Lego Reversible Cut-Away Engine

This is the engine in the other videos, but with Stephenson reverse gear. It was a challenge to get the hanger and lifting mechanism into that tiny of a space, it took me about three hours all togeather. This video demonstrates how the reverse link works and what exactually it does to reverse the engine. The Stephenson gear itself is quite an old valve gear, it was designed and first used by the Robert Stephenson Locomotive Works in the mid 1840's. It was designed to replace the old clumsy Gad/Gab valve gear used on previous locos that gave only fixed valve timing. And the Stephenson gear was extremely succesful, in England it remained popular for the remainder of the steam age. It was popular in America untill around the 1910's.
Hope you like it everyone!

Category:

Science & Technology

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• stephenson
• link
• valve
• gear
• lego
• steam
• engine
• air
• vacuum
• pneumatic
• how
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[TerminatorFRA]

Something else you can do. Lengthening the valve to the size of the cylinder. This gives straight channels between them and it's easier to build. I see you have enough space to do it.

And when you lowered the link, you forgot to make it running backwards. ;)

[mechanicsnut]

@TerminatorFRA Oh, I had not noticed that. That's what I get for multi-tasking. Also, my earliest engines had full length cylinder valves. But I wanted to try something that may not leak as much, the reduced area of pressure inside the valve means less vacuum lost. But I have not yet tested them both to find out for sure. Thanks again.

[TerminatorFRA]

@mechanicsnut Haven't thought about that. It's true, with longer valves, because the legos aren't tight, they leak. ;)

[TerminatorFRA]

It really impresses me how you assembled the blocs for building the piston and valve.

Try to modify/build one with a little cylinder or increasing the valve size for having more sectional area (I like more that idea). The engine will run even faster (if it can hold it) lol