My other hobby--steam engines
As some of you know, 2 years ago I bought a small lathe and mill. I have been designing and building small working steam engines from "bar" stock. Last week I finished another build, which is somewhat unique. It is a steam engine with a special valving arrangement, in which the exhaust valve is really a slave cylinder in the head which is operated by inrushing steam coming in the inlet port. This means that when the inlet valve is closed, the exhaust port is open to atmosphere which allows the engine to freewheel with no backpressure on the piston. As a consequence, the engine can be built with a set of governors which disengage the inlet valve cam at higher RPM and let the engin "coast" untill it slows down and the governors reengage the inlet valve cam making the engine "fire". In effect, it becomes a hit and miss engine. I am attaching two video's, one showing the engine running in conventional mode with no governors, and one of it running as a hit and miss engine with the governors working.----Brian
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/n...Movie_0001.jpg
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/n...ISSWORKING.jpg
