Heron's steam ball (turbine) made from a tin of condensed milk and some copper pipe.
I designed and built the origional one of these when i was about seven years old and the design hasent changed since. Since it was designed by a seven yr old its simple, debatably free and easy to make.
This is probably the simplest of my creations and all you need to make it is a can of condensed milk and some brake piping you can get free from any local garage.
For More Details Visit My Website at: http://letsbuildone.110mb.com/
Or Url: http://revver.com/video/1141221/home-made-diy-steam-turbine/
So lets get started.
I designed and built the origional one of these when i was about seven years old and the design hasent changed since. Since it was designed by a seven yr old its simple, debatably free and easy to make.
This is probably the simplest of my creations and all you need to make it is a can of condensed milk and some brake piping you can get free from any local garage.
For More Details Visit My Website at: http://letsbuildone.110mb.com/
Or Url: http://revver.com/video/1141221/home-made-diy-steam-turbine/
So lets get started.
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Materials Required:
* Soldering Iron.
- A tin can, idealy a normal sized steel condensed milk tin with only one seam which is at the top.
- Some metal tubing, preferably steel or copper. Hydraulics tubing from scrap car suggested.
- Swivel or thread that can be twisted ALOT and hold the weight of a can half filled with water.
* Soldering Iron.
- Something to make approximately 5mm holes with. Drill or large nail will do.
- Hammer if you are using a nail.
- Heat source like a trangia, camping stove or blow torch.
- Potentially a pair of pliers or a vice.
- Pipe bender would be helpful but not required
- Sand paper, scouring pad or brush.
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Put Simply- Decrease Nossle Size->Increase steam exit velocity->Increase rotation speed (rpm).
Also you could add a small amount of acetone to the water before you boil it, being careful to make sure it is mixed well. By a small amount i mean less than 10% although i cannot find the exact water acetone ratio right now. When you mix water and acetone together they form an "azeotrope" this is usefull because as the acetone boils/evaporates it takes molecules of water with it effectually lowering the boiling point of water from 100*C (pure water at 1bar atmospheric pressure) down to around 70-80*C (acetone-water azeotrope at 1bar atmospheric pressure). This means it will boil faster and produce more steam at 100*C than the pure water would.
More steam=more pressure=higher exit velocty vapours=more mass out per second. Going back to Ke=(1/2*M)*V2 if you increase the mass (flow rate ie mass out per unit time) the Kinetic Energy increases and since the same equation applies to the vessel and the mass is constantly decreasing as the azeotrope evaporates the velocity must increase.
The only other thing you could do would be to make the vessel lighter, more aerodynamic and reduce the rotational friction from the bearing. You could experiment with pipe lengths but lengthening increases torque action but decreases rpm, shortening increases rpm but decreases torque. (Torque is the rotational force applied to the vessel by the steam, too little torque and it wont have enough force to spin although this is unlikely).
In conclusion:
@ Smallest Possible Holes/nossles.
@ Add Less than 10% acetone to the water to lower the boiling point.
@ experiment
Hope this has helped,
LBO
Joking aside, am I actually using particularly long words? I'm aware can be rather verbose at times but that's because I want to be clear. I use a few technical terms to be accurate but my intention isn't to bamboozle you. I don't think theres anything in there that the average person won't understand. Azeotrope may need a quick Google but I explained what it meant for those people who didn't know, I explained everything in case people didn't know the science, I even explained what torque was.
I'm an engineer, maybe I have a different perspective on what a big word or what simple is. I may do a "Building a... for dummies" series where the instructions are simplified. I could do it as a comedy series and write it in hill billy? Could be fun... Especially if it's to build something particularly precise, scientific and complex. I do enjoy irony.
i wrote it so that is a word
Back on topic
Would you get more power with more pipes attached? I wouldn't think so, since that would decrease the pressure inside because there would be more openings. More stability maybe?
If you want the smallest opening possible, could you make a hero's engine with only one pipe/arm/thingy? It would have to be balanced perfectly because of stability issues but I think it might be a bit more effective.
Back on topic
If you want more power then boil something with a lower boiling point. adding more exhausts wouldn't help because what you gain in mass flow rate out of the engine, you lose in exit velocity. Increasing your torque but decreasing your pressure and top speed as the engine can only be propelled as fast as it's exhaust travels. One pipe may make it faster but it would probably require a solid shaft to spin on over a piece of string because of the stability issues you mentioned.
You would get the same effect by using smaller tubes. remember that it is the cross sectional area of the exhaust nozzle that effects the exit velocity so halfing the diameter doesn't half the area as the area is equal to pi multiplied by the square of the nozzle radius.
But I never made one