Valveless steam engine

[mklotz]

This is an interesting design for a valveless steam engine. The piston is a solid rod with a flat on one side. As the flywheel revolves an ingenious linkage causes the piston to not only go up and down but also turn from side to side thru an arc of about 30 degrees. This side-to-side motion alternately exposes the flat to the steam inlet (thus providing steam to power the piston) and then to the exhaust outlet.

This short video clip shows the motion of the linkage...

Under power, the linkage is just a blur so I shot this video using the slow motion setting on my camera. Unfortunately it's too long. I keep forgetting that in the slow motion mode only a few seconds recording are going to turn into a rather lengthy video. Feel free to stop it when you've seen enough.

Because the engine is completely symmetric, reversing it involves nothing more than interchanging the steam and exhaust.