Tiny home made drive chain pics and video and rotary head.

warranator · Jun 26, 2011

This is a tiny chain which will drive my rotary head cam shaft for a two cylinder steam engine I am building. I was lucky enough to make all the chain components on a repetition cnc lathe which probably took about 4 hours to complete the machining. The assembly of the chain is the time consuming part but I am getting it done.

http://s1109.photobucket.com/albums/h422/warranator1/Twin cylinder rotary head/

stevehuckss396 · Jun 26, 2011

Very cool. I almost made my own chain but it was going to be a bit smaller than yours.

warranator · Jul 5, 2011

I finally got around to assembling my two cylinder rotary valve motor. The rotary valve didn't work at first, I couldn't get more than a couple of revolutions out of the motor, with a bit of head scratching I worked out that the inlet and exhaust ports were bleeding into each other for each cylinder so I pulled the rotary valve shaft out and machined some grooves for o-rings and that fixed the problem. My original fly wheel was also a bit small so I had to machine up a bigger one hence the need now for stilts. I will make up a wooden base and post a video of it running.

lazylathe · Jul 5, 2011

Looks very cool!!
Do you have a build log for this engine?
I would love to see what went into it and what the insides look like!

Looking forward to the video too!!

Andrew

TravisT · Jul 5, 2011

That's a heavy duty chain. Looks great with all the brass. That does look like a lot of work though for a chain but the end result look better than anything you could go out and buy.