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Mr. Kleinstein posted very nice James Watt's steam engine to lego Ideas. And he shared the digital file, so I have slightly modified it and made instructions.

This is a working model of James Watt's steam engine. The model represents a beam engine, with an upright cylinder and a large flywheel. The to-and-fro motion of the piston inside the cylinder is taken up by the large beam, and then converted to a rotary motion by planetary motion gears. To make the piston rod on the end of the rotating beam travel in a completely straight path, a system of levers called Watt's parallelogram is employed. A sliding valve driven from the main crankshaft steers the intake and outlet of steam. The machine also includes a speed governor, an air pump for the steam condenser, and a feed water pump.

The model actually runs on a gentle vacuum, as provided by carefully approaching the steam outlet with the hose of a vacuum cleaner. There are 1152 bricks in this model. The build is quite challenging; the hardest part is adjusting all the parts to move really freely, and then centering the motion of the slide valve. When finished, the rigid frame stabilizes the engine so it can easily be picked up and handled without coming out of adjustment.

The model contains also a fireplace, boiler and a heap of coal. The modeled steam engine would typically use a Cornwall-type boiler, which would be even longer than the machine (at the same scale). The engine frame would be at floor level.

The instructions were generated in Studio, and contains also description of steam engines, Watt's inventions, properties of the model and some pictures of real beam engines.

My own photos are quite bad, so you see only render or Mr. Kleinsteins original video. However it is fully working, and my older boy likes to play with the large wheel, he likes to watch sliding valve moving, and placing spiders all around.

See Mr. kleinstein's video on flickr:

Lego Ideas Watt's Steam Engine

Rebrickable:

https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-22090/

All model files (.io, .ldr, .odt, .pdf) can be downloaded here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/owccc09eev0kxg6/AAA5W0qkzNCR-yM4odlq9Zo2a?dl=0

I was not sure if put it into technic forum or scale modelling, however the funcionality is the main thing so it seems to fit technic forum.

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Any video you can make a link to.. ? Somehow I can't find the video on flicker?? 

 

Update 

I found it !!  

Edited by sirslayer

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This is brilliant. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. I now have an idea for my steam mad Uncles birthday present.

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Fantastic! Not only does it look great, but comes with mechanical complexity, also demonstrating the Watt's linkage. The last sentence being a bit of an understatement, as this machine was the reason why James Watt came up with this linkage in the first place... Really a nice idea to reproduce one of the first machines around. A big plus that it actually works with vacuum!

Edited by kolbjha

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Wow, what a machine !!

Making such a complex mechanism work smoothly with Lego plastic is surely an amazing achievement.

Did you have to use any lubrication ?

Also, I was curious how you achieved air insulation. I had tried building a water fountain from Lego and the water was leaking all over because of the small gaps between bricks. I suppose getting air insulation will be much harder.

 

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Oh, this is cool. I tried to go and support it, but the project already expired. Thanks for making instructions - added to the to-build list :thumbup:

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2 hours ago, iLego said:

Did you have to use any lubrication ?

Also, I was curious how you achieved air insulation. I had tried building a water fountain from Lego and the water was leaking all over because of the small gaps between bricks. I suppose getting air insulation will be much harder.

No lubrication is needed. Mr Kleinstein did a good job, the only thing you have to do is to make some free play on the axes.

The good insulation is not needed. The cylinder is of course leaking air, still average vacuum cleaner makes sufficient air flow to run the engine. No special precaution during building is required.

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I would like to see the crank mechanism of this build.
I know about the patent problems James had cause with it due to a complete ridiculous patent that was given away.
(actually from that moment on everyone with a pedal sewing machine was a patent offender)
I'd like to see if you managed to rebuild this.

For those that want to see the mechanism, the original is in the science museum in London.

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