Interactive article on Beam Engines

[glinscott]

Hi,

I've been interested in steam engines for a long time.  Recently, I was reading through Richard L Hills "Power from Steam", and "Power in the Industrial Revolution".  The books are wonderful, but it's sometimes difficult to build an intuition for the concepts from static pictures.  That led me to do a deep dive into the beam engine: how it works, the history behind it, and the engineering tradeoffs the builders faced.  The article has quite a few interactive figures that I hope make the concepts easier to see.

Article: https://glinscott.github.io/beam-engine/



The engine is based on this great CAD model: https://grabcad.com/library/horizontal-beam-engine-1, which is in turn based on https://www.ajreeves.com/model-engineer-beam-engine-me-beam.html.  I rigged it on OnShape, and wrote a custom exporter so the article could show the different mechanisms clearly.

I would be very grateful for any corrections or feedback.

Thanks,
Gary

[Sanjay F]

I have just skim read this and looked at the pictures and animations; I'm totally blown away by your fantastic effort and am now getting a cup of tea and some biscuits and am going to read each every word top to bottom - thank you 

[glinscott]

I have just skim read this and looked at the pictures and animations; I'm totally blown away by your fantastic effort and am now getting a cup of tea and some biscuits and am going to read each every word top to bottom - thank you 

Thanks!  Enjoy the tea and biscuits .

[Michael S.]

This is good information if you want to learn about the history of steam engines.
I can still clearly remember the demonstration here in Magdeburg of Otto von Guericke’s experiment with the hemispheres and horses.

Michael

[Sanjay F]

This is good information if you want to learn about the history of steam engines.
I can still clearly remember the demonstration here in Magdeburg of Otto von Guericke’s experiment with the hemispheres and horses.

Michael

I always thought you were old, but didn't realise you were that old to remember the experiment! 

[glinscott]

This is good information if you want to learn about the history of steam engines.
I can still clearly remember the demonstration here in Magdeburg of Otto von Guericke’s experiment with the hemispheres and horses.

Michael

Did someone do a historical recreation of the hemisphere demonstration? That would be very fun to see if so!

Also, I should check my sourcing on where the demonstration(s) actually happened.

[Michael S.]

No, no, I’m not quite that old yet.
Back in my school days—in the 1980s—it was demonstrated once.
Unfortunately, it hasn't been shown in recent years.

[Michael S.]

I found somethin

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQXjQL7GQco" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQXjQL7GQco</a>g:

[crueby]

I remember  that experiment being shown recreated on an episode of Connections with James Burke. Don't  recall  where he went to film it.

[steam guy willy]

Hi the steam engines have followed an incremental pattern over 300 years and because of the many patents being enforced starting with "An engine being driven by fire " and the progress/process ending with Triple expansion and horizontal mill engines ,then turbines , this has taken quite a long time to come into fruition, One of the many setbacks was J Watts having to use a sun and planet gear to be able to use a flywheel ?? Also the lack of the steels being used for boilers ??waiting to be invented . I always wondered if James Watt made a silver solder copper boiler to carry out high pressure steam engine experiments ?? The thermodynamic laws were created and understood quite a long time ago, resulting with Guiffards  " Magic box" (injector) to refill boilers !!??....Just a few comments from my long experience with steam engines !
Cheers

Willy

[Krypto]

Your interactive article is great and was a lot of fun to read and view!  The first animation was a bit laggy on my tablet, but was smooth as butter on the desktop.  More GPU horsepower I suppose.

[glinscott]

Your interactive article is great and was a lot of fun to read and view!  The first animation was a bit laggy on my tablet, but was smooth as butter on the desktop.  More GPU horsepower I suppose.

Thanks!

RE: GPU horsepower - yes, the first animation is pretty detailed - I can almost certainly optimize things there though, will take a look.

[Krypto]

While you are looking, you might want to check out the rotation of the ball governor.  I think it's backwards?  It looks a little funny down at the gear mesh.

[glinscott]

While you are looking, you might want to check out the rotation of the ball governor.  I think it's backwards?  It looks a little funny down at the gear mesh.

Thank you! This is now fixed .

[Sanjay F]

Having read it top to bottom, I enjoyed it throughly, a lot I didn't know. It's definitely better for a younger generation too who need lots of visuals, photos and animations to keep them interested. Everything is instant these days, so for better or worse giving them a text book 'ain't guna work'!

Thanks once again and whenever I get asked about how steam engines work, I'll give my basic explanation then point them at your presentation