The lack of activity here might indicate everyone is out in their steam launches having fun. Or I have no idea of the normal traffic here. Quite possible. 'Hope you are all out enjoying your Steam Machines. RussN In Michigan, Labor Day is sort of the end of the boating season (It can snow here in S...

Thanks Fellas, I appreciate that. It's good to know that someone is getting something out of my ramblings. It's been a long learning process for me, I think back of when I first started and laugh at some of the things I thought and misunderstood. For instance, I had planned for a dump valve in to th...

Quote: "To make boiler nipples removable, use neverseize." I've had good service out of neverseize as well, what I swear by for sealing and non binding of threaded components is "Jomar Green Stuff" thread sealant. I've been using that for many years now and I have never had anything steam related th...

Well thank you for that Fred. I've garnered more here than I have contributed. Definitely not getting out of the hobby. I plan to build another steamer in the future. I enjoy building as much as using. I should have more free time in the future, I'd like to get over that way and meet you and some of...

It's important to know if corrosion is happening, but it is also important to know what effect it is having. An Ultrasound thickness tester which can be had for a little over a hundred dollars works well for this, they are very accurate to within .001" and will show if there is any thinning in areas...

So now that we've totally hijacked Tom's thread, how large should blowdown piping be for a vertical fire tube boiler with 30 sq.Ft. of heating area? Right now mine has 1.5" all the way including a giant ball valve. I'm thinking of dropping down to 3/4 ". Those are nominal pipe sizes, of course. May...

I just sent Beckman an email asking how many amps it draws. Somewhere I got the impression that it was around five amps. The Beckett style burner for a house furnace which is similar in duty will draw close to 1500 watts with igniter on at start and then drop back to about 300 watts once ignited. T...

thoughts to buy a 12v oil burner for which I will need some current. Those Beckett style gun burners draw a lot of juice, I know guys that run them on steam cars and I do not know of one that has a charging system that can regenerate the power required to run the burner and still propel itself. It ...

Lopez Mike wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 20, 2019 4:11 pm

There are tradeoffs no matter how you do it.

That should be the motto for this whole hobby. Very rarely does a gain result in zero cost.

Did you get that economizer on there yet? (running joke)

-Ron

A generator on a small steam engine is very simple. I use a Nema 23 90 VDC brushed servo motor which is just a DC motor. Belt it at around 1200 RPM and puts out about 6 amps. I use one corner of a 600V/25A Bridge rectifier ($2) as a diode to prevent the voltage coming back at rest and low RPM. Very ...