User:Fishpaw/ENES-100/Steam Engine Project

Choosing a Project
Chose to work on the steam engine project.

Week 1 Research
While in class the group talked about
 * basic components
 * potential designs
 * materials required
 * general how to build a steam engine because no one had any experience building a steam engine

We felt that by limiting the research to the four items it would allow us to stay focused. The group did research into steam engines on the internet. My research started at the Wikipedia article on steam engines. Also did a goggle search for steam engines and read the second and third website, the first one was the Wikipedia page. From this information if we were going to build a boiler the water tube boiler is talked about as a safer option. I began to look into how to build a water tube boiler but it kept leading me to descriptions of what it does or how it works no how to build one.

I goggled 'main components of a steam engine' and looked at the images. The third image was the one that I looked at. It showed 6 pieces
 * piston
 * cylinder
 * connecting rod
 * crankshaft
 * flywheel
 * frame

I did a goggle search on 'how to build a flywheel' and found a website called Open Source Ecology where I found a lot of step by step building instructions for not just a flywheel but building a steam engine.

Changed my goggle search to find other instructions on a flywheel to 'how to build a flywheel for a steam engine' and clicked the link from the website instructables.com that had a video of the actual build.

Week 2 Focusing
The group decided to break the steam engine into three parts (flywheel, piston, and boiler) and focus on just getting one of the parts to function. We decided that we were going to focus on trying to build the piston using a 3D modeling program to design and possibly the MakerBot printer to print it.

Searched Goggle images for 'steam engine' to get ideas for designs and try to narrow down the type of design that we will use. There seem to be two designs the single action and the double action piston. The group decided to work on a double action piston and focused on these two designs
 * Design 1
 * Design 2

Due to the ability of SolidEdge to produce a more accurate model the group decided to use this program. My part was to work on designing a plunger to go into the main chamber. I Goggled 'steam engine piston + solidedge' to see if there was any information on building a steam engine piston in solidedge. I was not able to find anything that helped build the plunger. SolidEdge has an assembly option called engineering reference which had a shaft option that I was able to manipulate into a plunger. I struggled with being able to extrude a hole into the rounded side of the plunger where it will attach to the flywheel. The group was also not able to extrude a hole in the rounded side. The group continued to struggle with this problem. The group decided to put a presentation together to try to get some help from the class.

The problem we ran into with solid edge was not being able to get a hole in the rounded side of the rod. This was an issue that we presented to the class and through this presentation we found the right mix of search words in goggle to do this. Through seaching "punch a hole in a cylinder in solid edge" Drilling a hole on cylindrical surface. This allowed us to put a hole at the external end of the piston shaft that could eventually attach the piston to the flywheel.

Our first attempt was to make the entire housing one piece but then we realized that in order to manipulate anything inside the housing would require us to reprint the whole thing. This was not an ideal set up. Then we talked about trying to figure out how to split the housing in a way that would allow the most access to all the pieces required. It was pointed out to us that the two did not have to be attached to each other. This allowed us to focus on just making a piston rod, valve rod and then two housings that were connected by some tubing.

Week 3 Wrapping it up
I was out of town for this week so I was not able to participate.