Technical Help

Spring City Steam Works Reports:

​22nd July 2019

While it's crazy hot and in between the new kid prep.... I'm printing some fixtures to test out and help decide on the fixtures for the pancake coils for the Mason. Hopefully a little bending and fixture time this week!
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23rd July 2019

One may have been thinking... Why the need to pallet jack the weld table around.... Well, I'm trying to take a 21 foot piece of pipe and wind it into a double stacked pancake flat coil of pipe to replace some coils in the Mason's monotube steam generator. Shops too small, so out in the driveway it goes!!
As for the 3d printed pieces, I'm working out how to fixture the hairpin bent pipe so that the top leg is ~1/4" gap above the lower when it gets wound into a coil. The center section will be made of steel and there will be a clamp on top as well as the pipe getting tack welded to the clamp. Then the 11 foot long top pipe will swing a huge circle as the lower pipe is wound on itself to make the pancake coil. The whole mess then gets flipped over and hopefully that leg winds into a nice pancake below it. Works in my head, got to refine the pieces a little and make some chips and then try that plan out!!! ​

We have just been sent these Ottoway Burner Drawings, courtesy of John Liming. The Ottoway burner is a simple, yet effective replacement steam car burner, most commonly used in early tiller-steered steam cars.

Condensed from a report to the Third International Automobile Congress, held at Milan 24th-29th, May, 1906.

By Leon Serpollet (Article Courtesy of Light Steam Power, November-December 1970)
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When sending a copy of this report, Mr Thos. Hindle states : “It is evident that the Steam Car would not have languished….had Leon Serpollet lived. His fundamental proportionate feed system which, in it’s perfected form, embraced the positive and concurrent delivery of liquid fuel, combustion air and feed-water, has practical possibilities today (1970). Serpollet was the first to propose electric ignition for a Steam Car spray burner. It is also noteworthy that in 1905, he abandoned his famous single-acting  engine for a double-acting version which, however, retained the essential poppet-valves actuated by a sliding camshaft.”
(To be Continued).

Condensed from a report to the Third International Automobile Congress, held at Milan, 24th-29th May 1906. Supplied by Thos. Hindle.
By Leon Serpollet (Courtesy of Light Steam Power, March-April, 1971).

​Fuels

Solid Fuels, either coal or coke, are employed with nearly all tank boilers, so that, on account of the weight of the generators themselves, the bulk of the supplies and the nature of the fuel, they are limited to heavy commercial vehicles, which generally are operated on designated routes and have fixed points of supply. There remain the liquid fuels, gasoline, alcohol, kerosene, and heavy oil.