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Klaymen

A steam turbine would be easier to manufacture and more reliable as it has less moving parts. Something like this.

Bastelmike

I doubt whether its easier to manufacture than a steam engine. The design of rotor, blades and case is difficult. With current technology available at FeF manufacturing won't be possible. A turbine has difficult parts that need high precision. They have to be balanced on special machines.

Don't forget, the design in Your link is patented (patent pending)
At present no option for the GVCS in my opinion.

Mike

DavidIAm

Looks remarkably like a tesla turbine. The 'rotor and blades' is just metal discs, and 'case' is just milled steel, which will need to be within the capabilities of GVCS if we're going to complete all our devices. a modern industrial turbine needs high precision and difficult parts for high efficiency. We don't need high efficiency, so we don't need precision or difficult parts, and we don't need to build rotors or blades. Further, the basic principles of the technology are currently public domain, despite their patent by Tesla so long ago.

Even a steam engine using cylinder is *still* requiring the ability to mill and bore cylinders and casings and all sorts of 'difficult parts' - there are turbine designs that are simpler than steam engine designs.

It comes down to something very simple, Klaymen. Prove it. If you want to build and fully document a powerful little steam turbine for the benefit of the world and OSE, nobody is going to stop you. If you can show that a powerful little turbine can be built by most anybody and work well, who are we to say its not the way to go?

But what its really going to require is one heck of alot more advocacy than a post on a forum. ;)

dorkmo

should make a compitition? turbine vs piston?

we already started on piston path based on marks stuff.

i bet the torch table could cut some nice circles.

what should the point system be? 10 points for replicability, 5 for efficiency, 10 to be first working system.

DavidIAm

Such a contest would require some executive declarations and funding in order to go anywhere, don't you think?

dorkmo

i was thinking more of a just for fun contest. winner gets a 6 pack?

mjn

The notion of a steam turbine has been explored by OSE before - it never even reached the design stage. While a piston steam engine certainly has design challenges, I think they can be overcome. A turbine, as was pointed out above, requires some very delicate machining, assembly, and balancing. They run at high speeds and are very sensitive to vibration. I also believe that a turbine REQUIRES high pressure steam, whereas it is an option for a piston engine.

- Mark

Bastelmike

mjn:

The notion of a steam turbine has been explored by OSE before - it never even reached the design stage. While a piston steam engine certainly has design challenges, I think they can be overcome. A turbine, as was pointed out above, requires some very delicate machining, assembly, and balancing. They run at high speeds and are very sensitive to vibration. I also believe that a turbine REQUIRES high pressure steam, whereas it is an option for a piston engine.

- Mark
A Tesla turbine does not need high pressure, one advantage of the design. Everything else in Your post coincides with my opinion. Especially I see the need for GVCS-51: balancing machine

There are several sites in the web describing the construction of a demo Tesla Turbine, but there isn't one that provides real useful power. They have very high rpm and low torque, making it difficult to build direct driven electric generators. No Tesla turbine ever was seriously used and they tend to overstress the material.

@DavidIam
Even if You think, turbines are not difficult to build, just remember that people at the beginning of 19th century could build piston steam engines with their poor machine tools. Only many years later the first steam turbines were built. What do You think why, David?

:(

dorkmo

i think there are good cases to develop both systems..

like for big stationary electricity, where weight and size are of no design concern, i think turbines would easier to maintain for like a village.

for smaller things, like machines on wheels or maybe a house, i think piston makes sense.

hiatus

Piston: A piston can be made from nearly anything, and is very forgiving to machining imperfections. Parts are easy to find such as in junk automobiles. They aren't very efficient, but they are robust and easy, ideal for initial setup.

Tesla Turbine: A tesla turbine is made from several tightly stacked plates, with just enough room for a fluid or air to squeeze between and cause spinnning. Generally they spin at VERY high rpms, and require great precision to avoid flying apart at high speed.

I do have an idea concerning manufacturing tesla turbines. Take a solid chunk of aluminum and lathe all the plates out at a good speed, carefuly raising the rpms as imperfections and wobbles are worked out. In this way the plates will not require tedious re-stacking, and will be more stable as a solid unit. Ideally a high viscosity oil would be used to provide friction, with the standard couplers present on the GVCS power cube.

I believe keeping it simple and reliable is best during initial setup, perhaps do the piston first and as time allows later, a larger tesla turbine to power a cluster of homes.

DavidIAm

A tesla turbine is made from several closely stacked surfaces, with approximately twice the fluid boundary layer thickness between them. They can spin at very high rpms, but that rpm speed is inherently limited by the pressure of the incoming fluid - the faster they spin relative to the incoming pressure, the less power they develop. This means you can predict very reliably what the 'no load' speed of the turbine pack will be, so provided your input pressure is regulated, your pack will not overspeed.

I have an idea of manufacturing a tesla turbine too, to be as easy as taking some flat round pieces of metal such as created by a large metal punch, putting little dints in them that hold them off from each other at about the distance in question, and bolting them together, which is effectively stacking plates and center washers with no tedious alignment matters to attend to. The strain is all tangential/spin from the axis, so there is very low coaxial to the axis strain, plus, it requires an astonishing level of speed and heat to cause a flat disc of metal (even with cutouts near its middle) to fail. Go through a conventional balancing procedure, and without any precision manufacturing at all you've made a capable turbine pack.

I believe that there is little simpler than creating a tesla turbine - its one moving part created of a pile of imprecise parts bolted together and balanced.

That said, I am fairly pessimistic about anybody creating such a tesla turbine, even myself as fascinated as I am by the ideas, because it is low priority in my life for the foreseeable future.

hiatus

I have made one out of scrap hard drives, but this hardly merits a boy scout badge, as the precision work is already done by seagate.

I do agree, tesla turbines shouldn't be a priority at this time. I'm not entirely convinced its feasable or economical for the purposes of GVCS.

That said, I would like to try making a larger one in the future, if I can find a sucker willing to let me borrow his shop.

Metz

I was envisioning a turbine similar to a aircraft turbine made from flat steel parts cut on the torch table, then assembled and balanced on a automotive wheel balancer.

For a example see greenpowerscience YouTube channel...

DavidIAm

I think that is less feasible than the Tesla turbine, Metz.

Metz

not with the torch table... Cut a circle, flat instead of curved blades in notches around the edge. Sprockets cut on the torch table, housing made from laminated steel similar to how a master lock is made from laminated steel parts so you dont have to do much machining in the housing...

dorkmo

how bout this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerotor

mjn

Interesting. The Gerotor is similar to a Wankel engine that uses rotary cams instead of gears.

NavSy

Other then the tesla turbine almost all other turbines require dry steam. Wet drops of water will be like placing grains of sand in the turbine. I haven't seen any vehicle to this date with a tesla turbine. Steam turbines also require a lot more water than piston engines. Piston engine is the way to go. Either v-twin style or radial style like the cyclone. Much less maintenance and much easier to manufacture.

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