TIG Welded Boilers

[simplyloco]

Following on from Steve's excellent thread on traditional boiler construction, it might be relevant to show the boiler that is installed in my 3.5" Britannia locomotive as it is quite different! I bought this in 2009 from Steam Technology Ltd after my own home built boiler build failed at the throat join on the last leg!
This is as supplied by the Company. https://www.steamtechnology.co.uk. Clever stuff, but some boiler inspectors won't touch it...



This where my boiler failed: at the throat joint, probably due to different expansion between the inner and outer components.  I followed the LBSC instructions...




PS. No more from me for two weeks as we are off to see the Taj Mahal and The Maldives!

[Kim]

That's a beautiful boiler! 

I'm sorry to see your home built boiler developed that crack.  Couldn't that have been repaired with some additional silver soldering?  Or would the boiler inspectors not accept that?  Or was it just more trouble than it was worth?

Kim

[simplyloco]

I'm sure it could have been, but I was quite disheartened after all that work. Marco from Steam Technology who had been following my MECH forum thread, contacted me to make me an offer I couldn't refuse, and six weeks later there it was!
He had just started up you see...
John

[Admiral_dk]

What a shame after all that work  :'(

Good to hear that a new is on the way 

PS. No more from me for two weeks as we are off to see the Taj Mahal and The Maldives!
 

I hope that you have a really great Hollyday / Trip 

Per

[uuu]

I'm sure it could have been, but I was quite disheartened after all that work. Marco from Steam Technology who had been following my MECH forum thread, contacted me to make me an offer I couldn't refuse, and six weeks later there it was!
He had just started up you see...
John

When I've seen these guy's boilers in the flesh I've been really impressed.  It's a clever idea - with the welded seams, you don't need to form the plates to provide an overlap - so the backhead is just a flat plate.  I'm attracted to the repairability too - having seen quite a number of boilers that have been damaged, or failed in later life, and proved unrepairable - I'm thinking that a silver soldered repair in a welded boiler is much easier than in a more conventional one.

Note (certainly in the UK), welded boilers need a traceable/certifiable source of copper, to be of an appropriate grade.  And a coded welder, so no home-brew, alas.

Wilf

[vtsteam]

I'm unable to view in the browser all but the first two photo attachments in your post simplyloco. This is what I see, and those listed files won't display in the browser. They require downloading and then viewing in a separate graphics program. Some are tagged as jpgs, but are actually webP types. Something is not working correctly for these files in general.

[vtsteam]

The problem seems to be that these are webp images instead of the standard jpegs. Even the files above with .jpg extensons are apparently mislabeled webp images.

While this forum software is not set up to block webp's being uploaded as attachments, it does not seem able to recognize them as images or handle them properly, and does not seem to generate the usual thumbnail, or enlarged inline view. It treats them as downloadable binary attachments.

As a suggestion, if you want your image attachments to be viewed normally on the forum make sure they are in the usual jpg, png, gif formats, and not the webp format. Your webp image attachments will not be displayed in many browsers of this forum. Also, changing the extension of a file to .jpg will not convert a webp to a jpg. They are different formats.

[Kim]

Yeah, I found that too.  I could see the two in-line images OK (seem to be hosted on imgur).  But the rest of them I couldn't view, even if I downloaded them.  Seems like interesting pictures John, and would love to see them if you can post them in standard JPG format.

Kim

[Midland60]

John
Didn't have a chance to tell you that I took my 60 boiler to Southern Welding under the arches next to Southern Meats as he does TIG and asked about putting the strip down with TIG. His comment was that the heat would probably melt the original silver solder so who knows???
David

[uuu]

I think it only works the other way.  If you had a repair to do to a TIG-welded boiler, you could safely use silver solder without risk to the welded joints.

Wilf