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The Beam Engine

glinscott.github.io

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Re: The Beam Engine

#61

Post by [deleted] »

shit_game wrote: post #52
eleventen wrote: post #26

Quinn (Blondihacks) on youtube is a model engineer machinist and has, IMO, the most outsider-watchable content on building boilers and steam engines like this. Highly recommend this primer titled "The Model Engineering Learning Curve" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps_BQJEMnGA She's been building a model locomotive for years now, there are over 100 videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLY67-4BrEae-xhrvZX33gPk4…

I'm only ~5 minutes into that first video and every single thing she has said so far rings so stupid true that its almost painful hearing it said so bluntly. Making things takes a lot of time, requires lots of fundamental skills, is expensive to do yourself, generally isn't going to be better than something other people are selling, and should be fun the entire time you're doing it . This should be the comment that p…

[deleted]

Re: The Beam Engine

#62

Post by userbinator »

eleventen wrote: post #26

Quinn (Blondihacks) on youtube is a model engineer machinist and has, IMO, the most outsider-watchable content on building boilers and steam engines like this. Highly recommend this primer titled "The Model Engineering Learning Curve" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps_BQJEMnGA She's been building a model locomotive for years now, there are over 100 videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLY67-4BrEae-xhrvZX33gPk4…

On the topic of steam-related machinery YouTube channels, Keith Rucker gets my recommendation: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyjwQ6oz4cqqtEcWGboSU3g

Re: The Beam Engine

#63

Post by emmelaich »

glinscott wrote: post #20
MisterTea wrote: post #13

Ever hear the phrase "Balls out" when referring to pushing something to the max? Comes form the balls of the centrifugal engine governor. At maximum speed the balls extended all the way outward giving us the term "Running balls out." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor edit: I once said this phrase at a work meeting and someone objected to my use of a crude term which I then explained much to everyone'…

Definitely a fun note :). I think I heard it first from a Jay Leno youtube video where he was showing his amazing collection of steam powered machinery. This is from the article, but governors also played a role in kicking off modern control theory! """ In 1868, James Clerk Maxwell studied when these oscillations grow or die away in his paper “On Governors”[ https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gold/pdfs/teaching/old_lit…

Indeed, and of course "governor" in Greek is κυβερνήτης (kubernetes).

Re: The Beam Engine

#64

Post by userbinator »

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…

That was a reaction engine, something like a steam rocket confined to rotate in a circle, and not a positive-displacement engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile

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.

IMHO they definitely had the processes to basically add a PTO to one, but it was probably dismissed as impractical.

Re: The Beam Engine

#65

Post by yunnpp »

taneq wrote: post #37
MisterTea wrote: post #13

Ever hear the phrase "Balls out" when referring to pushing something to the max? Comes form the balls of the centrifugal engine governor. At maximum speed the balls extended all the way outward giving us the term "Running balls out." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor edit: I once said this phrase at a work meeting and someone objected to my use of a crude term which I then explained much to everyone'…

> When the engine slows, the balls fall and open the cock again. The choice of wording makes me suspect that they intended both entendres. ;)

[dead]

Re: The Beam Engine

#66

Post by yunnpp »

glinscott wrote: post #8
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #7

This reminds me a lot of https://ciechanow.ski , down to the body typeface. (IBM Plex Sans?) Also, the SI units everywhere here make me beam. Thank you :)

100% - his articles were a major inspiration, and first line in the credits: - Thanks to Bartosz Ciechanowski, whose exceptionally well written and designed articles inspired this one. Glad you enjoyed the units :).

Are you a graphics programmer? That js/glsl is no joke.

Re: The Beam Engine

#67

Post by bos »

inigyou wrote: post #53
bos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While fun and satisfying, this is extremely unlikely to be true. The first attested use is from 1945, on the nose of a P-47 Thunderbolt flown by Captain Milton Thompson of the 509th Fighter Squadron. And his art was exactly what you'd expect: a charging bull with the words "balls out".

Maybe he's thinking of "balls to the wall"?

Could be, for which the first attested use is in 1965 or so. Still doesn’t help.

Re: The Beam Engine

#68

Post by 27183 »

radarsat1 wrote: post #28

One of the unexpected pleasures of having a 3 year old has been learning far more than I ever planned to about steam locomotives. It turns out steam engineering is fascinating, this article emphasized it for me even more. It really amazes me how much ingenuity there is in just connecting the right shapes and joints up so that the right thing happens at the right time, creating perfect cycles, regulators, etc. Seeing…

High performance "modern" steam engines are fascinating, they're not necessarily simpler than their internal combustion successors, just different. Monotube boilers create superheated steam that pushes 1200°F, which is right around the same temperature as the exhaust gasses in truck's diesel engine pulling a large hill at maximum power. Hot enough to melt aluminum save for the presence of oil jets to cool the piston and a jacket of cooling water surrounding the cylinder. However, since there's no combustion happening in the cylinder of a steam engine, you don't have any cooling water surrounding it--that would be totally counterproductive. So steam engines operate in a thermal regime that is far more extreme than internal combustion engines. Consequently, bores are often cut slightly tapered to account for the temperature gradient across the stroke, in a double acting engine the cylinder bore has a slight hourglass shape, otherwise the thermal expansion would cause the piston to bind at the ends.

For a fun rabbit hole to dive down, check out Doble steam car technology or the Besler airplane engine.

Re: The Beam Engine

#69

Post by bigiain »

radarsat1 wrote: post #28

One of the unexpected pleasures of having a 3 year old has been learning far more than I ever planned to about steam locomotives. It turns out steam engineering is fascinating, this article emphasized it for me even more. It really amazes me how much ingenuity there is in just connecting the right shapes and joints up so that the right thing happens at the right time, creating perfect cycles, regulators, etc. Seeing…

One of my treasured toys - probably from a few years older than your 3 year old though - was a rocking cylinder steam engine my father gave me. It was a present from his father as part of a steam powered boat they built together probably in the late 1940s.

Something similar to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillating_cylinder_steam_eng...

And you can still get them reasonably inexpensively: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007964198565.html

I bought one for a friend's 5 year old a while back and became BEST UNCLE EVER!

The run well on compressed air (like an electric car tyre inflator or small air compressor), or for a bit more high temperature danger they run great attached to the steam wand of an espresso machine. When I was a kid dad built me a steam boiler out of a steal aerosol can and some copper tubing with a folded brass sheetmetal alcohol burner. That's not a 5 year old friendly thing though, from memory I'd have been maybe 10 or 12 when he started letting my light alcohol on fire in that garage or backyard. (Modern parenting may disapprove...)

Re: The Beam Engine

#70

Post by glinscott »

27183 wrote: post #68
radarsat1 wrote: post #28

One of the unexpected pleasures of having a 3 year old has been learning far more than I ever planned to about steam locomotives. It turns out steam engineering is fascinating, this article emphasized it for me even more. It really amazes me how much ingenuity there is in just connecting the right shapes and joints up so that the right thing happens at the right time, creating perfect cycles, regulators, etc. Seeing…

High performance "modern" steam engines are fascinating, they're not necessarily simpler than their internal combustion successors, just different. Monotube boilers create superheated steam that pushes 1200°F, which is right around the same temperature as the exhaust gasses in truck's diesel engine pulling a large hill at maximum power. Hot enough to melt aluminum save for the presence of oil jets to cool the piston…

Thanks for the pointers! That is an area I've not explored much - reciprocating steam using modern technology. Using modern electronics, sensors and valves to optimize steam expansion would be a fun project. Perfect cutoff every time :).
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