A Steam Engine

With almost all the last fixes on the apartment done, I felt that I needed a new project to pick up. Something that in no way was practical and had a deadline, but just for the pure joy of doing it.

I decided to try to build a steam engine from scratch. I spent all of that time in the hex project learning CNC, but then in the end I never really used it. And if I am to get some credibility as a hobbyist mechanical engineer, a steam engine is the perfect portfolio piece. Nothing speaks old-school engineering quite as much as a steam engine.

I am pretty sure that I do have enough knowledge to design a steam engine, but I would probably make some bad choices in the beginning that would either completely stop me or at least give me an engine with really crappy performance. So I decided to look for some sort of finished design that I could use.

I was really lucky and found this build that was extensively documented: https://www.machinistblog.com/bogstandards-paddleduck-engine-plans/

This that is the one I am following.

I will also do a departure from my regular philosophy that if a design requires tight tolerances, then it is a bad design. This one does have quote a few pieces that do need to fit perfectly. But then, that is a fundamental property of a cylinder, so I might as well go with it. Also, the fact that tight tolerances are a sign of a bad design does not mean that I should not know how to make parts with tight tolerances if I ever want/need to. So challenge accepted.

For now, I am starting with building a complete CAD model of the engine based off of the instructions. This forces me to really look at every part and measurement and make sure that I understand it. It also means that I do a sanity check of the documentation in case there are any mistakes there.

So here is how far I have gotten for now.