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The Beam Engine

glinscott.github.io

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Re: The Beam Engine

#101

Post by glinscott »

Animats wrote: post #79
glinscott wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are welcome! I agree, it's a really nice way to learn about something. Digging into the transfer of power with belts may have been one of my favorite parts here, even though it's not really steam directly :).

The capstan winding animation is beautiful. The key thing to understand about early steam engine technology is that they didn't have steel . Good steel in quantity wasn't available until the Bessemer converter around 1880. The converter itself is simple. It took about 10,000 melts to get the metallurgy right, and analytical chemistry to get consistent ingredient mixes. Without steel, the early engines were cast or wr…

Thanks, yes the capstan animation is one of my favorites :).

Great point on steel not being an option, I should have mentioned that.

RE: Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection - cool, thanks for the details!

Re: The Beam Engine

#102

Post by inigyou »

ttoinou wrote: post #89

Whenever I see an explanation of an old technology, I don't wonder "How do that work" but rather "How did they even build this" How did they make vacuum and be sure it was indeed a vacuum ? How did they melted that metal alloy into the right shape ? How did they built those precise mirrors ? How many times did they fail before succeeding ? How did they lubricate and seal properly all components ? I know I could expla…

One of the most conceptually simple ways to make a vacuum is a Sprengel pump. You have, from top to bottom, a pipe full of mercury, a restriction so it comes out in drops to the next stage, a chamber where the vacuum is developed, and an exit pipe. Mercury drops fall through the chamber, trapping air between them as they fall down the exit pipe. The energy comes from lifting the mercury back to the top.

A way that's easy to execute, but doesn't produce a perfect vacuum, is to fill a chamber with steam (actual high temperature steam, not the clouds coming off a kitchen pot), seal it and cool it. This is only a near-vacuum because it's filled with low pressure water vapor, but it's very easy to do.

Re: The Beam Engine

#103

Post by inigyou »

mr_toad wrote: post #97
AndriyKunitsyn wrote: post #39

Ancient Greeks had a steam engine. They called it a Hero's engine. They used it as a toy. They couldn't use it as anything else than a toy. The reason they couldn't because they didn't have the metallurgy and the machining to create pistons, valves, etc. There's an important lesson that can be applied to every technology, I think: technological progress is always iterated, never revolutionized. If your novelty - a pr…

> The reason they couldn't because they didn't have the metallurgy and the machining to create pistons, valves, etc. It was a turbine. You don’t use pistons in a turbine. They lacked knowledge of turbine blades, the metallurgy to make pressure vessels, and the tools to make parts with the tolerances needed to spin at high RPM and withstand high temperatures.

Probably could've connected it to some tiny device, and then someone surely would've thought, what if we made a really big one a d connected it to our Archimedes screws?

Re: The Beam Engine

#104

Post by foxglacier »

inigyou wrote: post #103
mr_toad wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason they couldn't because they didn't have the metallurgy and the machining to create pistons, valves, etc. It was a turbine. You don’t use pistons in a turbine. They lacked knowledge of turbine blades, the metallurgy to make pressure vessels, and the tools to make parts with the tolerances needed to spin at high RPM and withstand high temperatures.

Probably could've connected it to some tiny device, and then someone surely would've thought, what if we made a really big one a d connected it to our Archimedes screws?

The Romans didn't have a need to pump water from coal mines because they hadn't yet cut down all their fuel forests or exhausted all their surface deposits of coal. Newcomen's engine was so inefficient, it needed to be at a coal mine to power it and this jet screw engine would have been even worse. If they wanted to turn an Archimedes screw, it would have taken less labor to just have a person turn it by hand.

Re: The Beam Engine

#105

Post by inigyou »

foxglacier wrote: post #104
inigyou wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably could've connected it to some tiny device, and then someone surely would've thought, what if we made a really big one a d connected it to our Archimedes screws?

The Romans didn't have a need to pump water from coal mines because they hadn't yet cut down all their fuel forests or exhausted all their surface deposits of coal. Newcomen's engine was so inefficient, it needed to be at a coal mine to power it and this jet screw engine would have been even worse. If they wanted to turn an Archimedes screw, it would have taken less labor to just have a person turn it by hand.

I'm sure they could afford to build one or two as an experiment.

Re: The Beam Engine

#106

Post by anunay_i »

spartanatreyu wrote: post #40
glinscott wrote: post #2

Author here. The beam engine created power from steam, and was a key part of the early Industrial Revolution. The article is a deep dive into the engine: how it works, the history behind it, and the engineering tradeoffs the builders faced. There are quite a few interactive figures that I hope make the concepts easier to see.

This reminds me a lot of the articles at: https://ciechanow.ski/archives/ Not just in terms of presentation, but also quality. Amazing!

anyone knows what Bartosz is working on these days? miss reading his articles.

Re: The Beam Engine

#107

Post by peterfirefly »

glinscott wrote: post #100
peterfirefly wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite all the details, you still left out a lot. Safety valve, pressure gauge(s), regulation of the water pump, water level gauge for the boiler, lubrication (you only have two of the glass/metal can reservoir types for the main axle), and then maybe also the valve gear (the control mechanism for the valves which takes into account where in the cycle the machine is and maybe also how fast it is going, how fast it s…

RE: Things are more complicated - I totally agree. My favorite part of the article is probably the belt transmission section. I wasn't sure how it was possible for a leather belt to transmit so much power. Super fun to just dig in deeper and deeper to see how it works. Even there though, I left out a lot - the material properties of leather that let it work, how they attached the belts, the problems they had with gea…

Bearings is another good subject to dive into.

> I wasn't sure how it was possible for a leather belt to transmit so much power.

Friction is also one of the main reasons why rivets work. And why ropes work and why knots don't unwind and lashings work and, and, and ... and of course also nails and screws and worm drives. Friction is awesome.

> Another fun aspect is safely starting the machine

I saw them start this little beaty more than a decade ago:

https://dieselhouse.dk/en/videnom/#BW2000

It was not exactly a quick and simple job.

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