Steam Engine Part 2 (aka Let's Melt Some Metals)

Alright, this is the second part of the story on my steam engine project. I'll try to keep it brief this time. Last time, we completed the frame portion so now, we worked on the cylinder part used for the actual piston assembly itself.

Basically, we used this machine called Lathe which is quite spectacular really, when you first use it. Good ol' wikipedia helped me out on this one.

A lathe is a machine tool which spins a block of material to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or def ormation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation....

Metalworking lathes are commonly provided with a variable ratio gear train to drive the main leadscrew. This enables different pitches of threads to be cut. Some older gear trains are changed manually by using interchangeable gears with various numbers of teeth, while more modern or elaborate lathes have a quick change box to provide commonly used ratios by the operation of a lever.

Source: Wikipedia-Lathe

So there, you have it. Check out the site for much more descriptions. Anyways, I decided to post some pictures of the cylinder. Enjoy =].