Small Oscillating Steam Engine

Here's a small oscillating steamer built from plans found on the internet. The original source site has shut down (and we have not gotten a response from the site webmaster) so we've redrawn the plans with a few minor changes (and aluminum could be used as a substitute for the brass). The engine uses an "L" shaped frame and "upside down" layout (the crank is over the piston). We added a muffler on the exhaust port (the type used on small pneumatic equipment...looks neat but didn't really make any difference). The (air pressure) regulator is clearly visible (in the left side of the first picture) and is connected to the intake port. The bottom picture shows it spinning at about 1000 RPM. Despite large diameter, heavy flywheel, it didn't run steady at slow speed (say below 500 RPM)....we've found that most of these oscillating engines don't like to run real slow. Runs ~ 3600 RPM at 30 psi.

Plans: