Good Side to COGA Finding out about steam engines

chrisd wrote:

Highjohn wrote:They got diagrams. This was the briefcase of an engineer. They will not be able to build an engine even close to Charisian quality and they will take at least a year to do it, but now they have a huge leg up.

Joat42 wrote:Now, it would be interesting to see how long it will take them to implement proper quality assurance on the parts going into a steam engine, I'll expect they are going to have some problems with the engines exploding.

QUALITY CONTROL is vital to any engineering production

QUALITY ASSURANCE is a mere bureaucratic paper-chase. devised out of acknowledged ignorance and designed to keep management's collective ar5se out of harm's way. It has no value to any civilised person

Quality assurance is what happens when you have lazy people doing quality control.

Your remembrance is the same as mine. Rayno makes a point of the fact that this time they _didn't_ manage to get the drawings.

n7axw wrote:

Highjohn wrote:They got diagrams. This was the briefcase of an engineer. They will not be able to build an engine even close to charisian quality and they will take at least a year to do it, but now they have a huge leg up.

As for exploding. Industrial accidents happen and the members of the CoGA KNOW that god and Langhorne are on their side. Also the charisians are being helped by Shan-wei, who obviously is sabotaging the true sons and daughters of god. It takes me five seconds to come up with a rationalization, RFC could do much better and so can his characters.

IIRC, they didn't get diagrams. What they actually got was a description of how steam engines worked. I'm referring back to Rayno's report to Clyntahn in LAMA.

Don

Here is a nasty thought what if the CoGA didn't get all of the drawings or that some of the drawings were missing. Remember the Charisians are currently using single, double and triple expansion engines. What if the CoGA only got the plans for a single expansion engine. Also IIRC Charis is using small tube steam engines vs open boiler steam engines.

saber964 wrote:Here is a nasty thought what if the CoGA didn't get all of the drawings or that some of the drawings were missing. Remember the Charisians are currently using single, double and triple expansion engines. What if the CoGA only got the plans for a single expansion engine. Also IIRC Charis is using small tube steam engines vs open boiler steam engines.

As was just stated, they didn't get any drawings of steam engines. Just the principles behind it.

saber964 wrote:Here is a nasty thought what if the CoGA didn't get all of the drawings or that some of the drawings were missing. Remember the Charisians are currently using single, double and triple expansion engines. What if the CoGA only got the plans for a single expansion engine. Also IIRC Charis is using small tube steam engines vs open boiler steam engines.

Even if the COGA got the drawings with the descriptions--which they didnt--it's not going to do them a whole lot of good. They don't have the technical ability to make steam engines at this point. Heck, it would be like me trying to make an atomic sub when I can't even make u-boat.

Don

The Safeholdins had wheel-locks therefore they had metal lathes so an idea of how to machine a steam engine parts exist. They will have to make larger lathes.

But they don't have a milling machine? You can use the lathe's faceplate, attach the castings, and machine using lathe tools to make flat surfaces

Poker

n7axw wrote:
Even if the COGA got the drawings with the descriptions--which they didnt--it's not going to do them a whole lot of good. They don't have the technical ability to make steam engines at this point.

Don

They have. It isn't too hard. Remember, that early steam engines were constructed even in 1830th Vietnam.

pokermind wrote:The Safeholdins had wheel-locks therefore they had metal lathes so an idea of how to machine a steam engine parts exist. They will have to make larger lathes.

But they don't have a milling machine? You can use the lathe's faceplate, attach the castings, and machine using lathe tools to make flat surfaces

Poker

You can even "scrape" a surface to make it flat by reference to a "surface plate" which technique was available before the large-scale adoption of machine tools. this is still used today for very fine fettling work, as well as for finishing bearings to their journals.

I have gone back and read the passage. What they got was

"Why, a complete description of the heretics' new steel-making process..." with gaps and they would like more technical drawings plus "....it deals only with blast furnaces and something called open hearth furnaces, not all the other devices...." and "However as part of the description ... there is a discussion of something called 'steam engine'. I've found no directions for building one, but there's a lengthy description of the principles..."


So, they have:

The process of making the better steel and just mass producing steel.

Some technical drawings of the devices in the above processes.

The principles of steam engines.


So actually the situation is worse than I remembered, because they know how to produce the new better steel in large amounts. However with regards to the steam engine they only have the theoretical understanding so it could take a while to produce one and they don't have OWL.


As for historical example building steam engines in Vietnam in 1830s. It doesn't matter. We know they could build one, Charis did. The questions are how many, how fast and most importantly, will they BLOW UP. Yes you can build a steam engine but they aren't easy to get right. If you overheat them they blow up, if you have a flawed container for the steam they blow up, if you have to much soot or ash they blow up or are damaged, if you have badly fitted gears, pipes, belts, pistons or seals, they blow up or crash. Steam engines are not easy to build right. This will take them a while and then they have to produce the steam engines and distribute them to really get good use out of them. The intelligence windfall was extremely important. However it will take five months to a year to implement the processes at least. Since Charis also took some time to implement the steam engines.

Dilandu wrote:

n7axw wrote:
Even if the COGA got the drawings with the descriptions--which they didnt--it's not going to do them a whole lot of good. They don't have the technical ability to make steam engines at this point.

Don

They have. It isn't too hard. Remember, that early steam engines were constructed even in 1830th Vietnam.

And prior to that, in 18th century England. Perhaps my comment should have been a bit more precise. What I should have said was that they would not be able to make steam engines of sufficient quality to compete with the triple expansion engines that Charis has been producing.

What they are missing is the ability to do the precision machine work that is needed to develop the pressure to produce the dragon power needed to be truly useful at anything but pumps for getting out of mines, and similar such tasks.

There was a discussion few months ago that thoroughly explored this subject and I think it was Pokermind who commented that working with leather sleeves which would be about the best that the Temple would be able to accomplish at its present tech level would be about 15 hp.

That was what I was getting at in my previous post. Considering the tech quality available to the temple and the amount of time left to them, steam is not going to do them a whole lot of good.

Don