BEAST: solder and stitch and ponder

Yesterday I got down to some soldiering. The kettle pot I am using has a relatively heavy gauge, so your average 40 watt soldiering gun does nothing to heat the pot anywhere near the temperature for fusing copper with plumber's soldier; I need a propane tank and some high temperature to melt this puppy!



A couple of images of the different components I am using in the steam want. Firstly, the steam wand is connected to the lid of the pot. I have incorporated a valve into the first section of the steam want coming out of the pot lid, to help control and vary the pressure when I need to test the machine. I am using a 1/4" I.D. copper tube to channel the steam. The tube then forks, and shrinks in diameter, to a 1/8" I.D. At the ends, I will place two existing espresso steam wand tips. Having the two different steam wands will also give me the option to play around with ways I can have the steam exit into the air.





I have also been working on the water reservoir component of the beast. The large nylon "belly" rain collector joins into the water tank with snap tape. I glue, then sew the snap tape ribbons on each piece.



p.s. Trouble shooting solved! Earlier I was having trouble with the motion sensor hooked up to the kettle element; the timer was not running as to the time specification I set. It turned out to be a problem related to the kettle element and not the sensor. All the while I was running my tests, I never had the pot filled with water. Once the element was submerged in water, it not longer overheated to quickly thus setting off a the safety switch. Back to the sensor - I need to install a 120V relay to the sensor/kettle element circuit. The sensor is overheating from the high voltage. It normally serves up two light bulbs...this is a wee bit more power than that. tschuss!

BEAST: sketch and make and ponder

I have made an outline sketch of my beast and begun to assemble and build the different components.

The scaffold is a lightweight frame made up with tension cables and L-section aluminum joists, and many many nuts and bolts. I can easily hang, clamp, and fix to the frame (with more nuts and bolts!) my different steam machine components.






The three main components of the Beast:

1) hot water tank
2) water reservoir
3) steam wand

The hot water tank is a component in which I have built in an electric kettle heating element. The heating element is activated by motion sensor (details of copper pot "reverse engineering" below).







The water reservoir is a kind of I.V. drip slowly and continuously replenishing the water content in the tank. A rain collector, installed at the top of the scaffold, draws collected rain water into the water reservoir. The rain collector is a stretchy nylon lined with eyelets which clasp around the edge of the frame (details of water reservoir and fabric below).





The steam wand is a long copper tube inserted into the cover of the copper pot. A long copper tube, expanding and decreasing in diameter carries the steam to the wand end where it then exits into the atmosphere. There are several possibilities as to shape and length of the steam wands. I can recycle the existing steam wand from my the MachinaKafe, or I could model my own steam wand head shape. I would like to see what kinds of steam wand head create what kind of steam "clouds".

Going back to Jenson's paper, I want to recall here her notion that the natural world is dynamic and changeable: there exists no distinction between what is artificial and what is natural.

"It is not possible to isolate the essence of the concept of nature. However, this state of affairs contains a certain potential as regards people’s reflexive interaction with their surroundings: it may provide us with greater possibilities than we have had before to observe and evaluate our own relationship to that which surrounds us."
-Jenson, Remarks on nature, super-ecology, life, production, position and other negotiations

My hope is to make a beast which exists and operates withing different scales and types of systems: atmospheric, meteorological, 19th century steam mechanics, the cultural history of the invented landscape. The beast sympathizes these different conditions into a singular, perhaps chaotic, existence. For example the beast draws from the weather system what it lacks from in extracting in the mechanical construct, and in so doing, allies the complexities and realities of the interdependent ecology we all exist in.

I have been mostly working on the first two components: reverse engineering my copper pot, and making a home made IV drip. I am trying to incorporate details and parts from the first MachinaKafe as I assemble the parts of the beast. Am also looking into parts and details that can be food in kitchen equipment and crockery.



Trouble shooting ! Some trouble has come up with the timer attached to the motion sensor. I would like the kettle, once tripped to "on" by the motion sensor, to run for ten minutes. Unfortunately, it doesn't want to keep the element on for more than 16 seconds. I wonder if this is a result of something in the sensor, or the element... not sure as of yet.