Steam engine/Story

## Production

The first steam engine's components were made by blacksmiths and Carter Lannis, then molded together by Anna. It cost Roland 20 golden royals.

The steam engine brought the first industrial revolution, it was the driving force behind human development, completely replacing humans and animals in the workforce.

It was a schematic diagram that each mechanic engineer was familiar with, to describe it in simple words, it was a larger version of a kettle. After boiling the water, the produced steam would be induced into the cylinder. There, it would push a piston that is connected to a pole. Like this, thermal energy was turned into mechanical energy.

The principle was very simple, but it did not mean that it was easy to manufacture. Its difficulty laid in the sealing of the cylinder and piston, as well as the production of the gas pipeline. Without proper metal processing skills and only relying on manual forging, manufacturing a usable cylinder would only be a dream.

However, with the help of Anna’s ability, he could make up for the lack of their manufacturing skills.

After much advance planning, Roland came up with a design using four iron plates of the same size, like this, so the smithy could easily grind it. Then the iron plates would be welded together at a 90-degree angle by Anna. Like this, it was possible to get a highly stiff square cylinder. With the help of Anna, he didn’t need to use the traditional production process. They created first a tubular boring machine, and then post processed it to create a circular cylinder. The other big parts, too, could be divided into small pieces and then welded together. In this way, it was even possible to produce them in a small workshop. In this way, they were able to produce all of the components required for the steam engine.

In fact, prior to the invention of welding, people could only rely on connecting small pieces by bolting or riveting. Since the internal cylinder must be smooth, normal connection methods obviously couldn’t do this.

The only problem was the gas pipeline. Its production process was nothing special, it needed to be heated up until it was red, and then the groove could be hammered into the right shape; this was also the method to produce a front-loading flintlock gun barrel. Later the barrel just needed straightening and counterbored rifling etc., nothing that was too complicated.

The problem was that it was impossible for Roland to call the blacksmith into the castle’s back garden, since it was still not known that Anna hadn’t been executed. Blacksmithing was not one of their strengths, but in a desperate attempt, they had to let the chief knight do it, under Roland’s own command.

## Improvements

The worked up noise and vibration by his prototype of the steam engine was very impressive, even when stabilizing the drill it was impossible to complete a pipe. When doing heavy work or menial jobs, this degree of tremor didn’t matter, but processing a gun barrel was clearly not possible.

If he wanted to improve the steam engine, he would have to create a centrifugal mechanics governor to control the output power of the steam engine, and then he could reduce the tremor by using gears to adjust the rotation speed of the drill. And he need a simple lathe machining gear. With all this in mind, Roland simply found no way to achieve this goal while preparing for the coming Months of the Demons.

In the end, he could only use the old fashioned way, and let a blacksmith hammer the drill into the barrel. But the plan to mass-produce firearms was impossible. According to the number of smithies in Border Town, it was only possible to produce 3-4 root barrels each month, but only in the case that he stopped the production of the second steam engine.

## References

1. ↑ Chapter 23
2. ↑ Chapter 24
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 23 (novel)
4. ↑ Chapter 28 (novel)