can you make bronze steam engine?

NATO1949

can you make bronze steam engine or form copper
the cannon where made from bronze because they easier to use and can withstand high pressure.
 

Henriksson

Why, yes. The very first steam engines made in the Hellenistic period and later rediscovered during the Renaissance were mostly made of bronze.

On a side note, it often puzzles me why there is often an emphasis that the steam engines of "Antiquity" were not practical, while seemingly pretending that the later Europeans went straight to practical ones.
 

NATO1949

if hot air balloon is discovered early like 1000 bc. and let say that gas laws were discovered 100 ad. and simple mercury thermostat and mercury barometer.
than you have simple scientific understanding for simple steam engine. the roman did have essential components of the much later steam engine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierapolis_sawmill
 

Kevin Renner

Bronze will certainly be usable. And in some ways better. Steam is not user freindly to cast iron. Bronze depending on the alloy can be a cast iron bitch machining wise though. Of course some of the tougher alloys aren't technically bronze being copper/iron/nickel/aluminum. Google Ampco 45
 

wietze

Falastur

The problem with bronze is that it doesn't have the durability of iron. It can certainly be forged into any shape iron can, and for a while it will seem to do the job just as well, but ultimately bronze is a more brittle metal. Bronze used to be used for cannon, for instance, long before anyone thought of using iron, but it was largely abandoned (along with reasons relating to cost) because bronze cannons had a nasty tendency to crack under the pressure and then explode, showering their gun crews in shards of deadly metal. Iron cannon could also do this, but far, far less frequently. I suspect that bronze steam engines will suffer this deficiency too.
 

Richard V

Manganese bronze is high strength and used for hot working. Bizarrely it wasn't invented until the second half of the 19th century, even though humans have been using manganese since ancient times.

Another way of strengthening bronze is steel bronze, aka Uchatius bronze. This is simply worked hardened conventional bronze. Experiments in the 19th century showed it was competitive with early steel for rifled cannon barrels. Although work hardening a cast bronze tube requires mechanical compression process.
 

Reader347

Kevin Renner said:
Bronze will certainly be usable. And in some ways better. Steam is not user freindly to cast iron. Bronze depending on the alloy can be a cast iron bitch machining wise though.
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The Romans made bronze water valves and force pumps, so they obviously managed the tolerances.
 

Lleibi

Richard V said:
Manganese bronze is high strength and used for hot working. Bizarrely it wasn't invented until the second half of the 19th century, even though humans have been using manganese since ancient times.

Another way of strengthening bronze is steel bronze, aka Uchatius bronze. This is simply worked hardened conventional bronze. Experiments in the 19th century showed it was competitive with early steel for rifled cannon barrels. Although work hardening a cast bronze tube requires mechanical compression process.
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There is a reason why both bronzes you mention were discovered in the 19th century: metallurgy. You need metallurgy to create useful steam engines.
 

Richard V

jotabe1789 said:
There is a reason why both bronzes you mention were discovered in the 19th century: metallurgy. You need metallurgy to create useful steam engines.
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Steel bronze was difficult to make in tube form, in simpler shapes work-hardened bronze have been in use since the Bronze Age. But I don't see what's so hard about manganese bronze. People have been experimenting with copper alloys for millennia. You only need <4% manganese, and manganese oxides were plentiful.
 

eliphas8

Henriksson said:
Why, yes. The very first steam engines made in the Hellenistic period and later rediscovered during the Renaissance were mostly made of bronze.

On a side note, it often puzzles me why there is often an emphasis that the steam engines of "Antiquity" were not practical, while seemingly pretending that the later Europeans went straight to practical ones.
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Because the antiquity era ones didn't have the capability to be made practical? Steam technology has dozens of other technologies that need to exist to support its creation, just because you discover the theoretical abilities of steam as a power source does not mean you can make use of it with the materials available to you.
 

Hoist40

Banned
One thing that would help in using copper or bronze is that you don't need a lot of pressure to operate a steam engine. Ocean going ships before the 1870 operated at 15 pounds or less pressure. They were not as efficient as higher pressure engines but they worked.

Newcomen’s engine used 2 psi steam from the boiler.
 

Henriksson

eliphas8 said:
Because the antiquity era ones didn't have the capability to be made practical? Steam technology has dozens of other technologies that need to exist to support its creation, just because you discover the theoretical abilities of steam as a power source does not mean you can make use of it with the materials available to you.
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Not sure what you mean, surely the "ores" had the same physical characteristics then as now?

No, I'd say the real issue is that metal smelting peaked in the Early Imperial Era and then just dropped from there.
 

amphibulous

Banned
You can make a bronze steam engine, but you can't make bronze machine tools - not really good ones. And without these, the steam engine isn't really worth much. People on this forum tend to go "Steam tank! Yeah!" Or more sanely "Steam warship, yeah!" But the things that really matter are the things that make other things.

Without good machine tools steam engines

- Aren't very powerful (because tolerances ae sloppy and they are simpler designers)

- Are much more expensive

- Are rare

- Can't do very much (because there are no machine tools for them to drive)
 

eliphas8

Henriksson said:
Not sure what you mean, surely the "ores" had the same physical characteristics then as now?

No, I'd say the real issue is that metal smelting peaked in the Early Imperial Era and then just dropped from there.
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Well yes, the ore itself is roughly the same (although not totally), what I meant is that the metalurgical techniques to make metals capable of dealing with the pressure and heat of a practical steam engine didn't exist and wouldn't exist for hundreds of years.
 

Henriksson

eliphas8 said:
Well yes, the ore itself is roughly the same (although not totally), what I meant is that the metalurgical techniques to make metals capable of dealing with the pressure and heat of a practical steam engine didn't exist and wouldn't exist for hundreds of years.
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It did not exist when the first steam engines came about in later times, either.
 

Flubber

Banned
NATO1949 said:
... say that gas laws were discovered 100 ad. and simple mercury thermostat and mercury barometer.
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It's nice to see that someone realizes instrumentation is necessary for steam engine development. The Age of Enlightenment had it while the Classical Era did not.
 

DominusNovus

I think the issue of cost cannot be underestimated. Both iron and bronze were much more expensive in the classical era. Enough to totally wipe out the advantage of steam power, I'm quite confident.
 
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