Made a simple engine

Chris Hamel

Chris Hamel

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H-M Supporter Gold Member
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Mar 8, 2015
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I found this in Tubal Cains you tube videos. It is a simple steam (or compressed air) engine. Since there is no wrist pin on the piston side of the connecting rod, it causes the cylinder to pivot. As the cylinder moves it opens and closes ports so there are no complicated valves. The piston is a close tolerance fit without any o-ring. When i first tried to run it, I had to use quite a bit of air pressure until the piston and cylinder wore in. Now it will run on 10 psi. Instead of coming up with some kind of small nipple to connect air to, I just hold the rubber tip of my air chuck up to the inlet hole. If you thought of trying to build working engine this is a good design to start with.

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Good job! Hahaha, talk about coincidence... I'm just finishing up making one of these wobblers for my grandson (my first engine). The paint is drying on it now and I'll probably make a post about it in a couple of days when back together. In one of the videos he explains if you email a fellow named Toly he will send you a nice set of prints, which I did and received. I prettied mine up quite a bit from what Mr Pete did since I'm hoping this will be a keep sake for him.

You might be losing some air pressure without a direct air connection. Mine runs nice and smooth on 2-3 psi per the gauge on my 30 psi regulator. On ~ 8-10 it runs so fast I'm afraid it's going to fly apart! To be fair though I did put two tiny oil grooves in the piston which were not in Mr. Pete's design. I read where these help lubricate and also act like rings when full of oil and help with compression.

Making these is fun isn't it! Good work and I imagine many more to come in the future.

Ted
 
I am not sure how accurate the gauge on my regulator is. It may be more like 5 psi.
 
Chris Hamel said:
I am not sure how accurate the gauge on my regulator is. It may be more like 5 psi.
Click to expand...

Sounds more like it. If it's a higher pressure regulator my guess is that the pressure gauge may not be too accurate at very low pressures. I know the one on my compressor isn't. I plan on making more engines of different designs so I picked up a 0-30 psi regulator just for running these guys. It's fun to see how low you can go on pressure before it stalls. I'd like to make a double acting wobbler next. Since they have pressure on both sides of the piston they run on even less pressure and run a lot smoother, but I imagine you've seen these on Mr. Pete's videos as well.

Ted
 
An easy way to check low to medium air pressure pretty accurately is with a "tank valve", pipe thread on one end, Schrader air valve on the other end, and an automotive air gage (with an appropriate pressure range) to fit it. Automotive gages are around 0-50 psi, big truck ones about 0-150 psi, off road ones for light equipment and other specialty use can be as low as 0-10 psi. They can be found at low prices, and do not take up much space when mounted. 1/16" to perhaps 3/8" pipe threads should be widely available, and other threads as well.
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I cobbled together something and checked it with a tire gauge. I am actually at 5psi. Where did you get your Schrader valves?
 
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