Last night I wanted to check whether there was a leaky piston ring seal on a two-cylinder oscillating steam engine. A length of small I.D. plastic tubing became a stethoscope, and then it was easy to check the engine's behavior.
Compressed air was piped to the engine, and the pressure was set low enough so that the engine would not run on its own. With one end of the tubing to my ear, and the other end at the engine's steam exit port, the engine was turned by hand. As the steam ports opened and closed the air flow was clearly heard. With the bad-sealing cylinder there was a constant air flow when the cylinder was positioned to admit air, which indicated that there was constant flow from the cylinder's inlet port to its outlet port. The good cylinder had no audible air flow when it was in the same position. Next step is to figure out how to remove the cylinder's press-fit ends so that the piston and o-ring can be inspected. It is curious that the engine runs better in forward than in reverse, which implies that the seal effectiveness is different between the two directions of rotation. Because the cylinders are double-acting, one would think that the seal effectiveness would be the same in either direction. Steve __________________________________________________________________ Switch to Netscape Internet Service. As low as $9.95 a month -- Sign up today at http://isp.netscape.com/register Netscape. Just the Net You Need. New! Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer Search from anywhere on the Web and block those annoying pop-ups. Download now at http://channels.netscape.com/ns/search/install.jsp _______________________________________________ SSLiveSteam mailing list Send messages: [email protected] Cancel subscription: http://postfix.45mm.com/mailman/listinfo/sslivesteam Rules: http://www.45mm.com/sslivesteam_guide.html
