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Steam related discussions.
Re: Finally Building an Engine - 2 years ago
My print bed is 200 x 180 x 175 mm. I haven't used it since spring so it's due for a tune up.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Hard Chroming of Piston Rods - 2 years ago
Electroless nickel plating is very common in industry and produces a bright shiny part that can be mistaken for chrome. Shiny linear rods usually aren't chromed but actually nickel plated. Hard chrome is generally being replaced with nitriding and electroless nickel.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Hard Chroming of Piston Rods - 2 years ago
Keep in mind that hard chrome reduces fatigue life because the brittleness of the chrome allows fatigue cracks to start more easily. Once they have started in the chrome, they will grow down into the metal underneath.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Finally Building an Engine - 2 years ago
Export a step file and post it.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Finally Building an Engine - 2 years ago
39mm (~1.5in) piston and ring for a chainsaw I suppose I could skip the whole piston and ring design and build process and just buy a premade piston and ring, and use my original idea of DOM steel tubing for cylinder bored to 39mm. Speaking of lubrication, is there a rule of thumb for ideal ratio of steam usage to oil usage? I wouldn't have any problem setting up an oil injector that was geaby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Finally Building an Engine - 2 years ago
Rotary slide valve, think corliss valves, but likely run by either a straight eccentric or a cam. However, I might try a poppet valve instead. Depends on how the design ends up flowing. Couple of questions on materials. Probably won't be running over 400f. I'm planning on using DOM steel tubing for the cylinder bore, and I'm thinking aluminum for the piston? Also, for the rotary slide valve,by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Finally Building an Engine - 2 years ago
It's a single acting twin with a planned ~40% cutoff. It won't be self starting, but I'll be able to blip power to the motor/generator to start it turning over with a diode bypass switch or something.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Finally Building an Engine - 2 years ago
So I now have access to a cnc that can cut steel at my new job. I've been thinking about making an engine. I'm thinking of a configuration like the stuart sirius engine. Single acting, two cylinder, 1.5" x 1.5", but with rotary slide valves. At 80 psi steam this gives me around 1300 watts which is plenty for a moped sized vehicle. I'm not going to have variable valve timing, at least atby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Resonant circuit - 2 years ago
There are many ways to do this electrically. Capacitive coupling and inductive coupling. Also common in industry is ultrasonic sensing of fluid and flow in tubing. Capacitive sensing is easy in theory but it suffers from drift that will require more complicated programming to compensate for. It gets harder when you aren't looking for a solid water level. Capacitive sensing can tell you if thereby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Cleaning out the vaporizer - 2 years ago
Peter Brow Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > When it comes to fuel vaporizers, "crud happens". > Apologies for my latest "where'd he go?' episode; > I've been away steam designing. Latest bit just > so happens to be a simplified pilot vaporizer. > Like my latest design for the main burner > vaporizer, this one uses stock/offby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Turbo LaMont - 3 years ago
I also teed in my feed water pump to feed into the middle of the two check valves of my circulation pump for backup.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Gasoline burner system - 3 years ago
A pressurized fuel tank would be nice, but it requires more fabrication that I want to devote to a fuel tank, and it would be considerably heavier than an unpressurized tank and a pump. I tested running the nozzle on a little portable inflator, and I think it'll work as far as the air goes for atomization, but the fuel is gonna need a little help. I'm gonna get one of those little 2-4psi fuel pumpby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Gasoline burner system - 3 years ago
Since I'm storing pressurized liquid, I would either need a bladder tank, or a level sensor that worked with petroleum. I could probably make a capacitance level sensor, especially since it's not a heated tank. In any case, I'm gonna try this air atomizer first.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Gasoline burner system - 3 years ago
I bought this air atomizing nozzle from ebay to play around with. I originally also got a very small air pump that was woefully inadequate to run the nozzle. I plan on testing it out with one of those little yellow harbor freight 12 volt inflators. It says it pulls 10 amps, but since I'll only be running a few psi, it should draw less current. Also, once I'm up to steam, I can always switch to steby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Finned fire tube boiler - 3 years ago
The heat transfer bottleneck is almost always flue gasses -> metal anyways, not metal -> water. Hence why the fins are always on the outside.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Gasoline burner system - 3 years ago
I found a fuel injected motorcycle fuel pump. It has a built in pressure relief and regulates to around 40 psi. My only complaint is that it draws ~50 watts to deliver ~10 times the fuel needed, and I don't know if pwm control would work properly to reduce the current consumption. I'm thinking about ordering it and a gun oil burner nozzle, and hooking them up together to see what happens. I alby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Solid fuel boiler - 3 years ago
ReubenT Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I've spent years thinking about it. And very > gradually doing something. Finally got an ofeldt > built, tested, installed on a 3/4 ton 4x4 truck, > bought an antique westinghouse engine for it, > almost ready to run 2 winters ago and last winter > when I intended to finish it I got called ofby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Opposed Piston Engine? - 3 years ago
Rick.H Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Nice link Jamison, > I'd buy that F150 with this opposed piston > design! > > Peter, > On an interesting note, I think that a opposing > piston design would work well on lawn tractors. > Again, I think the Diesel Cycle (Otto) or > considered the compression ignition engine works > welby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Gasoline burner system - 3 years ago
What kind of fuel pressures do you want for a vaporizing burner? Would that depend on the nozzle size? I put a gauge on my stove and I got around 5 psi. You can buy dirt cheap fuel pumps that put out about that pressure. Otherwise the next step up is high wattage high pressure car fuel pumps.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Gasoline burner system - 3 years ago
If you don't want gasoline in your fan, and want to put the carb downstream of the blower, you'll have to make some adjustments to the jet. My carb did have a pressure equalizing tube going to the upstream of the venturi, but it didn't do a good enough job. I was going to look at drilling out the jet but I couldn't get ahold of drill bits for it before I got bored and switched back to looking at pby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Opposed Piston Engine? - 3 years ago
The process of pelletizing uses ~1-3% of the resulting energy of the pellets. Also, you can pelletize grass, which is cheaper and more land efficient, but the ash content is higher and the flue gasses have more sulfur in them which will corrode non stainless components much faster. (which is why using grass pellets will void the warranty for most pellet stoves) Until very recently, stricter emiby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Opposed Piston Engine? - 3 years ago
For 100psi saturated steam you just need to change out the o-rings for viton. Funny enough, it seems that the cheaper equipment has less plastic. the fancy brand name solenoid air valves at work are chock full of plastic, but the chinese valves I was using for my engine were almost entirely metal. Same thing with the air cylinders. The harbor freight die grinder and air drill I've taken apart don'by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Opposed Piston Engine? - 3 years ago
There are two main reasons cars didn't appear to get all that much more fuel efficient (until very recently) with technology improvements, emissions and safety. The engines have gotten more efficient, but at the same time we have added thousands of pounds of safety equipment and design, and caused a massive decrease in vehicle accident fatality. The fact that we haven't seen a decrease in economyby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Take The Off-The-Shelf Steam Car Water Pump Challenge! - 3 years ago
Oh, yeah, that's a really good way to do it. I had a similar setup in the programming of my first boiler. It was programmed to only check the water level sensor every 15 seconds, and if it was off, it would turn on the pump until the sensor turned back on. This (usually) kept the water level quite steady. Your average industrial solenoid valve often spends its life actuating every 5 seconds anywayby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Thermal oil boilers and other crazy ideas - 3 years ago
Just thought it would be cool to share a report I found. It's a study of a converted IC engine bieng driven by supercritical steam. They got >20kW shaft power from 45kW electric boiler in. That's pretty good efficiency.by zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Take The Off-The-Shelf Steam Car Water Pump Challenge! - 3 years ago
Hydraulic pumps need to pump oil at super high pressures with extremely fast varying flow rates from 0 to full and back. Industry standards for the mechanisms of these pumps exist because the designs that work are highly reliable. There are several constraints to hydraulic pumps that are also applicable to our needs. First, you can't control the speed of the drive motor, since you can't turn on anby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Oxygen tank for propane ? - 3 years ago
Oxygen tanks will be made from either aluminum or stainless steel, both materials are fine for propane storage. The oxygen tank will be overkill pressure wise. The relief vale will vent the propane around 300psi / 130f. The only concern is making absolutely sure every last bit of oxygen is out of the tank before converting to propane. Liquid oxygen is about twice as dense as liquid propane, soby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Take The Off-The-Shelf Steam Car Water Pump Challenge! - 3 years ago
I can't think of any ways to modulate the output of a feed pump without horsepower losses besides a few. Varying the stroke of the pump like an axial piston hydraulic motor or using a linkage between the crank throw and the piston rod that you can vary like a stephenson linkage. Varying the shaft speed of the pump, perhaps with a manually controlled cvt setup or electric drive with a vfd speed conby zimirken - SteamStuff
Re: Thermal oil boilers and other crazy ideas - 3 years ago
So, regardless of oil or not, I noticed a common design with industrial oil heaters. They all have this double helical coil design, and I think I would like to replicate this coil arrangement in my new cart boiler. I attached a picture I made in powerpoint of the design. It looks easy to build and quite efficient. There is a large combustion chamber in the middle, inside the first helical coil. Thby zimirken - SteamStuff