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Old school steam engine.

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Error401

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Just thought I'd give any machinists and steam junkies a look see at the little engine I'm assembling. It's a single cylinder, double acting vertical steam engine with reversing gear. I might put this one in a Midwest boat I'm going to start on soon. Anyway, I got the kit in York Pa, and it was pre-machined. It's supposed to operate on about 5-10 psi air or steam. Did I mention it's a steam engine?

steam1.jpg


steam2.jpg


steam3.jpg
 
I guess my new hobby is gonna be steam powered boats. Well, I'll be helping my dad with said new hobby.

The one we're gonna do first is a dumas tug boat, electric. Big mofo, about 4' long, 2 12v motors powered by a car battery.

Than it's on to the real deal. Saito powered tug. Tripple cylinder with a boiler. R/C to boot. I'll try to keep up with the construction pix. Too bad there's only 1 other member here who's kind of working on a boat. **cough, cough** ed **cough, cough***
 
Ok fellas, got the engine finished last night and didd the run-in today. Got about 2 hours time on it running off of compressed air. This thing purrs at less than 5 psi and will run on 1 psi. I'm gonna try and put this in a Midwest steam launch, complete with a sterno fired boiler.

Here's the short little vid I did tonight of it running. In the other room is the Hiawata airbrush compressor set at about 3 psi (lowest I could dial in).

Vertical steam engine running.

720 Kb Mov format.
 
Some of the coolest R/C's are steam powered boats. It takes a 2 cylinder double acting engine for a really nice boat. An engine like mine can't self start, so if it stalls, it can't restart by itself. The other thing about 2 cylinder engines is that they can, and you can reverse them via remote. Double acting means there is 2 power strokes per revolution (power-up, power-down). add another cylinder and time them 90 degrees from each other and it will self start since there is always a position where the crank is getting power.

If ya missed it, go here and check out the r/c steam boats. There are only 2 boats that are not powered by steam in those pix: the sub and the Conley powered speedboat.

I'll post pix of the boat I'm going to start building and maybe some video of it running under power.
 
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