Faster engine

Lewis · Faster engine

i noticed the other day my mm1 was running at full pressure
so out of interest i began to heat the bottom end of the cylinder and suddenly the engine went so fast it alomost fell of the table

anyone know why this may be ?

i thought that perhaps it had superheated the steam

steamyjim

It probally was superheated steam as you say lew

Or maybe the heat was heating any moisture in the wet steam and giving it an extra boost

Lewis

it works on all engines its quite good

dont heat it for too long though

mc_mc

I gotta try that! What did you heat it with?

I've got my mini-blow torch but would be worried about desoldering the pipes from the engine block.

Dampfzauberer

I once also had a MM1 or 2...few years ago...I also found that out...
I just used a fire lighter to heat it

Cranko

I imagine your extra heat is producing more steam and increasing the pressure in the boiler giving extra speed

Mamodman123

I guess it dries the steam out?

If you heat loco cylinders the piston rod pops out....someone will have a scientific explanation for this somewhere

Mister Occlusion

Turbo charger for steam engines

Steve_S

I did that once, years ago, with my SE2A. I put a little tray of meths under the cylinder (this was when I was young and didn't know better!) and it went very fast for about 30 seconds. Then there was a loud hiss and clouds of steam as the cylinder fell off the port face. All fixed now!

rangerssteamtoys

I do that all the time on any of my engines, I belive its a combination of heat and superheated steam. when I'm running my engines on air the heat helps them out since it loosens it up a bit.

Lewis

i just heat it for a few seconds of more with my lighter

goes black though if its not a jet lighter

H2o vapour · HEAT

Hi,

Don't forget that with steam, you get two actions working together when the steam goes into the cylinder chamber, the pressure and that when the steam is able to get into a bigger space it will also expand rapidly, so effectivly you have two energy sources.

By doing this "Heating" you are putting more energy into the steam, this will increase temp, pressure, and volume in the cylinder-

No wonder it goes better!!

H20

CJW

Teccy bit
Steam production is increased as a given volume of saturated steam(steam that is in contact with the water in the boiler)increases in volume when superheated;reduction of losses due to cylinder condensation;More effiiciant expansive behaviour of the steam in the cylinders.a superheated steam temperature of 700 degrees F is considered normal

Mister Occlusion

Cool. I was doing a bit of reading the the Stephenson valve gear on wiki a while back and it talked a little about the properties of steam, and how the engines were regulated to take advantage of the expansive properties by altering the cutoff. Interesting stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephenson_valve_gear
--assuming everyone hasn't already seen it, of course.

Lewis

ill do a vid sometime to demonstrate it

mc_mc

I just had a go with my Wells engine (which is running fine now after a bit more tweaking), used my mini-blow torch on the cylinder and it did really speed up the engine by about a third. Didn't want to do it for too long as it would have melted something.

So that's yet another silly thing to do when you've had the engine running for ten minutes and getting a little bored. but putting washing up liquid in the chimney of my SE1A is still my favourite.

Lewis

i ran my mm1 disc crank today and did the same

almost flew of the table

Faster engine

HEAT