Tappet

A tappet is a projection that imparts a linear motion to some other component within a mechanism.

Beam engines

The term is first recorded as part of the valve gear of Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric beam engine, a precursor to the steam engine. The first Newcomen engines had manually worked valves, but within a few years, by 1715, this repetitive task had been automated. The beam of the engine had a vertical 'plug rod' hung from it, alongside the cylinder. Adjustable blocks or 'tappets' were attached to this rod and as the beam moved up and down, the tappets pressed against long levers or 'horns' attached to the engine's valves, working the cycle of steam and injection water valves to operate the engine. This operation by tappets on a plug rod continued into the early twentieth century with the Cornish engine.

Internal combustion engines

The term tappet is widely used in relation to internal combustion engines, but imprecisely. It is most commonly encountered as a maintenance task for overhead valve engines, that of 'adjusting the tappets'. This operation adjusts the overall clearance in the valve actuation system: typically 20 thousandths of an inch (0.5 mm). The name arises because it is the clearance of the tappets that is being adjusted, even though the adjustment is not made to the tappets themselves.