- 1). Select your boiler. For a craft sized project, a tea kettle works perfectly. Due to its simplicity, you won't have to do a lot of work to adapt a tea kettle. For larger projects, you will want to look into high-pressure commercial boilers with safety valves and features required to drive larger motors. Since an open-ended tea kettle modified according to these instructions will be incapable of building up high pressure steam, there is no need for release valves or pressure gauges.
- 2). Remove the lid from the mouth of the tea kettle (where you pour out the hot water), and adapt your copper tubing to fit the tea kettle. You may be able to find copper adapters to funnel the kettle output into the piping, or you can use metallic epoxy putty to craft your own adapter. Either way, you want to ensure a secure fit that won't cause steam to leak out before it gets to your turbine.
- 3). Begin crafting your turbine by cutting both ends off of a soda can, to form a hollow, metal tube. Do the same with a second soda can, but also cut it lengthwise, and unroll it to form a flat sheet of metal. Using the other can as a guide, cut a circle roughly one inch bigger than the diameter of the intact soda can. Now, cut slits into the scrap metal, and craft them into angled fan blades. Lining your new steam turbine up with the soda can, bend the edges of each of the blades down until the turbine fits securely into the can, but has little enough friction that it can move freely.
- 4). Spray the inside of the soda can with pan spray for lubrication, and bend the ends of the soda can down, so that the turbine isn't allowed to simply fall over. Make sure the sides of the can don't put pressure on the turbine, preventing it from spinning. The finished product should resemble a metal fan with closed sides. If you blow strongly on the blades, they should spin freely.
- 5). Funnel the output of the copper piping into your wind turbine. More of the metallic epoxy putty can be useful for this part. Make sure the seal is air tight, and steam won't escape as it encounters resistance from the blades.
- 6). Attach an output shaft from the center of the blades to harness the power of your steam motor. The blades can be used to perform physical work, or you can attach the output shaft to a small electric generator to produce electricity or power lights.
- 7). Fill the tea kettle with water, and place it over a heat source. The hotter the heat source, the more power your steam engine will have. It may take up to 10 minutes for your tea kettle to build up enough steam to powerfully turn the turbine. Since there is no valve to build up pressure, the turbine will start out moving very slowly, and will build up speed as more steam is produced.
SHARE
