The longer stroke of a steam hammer gives pleanty on room for tooling for ring forging (becking saddles etc) compared to the shorter stroke of a 'self contained' type hammer.
If the environmental impact of running live steam is to much it may be worth doing a cost benefit analysis of converting to compressed air.
You can save additional money on a 'live' steam setup by futher pre-heating the boiler feed water using a secondary boiler flue gas economiser (heat exchanger), there are some critical design considerations with these, but they are becoming increasingly popular as energy costs increase.
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