Steam Engines

alj_sf wrote:

pushmar wrote:By the way, they even made a steam-powered airplane in 1933, with a reversing gear for VERY short landings.

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/worlds-f ... -airplane/

Not the first steam airplane by quite far :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ader_%C3%89ole

While Eole claim to be the first airplane is quite a bit impaired by the lack of directional controls, there was other attempts of steam airplanes in the 1910 era.

The Eole plant was good both in power and lightness but its propeller and wings were very inefficient. The plant was 90kg for 20 hp to compare with the 80kg for 12hp of the Whright brothers one.

Note that Eole other name, Avion, is now the French name for airplanes.

Add this one,( https://archive.org/details/BeslerCo1932)

Re: Tools to make Tools.

I keep up with several Steam locomotive restoration groups, and it is interesting what they have to do to access locomotive sized tools now, just a (relative) few years after steam was prevalent. Not simple!

dan92677 wrote:Re: Tools to make Tools.

I keep up with several Steam locomotive restoration groups, and it is interesting what they have to do to access locomotive sized tools now, just a (relative) few years after steam was prevalent. Not simple!

Well it has been 50 years, the mates able to drive them are mostly on retirement and the machinery itself was never very common in those sizes. The crucial point is probably the absence of workers. Old iron driving is usually tricky.

Unused old machinery in any industry tends to be quickly discarded. If it is used it is another problem. I once worked in a shop where about half the machinery had been built before 1920 and used to be powered by a central shaft driven by steam. They had been modified extensibily to individual electric motors but the frame was still the same.

We used the modern ones as most as possible of course, but the oldies were in different sizes/shapes and were used for the speciality products. Eg the 1894 tool grinder was very slow on operation because it used shallow passes but was able to do relief grinding angles its more modern brethen could not.

alj_sf wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Yeah, the flexible tubes are necessary. My point was that fixed seamless tubes form the trunk of the pneumatic system. Flexible high pressure hoses only connect the final stages to the machine.

Copper tubing for plumbing or even extruders to make cases for cartriges are already on hand. High pressure tubing for pneumatics and high pressure air tanks are also on hand. That portion of the necessary tech to make flash boilers are already on hand. Using coal gas to light streets and buildings are being used already. All that is needed to make lighter weight steam engines is realigning the existing tech into a workable design.

For pneumatics, you want brass (or steel) tubing, not copper. Luckily the alloy needed can be the same one as used in rifle cartridges.

Flexible hoses are indeed also mandatory and unless there is an equivalent to hevea, it means chemical industry.

At low pressures ,leather seal may be acceptable, but they dont handle being cooked by steam very well

Copper is perfectly adequate for air and oil up to 200 psi (above that steel tubing is required but you would be insane to use air at above 200psi for tools). Brass is required for fittings (for the required hardness) but the tin makes it far more expensive than straight copper. You can make flexible hoses out of copper or steel but the required hydroforming equipment makes this a specialist application on Earth. (But if you are making pressure gauges then you already have equipment). Hoses more flexible than straight soft copper are only required for hand held tools, most flexible hoses used in industry are used because its cheaper than designing geometry right in the first place (and using swivel fittings where strictly required).

AirTech wrote:Copper is perfectly adequate for air and oil up to 200 psi (above that steel tubing is required but you would be insane to use air at above 200psi for tools). Brass is required for fittings (for the required hardness) but the tin makes it far more expensive than straight copper. You can make flexible hoses out of copper or steel but the required hydroforming equipment makes this a specialist application on Earth. (But if you are making pressure gauges then you already have equipment). Hoses more flexible than straight soft copper are only required for hand held tools, most flexible hoses used in industry are used because its cheaper than designing geometry right in the first place (and using swivel fittings where strictly required).

At 110-150 psi which is the usual pressure for air driven equipement, I certainly dont want copper tubes in an industrial setting. Below that it is ok, but copper tubing is simply too easy to puncture if it is not adequately protected, and you cannot insure that everywhere. Yet the copper tubing can resist normal use, but not abuses.

And you need flexible hose in many place unless you use rotating joints which are costly, complex and need good seals which are not yet available.

pokermind wrote:Early steam engines used low pressure and although huge (they filled buildings) produced limited horsepower in the 5-15 HP range. Early boiler plates were caulked with lead and canvas, 70 PSI was high pressure, and higher melted the lead leading to very un-good results.

Huge is definitely the operative word. Kew Bridge Steam Museum in London is one of my favorite places to visit. Among their steam engines is an engine with 90", yes, ninety inch - bore that is running (on occasion) and a 100" bore engine. These were high pressure engines -- 40 psi. See:

http://www.kbsm.org/

alj_sf wrote:

AirTech wrote:Copper is perfectly adequate for air and oil up to 200 psi (above that steel tubing is required but you would be insane to use air at above 200psi for tools). Brass is required for fittings (for the required hardness) but the tin makes it far more expensive than straight copper. You can make flexible hoses out of copper or steel but the required hydroforming equipment makes this a specialist application on Earth. (But if you are making pressure gauges then you already have equipment). Hoses more flexible than straight soft copper are only required for hand held tools, most flexible hoses used in industry are used because its cheaper than designing geometry right in the first place (and using swivel fittings where strictly required).

At 110-150 psi which is the usual pressure for air driven equipement, I certainly dont want copper tubes in an industrial setting. Below that it is ok, but copper tubing is simply too easy to puncture if it is not adequately protected, and you cannot insure that everywhere. Yet the copper tubing can resist normal use, but not abuses.

And you need flexible hose in many place unless you use rotating joints which are costly, complex and need good seals which are not yet available.

I use copper regularly on 100psi - most air operated control valves are plumbed with hard drawn copper tube as standard, stainless tube is used where corrosion requires
it. (Tubing is more leak tight than screwed steel pipe).
Most people think of air operated hand tools, air operated machine tools are also possible and more common than most people think. Rotary seals can be made quite effectively with graphite running on honed hardened steel (although these days stainless is more common). Basically the point I am making is that if you cant have hoses then it is still possible to achieve the same result in a large number of other ways. (BTW dentists and surgeons used to use air drills on flexible jointed arms because you couldn't sterilize rubber hoses without damaging them.)

AirTech wrote:
I use copper regularly on 100psi - most air operated control valves are plumbed with hard drawn copper tube as standard, stainless tube is used where corrosion requires
it. (Tubing is more leak tight than screwed steel pipe).
Most people think of air operated hand tools, air operated machine tools are also possible and more common than most people think. Rotary seals can be made quite effectively with graphite running on honed hardened steel (although these days stainless is more common). Basically the point I am making is that if you cant have hoses then it is still possible to achieve the same result in a large number of other ways. (BTW dentists and surgeons used to use air drills on flexible jointed arms because you couldn't sterilize rubber hoses without damaging them.)

Well, my speciality is high pressure hydraulics (6 000Psi and above), but I've used quite a lot of pneumatic too.
The hard drawn copper tubes you were speaking of are afaik, usually copper beryllium alloys not straight copper. The latter in metallic form is both toxic and hard to separate from its compounds in a process involving fluorid acids. As such, it is unlikely it is used already on Safehold. Beryllium greatly improve tensile strength of copper even as a trace element at less than 1%, and even allow static tempering to form springs (but usually in bronze alloys not straight coppers). Straight copper is great for water and very low pressure applications.

Using brass is cheaper at this point I think.

As for rotary joints, yes they are possible, but costly.

however, with air (not oil), a multi layered etremely fine weave silk tubing can be used if the outer layers are waxed. Not ideal as it will be at least a bit leaky (meaning power losses and limitation to flow) but Safehold has a much better silk than Earth. Probably quite costly too

alj_sf wrote:
Well, my speciality is high pressure hydraulics (6 000Psi and above), but I've used quite a lot of pneumatic too.
The hard drawn copper tubes you were speaking of are afaik, usually copper beryllium alloys not straight copper. The latter in metallic form is both toxic and hard to separate from its compounds in a process involving fluorid acids. As such, it is unlikely it is used already on Safehold. Beryllium greatly improve tensile strength of copper even as a trace element at less than 1%, and even allow static tempering to form springs (but usually in bronze alloys not straight coppers). Straight copper is great for water and very low pressure applications.

Using brass is cheaper at this point I think.

As for rotary joints, yes they are possible, but costly.

however, with air (not oil), a multi layered etremely fine weave silk tubing can be used if the outer layers are waxed. Not ideal as it will be at least a bit leaky (meaning power losses and limitation to flow) but Safehold has a much better silk than Earth. Probably quite costly too

Soft copper works too (but gets bent much easier, hard drawn is prettier). If they have plumbing then having copper pipes as an off the shelf item is a reasonable assumption (unless like the romans they are using lead). Given the note that the average density of the planet is higher than Earth, high levels of mineralization would be a reasonable assumption. Some of the ores could be interesting too as copper often occurs with lead, gold and silver (look up Broken Hill (yes, where Broken Hill Proprietary started (BHP-Billiton), Western Tasmania or Ok Tedi). In rarer occasions transuranics are also present (look up Olympic Dam - break even on gold and silver, highly profitable on the copper and creaming on Uranium (but having issues with amount of Polonium in the copper smelter slag)).

Charis has an entire feild of study devoted to presure at their university. They have developed a basic understanding of the science involved. Even so and with OWL checking on the parts that first industrial sized Steam engine had the potential to explode. Charis has had no such problems as of yet because the people responsable have the foreknowledge necesary to avoid catastrophy.

Know imagine the church tech gurus look at these steam engine plans. Figure its to complex so they try to do something simpler. Ok but what happens when they forget to add things like presure release valves. Or don't know how strong to make particular parts that are under presure because they don't have any knowledge about what kind of bad things can go wrong. How many people are going to die when these things explode?

If anyone's been keeping up with the 1632 universe there was a secene where some sabotures basically put a bomb in a steam engines fire box. THey figured it was going to go bomb and seriously mess things up. Unfortunatly they were still in the danger close area when all that presurized steam was released. They died Horribaly as did several hundred others. More would have died if they'd rushed into that accident cite to help if an up-timer conversant with steam accidents hadn't stoped them.

So now back to Safehold how many massive industrial style accidents are going to happen in Clynthian's drive to aquire a steam engine? Now compare that to the lack of any accidents amoungst the Charisians. People are going to be woundering on what God really approves. Or on who Shan Wei is offering a helping hand too.