Hey guys, Welcome back.

Today we're going to be building
a minature steam engine kit,

and simulating it using C++.

I challanged myself to finish
the entire project in one week.

So it should be a pretty wild ride,
and I think you'll like the result

I'd like to thank Rena, our first ever
Patron at the "Master Mechanic" tier for their support.

And a special thanks also to Squarespace
for sponsoring this video, and making it possible.

If you need a comprehensive tool to set up your website,
Squarespace is an amazing option.

More about them later.

[DAY 1]
[THE REAL ENGINE]

This thing has been sitting around my apartment
for months now and its finally time to open it.

Sterlingkit sent me this engine to review,
and I wasn't really sure what to do with it

Since I don't really do unboxing videos
on my channel.

Now that all the packaging is gone,
we can start going through all the pieces.

The build quality is actually pretty decent,
and they did include all of the tools that

you need to build it which is good because
I don't have any tools at my current location.

The first step is to add these rubber feet to
the bottom of the base.

Now trust me, when this bad boy gets going,
it's going to need these heavy duty motor mounts.

Next we connect the piston to the connecting rod
with a very very small wrist pin.

Then we need to connect this cylinder sleeve
to what I'm calling the cylinder head.

There is a small o-ring that goes here, and I used the wrong one
But I fixed it off camera, so don't worry.

The sleeve is attached with this plate
and four screws.

We can now put the piston into the cylinder through
the bottom and slide the valve into it's bore

in the side of the cylinder head.

The entire crankshaft and valve linkage comes
pre-assembled with the kit.

Now we can attach this plate which holds
everything together.

Once that's on, we attach the two engine mounts
which will be bolted to the base later.

The flywheel is then attached onto the crankshaft
and secured with a set screw.

The entire assembly is held onto the base
using two screws which go through the

engine mounts that we attached earlier.

And now we can attach the frame to the cylinder
and engine mounts in the same way

as the other side.

The manufacturer includes a pulley for the
opposite side of the crankshaft which

I guess you can use to drive a load of some
kind. This attached the same way as the

flywheel with a small set screw.

Now lets move onto the boiler. After putting the
orange o-ring in the correct place, we can attach

the outlet to the top of the tank.

The two halves of the tank are held together with
12 screws around the perimeter, and three of those

screws are actually special, and they work as studs
to attach the three legs that hold the boiler

above the base of the engine.

Three screws then hold the legs to the base.

Once we attach this hose and the blow-off
valve, we're done.

(He also attaches a tiny little chimney) (SO CUTE)

After filling the engine (boiler) with distilled water,
we can add fuel to the cup under the boiler.

You should use denatured alcohol for this,
and not isopropyl alcohol like I am.

I didn't really have any and this was the best
I could do given my time constraints.

Isopropyl alcohol has a very sooty flame which
you can see in the video.

You probably also don't want to run this indoors
on a flammable surface which is also exactly

what I'm doing. Now trust me, I know a thing or two
about freak accidents okay?

This is me almost getting Jay Lenoed while I was
trying to film footage for my first Engine Simulator video.

Anyway, I wanted to try running this engine longer
but decided to wait until I had the right fuel and

a better environment to test it in.

While it was running though, it was extremely cool
and it worked surprisingly well.

I think I'm more suited to operating a keyboard,
so let's move over to the computer and start

writing the simulation. Now you might think that I
opened VS Code and started doing some

really cool prototyping or something but no,
I like to start with the art personally.

Now i know it seems a little backwards but I think
that all the parts of a project are intrinsically linked

and kind of guide each other. It's kind of like how
some games have their soundtrack written before the game.

Anyway, I started visualizing the program in Blender
and seeing what problems might come up in the development.

These assets are all temporary but they can be
cleaned up later.

After a few hours, I had 2D models for all of the
important components of the engine, and this is

enough to get started with the programming, and it's
a good place to end day one.

As some of you know, I recently quit my full-time
job at Google to work on YouTube and Engine Simulator full-time.

It's been a really interesting experience starting
my own business and managing an online brand,

and that's where today's sponsor, Squarespace comes in.
Squarespace is a comprehensive website building and

hosting tool that has a lot of features that are
perfectly suited to online creators like myself.

I'm actually building my company's website with Squarespace
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adjust your site to your target audience. They also offer a member areas feature, which is great for

my current model, which relies on online supporters.
It also integrates easily with my other social media.