Back Acting or Return Connecting-rod Steam Engines

A special section just for steam engines and boilers, as without these you may as well fit a sail.
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cyberbadger
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Back Acting or Return Connecting-rod Steam Engines

Post by cyberbadger » Fri Apr 16, 2021 5:21 pm

Sometimes you have to fold an engine so it fits in the ship.

Back Acting steam engine offered a small profile solution and were in use in the 19th century, but mainly only for marine applications. By 1900 they were mostly extinct.

One interesting feature is the connecting rod ends are nearly the same on a Back Acting Steam engine.

A model of a back acting steam engine running:
Look at the length of the stroke compared to the overall engine length, the small engine profile is what made these engines useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NqolHScFyY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_st ... ack_acting

A few examples:
USS Onondaga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Onondaga_(1863)

USS Ranger, later USS Rockport and USS Nantucket
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nantucket_(IX-18)
WW0Book-Sennett-MarineSteamEngine-005.jpg
WW0Book-Sennett-MarineSteamEngine-005.jpg (116.73 KiB) Viewed 2787 times
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TriangleTom
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Re: Back Acting or Return Connecting-rod Steam Engines

Post by TriangleTom » Sat Apr 17, 2021 12:13 am

I love these back-acting designs. Such clever arrangements to be as compact as possible
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