Chapter 545: Steam Engine Development Plan

Lucas’ contribution to the project need not be mentioned, as the idea for this machine was his in the first place.

One might be temped to say that the boy was just ’borrowing’ this idea from others and hadn’t actually put any effort into coming up with it himself, but that couldn’t have been more untrue.

Much of the basic science and design work had to be cobbled together from scratch by Lucas as the man he inherited memories only had the most basic knowledge of steam engines: boil water in a pressurized tank to produce steam, then use that steam to drive a piston attached to a flywheel.

Doing this would convert thermal energy into mechanical energy, which could then be used to do all kinds of different tasks.

It was simple to say, but going from just that to an actual prototype had been no easy task.

Even before becoming Celestina’s Disciple and gaining access to the resources and manpower of the Balfour Family, Lucas had spent many hours pondering, sketching, calculating, and puzzling through the designs that eventually became the basis for the LBM Mark 1.

The theoretical part of building a steam engine was only half the battle, though.

Without Braxton’s expertise in smithing, a functioning steam engine would’ve taken years to build. The old man had spent countless hours hammering metal and meticulously carving precisely fitted pieces in order to make this early machine a reality.

Braxton had also designed a complex gear box attachment for the steam engine based on one of the random technical debates he had gotten into with Lucas one day.

This gear box could only be made thanks to the new ’high-precision’ lathes in the forge, and was, according to the grumpy old Spirit Smith, ’a real pain in the ass’, but it was an essential component as it greatly increased the number of tools and pieces of equipment which could be run by the LBM 1 as its optimum operational power-range was actually quite small.

As for Marco, his biggest contribution to the LBM 1 was actually in its control systems.

Not only had the young man managed to create a set of gauges that allowed the internal pressure and temperature of the machine to be monitored in real time, he had even invented a type of simple governor that automatically maintained these factors, something both Lucas and Braxton had praised him for to no end as it was truly a stroke of genius in their opinions.

Another noteworthy contributor was actually Adam, who had made a clever suggestion about a kind of spring-loaded furnace door and exhaust system that allowed the steam engine’s charcoal supply to be topped up and waste ashes removed while it was operating, prolonging the time it could run for continuously.

Coal and even plain-old firewood were also acceptable fuels for the LBM 1, but charcoal was currently the optimum option as it burned hotter for longer than wood, and coal-mining in the Rockwell Kingdom was actually quite small-scale, making it much more expensive and less available than carbonized wood.

Naturally, the first LBM Mark 1 Steam Engine was installed in the Balfour Family’s Misty City forge, and while it needed constant troubleshooting and maintenance, no one in the workshop complained as the benefits it provided far outweighed the costs.

Back in The Lab, Project Revolution’s development team were hard at work looking for ways to improve the LBM 1’s design and gathering more data to help them plan out how to build an even better steam engine.

Regarding that last point, the process of designing the LBM Mark 2 was actually already well underway, with Lucas having set ambitious goals for improved reliability, runtime, and power output.

Lucas wanted the next model of steam engines to be capable of 12 hours of continuous operation at an output of at least 12 kW. He figured that this was just barely enough to run a small paddle-wheeler as it hauled cargo up and down the rivers of the Rockwell Kingdom at speeds comparable to the lowest end merchant ships.

At the same time, with Celestina’s permission, the methods to produce certain components for the LBM 1 were being taught to the family’s regular blacksmiths in order to speed up its production.

This would not only allow the members of Project Revolution to focus more on research, but would also give the lower-level smiths some experience producing advanced machinery.

Of course, a level of compartmentalization was still employed to keep any one person from being able to reverse-engineer the LBM 1, and certain critical components were still only manufactured by those involved directly in Project Revolution to further decrease the likelihood of the technology leaking, but such restrictions were probably just temporary.

Once a certain level of complexity was reached, and the demand for precision increased to the point where only the Balfour Family was capable of achieving it, secrecy wouldn’t really be a problem anymore.

An analogy would be the Sunchaser that was currently sitting in its dock. All of its technology and secrets were available for anyone to go and study, but that hardly meant it was possible for the Balfour Family to build its own Skyships.

Lucas’ plan from here was a simple one.

Use the first LBM 1s to improve mining, smelting, and forging efficiency, making metal and metal components more available to build more steam engines.

Hopefully, by doing this, dramatic inflation in the cost of metals caused by a bottleneck in the supply could be avoided.

Whether it would work, only time would tell.

Only Lucas truly knew how much of an increase in the demand for metals industrialization would cause, and he doubted anyone would believe him if he told them that one day Servist would be consuming billions of tons of steel every single year, but that didn’t mean he was going to just sit around and wait.

These problems were real, and inevitable, so Lucas figured he might as well get a jump on them now.

Torren Ridge had one of the kingdom’s biggest proven deposits of iron, copper, and something called false-silver, which Lucas suspected was nickel.

Small amounts of gold and even Spirit Crystals were also dug up around Torren Ridge each year, though nothing compared to the dedicated mines for such ores.

Lucas was fairly certain that other valuable minerals were present in the ’waste’ materials which were discarded from these mines, but he had no knowledge of how to identify and extract them, so for the moment he could only make a mental note to look into this issue at a later date.

I’ll have to find someone who can help me with that, Lucas thought to himself as he massaged his neck, trying to alleviate the pain he was still feeling.

For now, his main goal was to see how the mines in Torren Ridge were run, how the local smelters processed ore, then look for ways his steam engines could improve production.