developed simply to beat emissions?).

it has to be ready to go as soon as i spin the key. no waiting for a minute first. i want power, i want it NOW! a stanley steam car could take up to 15 minutes to get up to steam!

dont look at the price tag ;)http://books.google.com.au/books?id=2iUDAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA2-PA176&dq=popular+steam+engine+boiler&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DySCVMKtLee7mQX6t4LYDA&ved=0CE8Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=popular%20steam%20engine%20boiler&f=false

the engine has to only have two cylinders. no gearbox, or a very simple one with only a few ranges. yes, ranges. slow crawls. average cruising. highway speeds. 3 speed is an overkill. basically its automatic.

these days...electronic controls, computer maps, instantaneous torque readings...

the metals/materials technology. better understandings of heat flows and stresses and all that fancy stuff...

boiler controls, raising steam, maximum use of the heat in the combustion.

ohh. LUBRICATION. that is STILL a restriction, but ceramics and fancy composites... anyways. it limits hobby use to the low pressures of 600 or so psi... the temperature gets too high and most lubes just flash away... but commercially, with some industry backed research and development? critical point is the limit!

theres prototypes. theres working models. theres no interest. people are creatures of habit, and the current habit is to have internal explosions. yes, i love them too but id rather experiment with something older...yet newer at the same time.

the reasons are deep and many. look at yourself. youre convinced that steam is just a stinking smoky messy mistake of the past, forgetting that it isnt the steam that was dirty...its the way they raised the steam. (also...wheres your patriotism? the rails built america, yes?)

though, why do trains run diesel electric at all? why not just run diesel engines? theres good reasons behind why things are done certain ways.



and, at the same time...theres only so many people designing these things, building them. a lot is invested in current technologies... the teachers train using the same technology. the students are only familiar with one type of technology. why think outside the box? why think in the box, for that matter? think? i just wanna nice big fat salary so i can have a nice holiday somewhere and get a nice big house with a nice blonde wife with nice big... just do what the boss said and finish the freaking drawing...

some of the best engineering feats were achieved by self taught engineers rather than those from "schools of thought". early on, that whole industrial revolution. compared to today, where things seem relatively "stagnant", and there is no way a train driver could design a bridge that would actually get built and become a lasting monument in this day and age! wheres his qualifications? who taught him? what could he possibly know?

the world is a strange place where economic and legislative BS has over ridden common sense.

currently, the mindset doesnt allow that steam is still in common use...we think of nukes...not steam turbines.

coal is going simply because it has to be dug up from somewhere. now theres more people around, and they want to live somewhere. unfortunately the demand for power(coal) increases.

theres several alternatives and some governments are actually being rather practical... lets see. ours spent billions on desalination plants that are never used, and consume great gobs of power if they are. spain has a solar desal plant that uses...hmmm...NO power.

we have vast expanses of empty desert-type land, always sunny, perfect for generating electricity (using steam, sorry. mirror collectors and heat exchangers, something along those lines.).

instead we dig up our scenic areas for coal, and cover them in piles of overburden.

to burn vast amounts of coal consumes vast amounts of air. 300Mw is over a million cubic feet of air a minute. all that ductwork...all that piping... all that inefficiency...

coal is a stinking rock. just like asbestos. and both should be left alone.

theres plenty of ways to raise steam without coal. currently, the cleanest is with the sun.

but the current mindset is to use PV. to spend billions on "research" when some of the answers are already here, been implemented...and being ignored.

now, look at that stove i showed. they can run on diesel, apparently.

now...would you rather be stuck behind a truck up a hill, puffing a bit of steam and producing the fumes that stove would make(alright....500 of these stoves...:rolleyes:)...or to breath what they currently belch out of the exhaust at full throttle?

that fixed flame...it wouldnt make any more smoke if its burning flat out to being lowered just off a simmer... unlike the thirty shovel fulls of coal in the boiler of an old train.

how does an LPG fuelled car compare to your LPG fuelled barbecue or hotplate? regards the smell? the emissions?

my only emissions will be co2, water vapor, and the odd puff of methane :giggle:

al gore can kiss my rosy red ring if he wants to monitor the methane...

think about it. you could actually smell CH4 (with traces of H2S?) rather than the fumes of a stinking two stroke or even a four stroke engine as i pass.

i can smell the exhaust of the guy two houses down mowing his paddock... not the grass. the exhaust. its a four stroker.

oh, the personal desire for steam is because the petrol engine on a bike is now ILLEGAL where i live and if theres a loophole, im using it? they wont change the wording of the law for one small individual, ie...ME :)


steam is not a crime!
 
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Even steam powered ships aren't practical or there would be a lot sailing the oceans.

how does a nuclear powered sub actually get the power from the uranium to the propellor?

or a destroyer/carrier etc....

hmmm?

pixies, possibly. or mermaids perhaps.
 
Look up the life cycle costs of a nuke sub or carrier vs diesel powered, few pennies difference. Then there's the lil problem of storing the nuke waste for 100s of thousands of years.
 
the point remains, that steam powered ships still rule the oceans, if mere size means anything.

oh dont worry, i think nukes are the worst invention mankind has come up with, along with mirrors...

a quote of ben elton, from some book of his.." and they leave these big secret chambers scattered around, with strange symbols and bright colours all over! surely theyre hidden away with such thick walls to hide something valuable? unlike tutankahmens tomb though, these crypts really DO contain an evil curse..."


great presents to bestow on future archeologists :giggle:

if steam is so filthy...why are these sold as CLEANERS?http://www.harveynorman.com.au/karcher-1800w-compact-steam-cleaner.html?CAWELAID=1820435337&gclid=CjwKEAiA2JqkBRDshIOY_9eMghkSJABvNd1QMVl3STKf FathtKA635i73iSXAj2sUIJvUu_RPsNlKRoCZoHw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

ah well, ostriches and sand...

steam is slow, boring... smelly, messy...

 
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