Steam Powered Computer

Filmed in the summer of 2005.

~20 gallon boiler from an old steam ship (refurbished and re-certified by my dad), max pressure 250psi with a pressure release valve set at 150psi.
The steam engine was hand-built by someone else, my dad just re-painted it and machined new mechanical parts.
That's a 3kW generator outputting 120VAC ~60Hz in-phase across all outlets.
We had four machines plugged in and charging. The generator had no problem with the output as long as we could keep the steam pressure up. The low point was approximately 50psi; below that the steam engine couldn't keep up enough RPMs to keep the power at 120V.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• steam power
• boiler
• laptop
• computer
• steam engine
• model engineering
• generator
• alternator
• lan party
• steampunk

[DjFroztbyte]

Crap craptops, but nice idea lol.

[calaverx11]

Yeah, we were all a bunch of geeks who built our own laptops from scraps. Three Dell Latitude CPi-As, two Panasonic Toughbook CF-M34s and...whatever that big-ass thing Nate (the guy with the beard) had was. Some kind of "portable PC."

[gamefox120]

simply amazing

steam punk fans will eat this up.

[calaverx11]

You know, "steampunk" wasn't even on the radar for me when this was going on, and it didn't occur to me to put the tag in when I posted it. :P

I definitely want to do this again.

[artman40]

So overclocking the steam engine blows it up.

[PolishedMonocle]

This is so awesome.

[Tripp393]

Steampunk my Windows XP!