Maker Faire Bay Area 2024
Water and Fire and Steam in between
Home: California, United States
Kinetic Steam Works will be demonstrating the primitive yet powerful forces of steam power. Our 26,000 pound steam traction engine will be powering a large centrifugal pump that will drive a large water sculpture. We'll bring back the 1906 Chandler & Price letterpress, steam engine powered of course, and print commemorative works of art. Lastly, we'll be doing a reprise of live metalcasting in gray iron, aluminum, and bronze.
https://kineticsteamworks.org/
Maker
Kinetic Steam Works
Kinetic Steam Works, a Bay Area collective dedicated to steam powered kinetic art and education, came together in 2005 to explore, restore and share the artifacts of clockwork modernity.
https://kineticsteamworks.org/What Inspired You to Make This?
We love steam and we love making. Running and restoring vintage steam equipment often means that you have to make your own parts as the engines are often 100+ years old and sometimes broken and/or worn out. Setting up a full foundry and machine shop was pretty much necessary if we wanted to maintain this equipment in house. Once we were casting metal to make parts for the engines, it opened up other avenues of creativity and exploration. For the fountain- sometimes we just idle the tractor at events but it's a lot more fun to put it to work. We came across these old pumps that were rusted solid and restored them and the result is what you see. We've been printing on vintage letterpress equipment in a way that it was done in the distant past- with steam power. Steam is still the preferred power transfer medium in many modern power plants, though higher pressures (and turbines) are used. The science and engineering aspects of combustion, thermodynamics and power transfer are demonstrated here with a little art to spice it up!
