A steam spinner is a small piece of alchemical tool turns heat into rotational movement, consisting of a boiler, a flue, a rotor, and a mounting point. A refinement of a fairly ancient gadget that seems to have been more of a curiosity in ancient times, some refinement to the design has produced a useful tool that can stir or separate alchemical samples without effort.
Appearance and Mechanism
Steam spinners are a few feet tall, designed to be placed beside an alchemist's work table.
The base is a boiler, employing an upscale lantern adjustment to control the size of a flame directly below a reservoir that contains about a gallon of water. The top of this reservoir narrows to a narrow pipe and then opens to an inverted reservoir that contains steam. This reservoir has two openings: one is a valve allowing steam to proceed up into the rotor, while the other is a very tightly fitted seal, designed as a safe weak point if pressure in the steam reservoir were to become too great. (Early models lacked this feature, and had the unfortunate tendency to explode, spraying metal shards in all directions, if left unattended.)
The rotor is mounted on the base such that it can spin freely while still receiving steam from the boiler, and operates with 2 outlets on opposite sides: small pipes that stick out from the central shaft, bent 90 degrees and facing opposite directions. When steam flows through the rotor, it escapes through these pipes at high speed, thus similarly spinning the rotor. Both the boiler and rotor are usually enclosed by a flue, directing both any smoke from the boiler's heat source and the steam released by the rotor up and away from the work space, sweeping back at the top of the rotor and releasing the mixed gasses away from the work space; in more sophisticated alchemy labs, this is usually connected to a central chimney system that draws fumes away from various points throughout the lab.
Above the rotor, a shaft ending in a small cogwheel extends out from the flue, This cogwheel is typically fitted to one of two devices: a stirring device or a seperation device. The stirring device uses a belt to spin a mechanism on the worktable as the rotor does - this spinning mechanism holds a stirring rod or paddle held up over a sample, stirring constantly while leaving an alchemist's hands free to prepare additional ingredients or perform other tasks. The separation device is mounted directly on the rotor, holding several vials at an angle, bases pointed outward from the centre of the rotor. By spinning rapidly, any sediment in these samples is forced to the bottom, allowing for easy separation of liquids from any solid sediments suspended in them.
Comments
Author's Notes
The idea for this is a combination of the ancient Greek Aeolipile, which is that early Greek steam engine, made a bit more practical (while not going fully over the industrial era steam engine), and used to replicate a couple of really useful tools in modern chemistry. I figured that if alchemy and making potions and such actually works, you'd probably start seeing some of the tools used speed things up and make them more consistent. The stirring mechanism is inspired by those little rotating magnets. (Obviously, if a true steam engine is too high tech for this setting, the rotating magnetic field wizardry used for those definitely is.) And the separator is literally just a centrifuge...we just don't have electric motors, we have a decently big steam contraption to make it work. I definitely don't want to go full steampunk with this kind of thing - this setting is meant more to be a Renaissance sort of time period rather than industrialization...but I also wanted to plant seeds indicating technology being developed that would lead in that direction.