And now for something completely different: a couple of amazing advances in car tech!

[thewayne]

Porsche has an engine that produces 700 horsepower. I'm sure the car is completely affordable (if you're a billionaire). They're now 3D laser-printing the PISTONS, and it's added another 30 HP to the car!

The process reduces the weight of the pistons, it also allows them to add an engineering trick to the piston head that was not otherwise possible through conventional manufacturing processes. I think the process that they're using is laser scintering, where a laser burns into a special metal powder like magnesium. The powder melts, forming a solid, and it progressively builds up the shape needed.

Pretty awesome!

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/34775/porsche-found-a-way-to-3d-print-lightweight-pistons-that-add-even-more-horsepower

* * * * *

Another GermanA Swedish company, Koenigsegg, is producing an engine that makes 600 HP, and the interesting bit is that IT DOES NOT HAVE A CAMSHAFT! There are two "shafts" in an engine, the one on the bottom has all the piston rods connected to it (my brain is not providing its name), the front of it connects to a toothed wheel that has a chain or belt to it - the timing belt - that travels to the top of the engine (this is a great oversimplification) and connects to the camshaft. The camshaft turns in time with how the pistons move up and down and controls the timing of how the valves inside the cylinders open and close and let fuel and air in and out of the cylinders. This controls compression, exhaust, etc.

It's a cool process, a very carefully timed ballet. Back 40 years ago, or people who work on 40 year old cars, you'd pull out a timing light and make adjustments to your distributor cap to make sure everything remains properly timed/synchronized. With electronic fuel injection, computers took that over for you.

This goes a step further and eliminates the camshaft! Hydraulic actuators take over the function of the camshaft, giving complete computer control over the ignition process. The advantage of this is greater subtle control, including the ability to completely turn off cylinders when the car is cruising at highway speed!

Cars have had the ability to turn off cylinders at highway cruise for decades, this is not a new feature, just a new implementation. But those early implementations just turned off the spark and maybe the fuel flow, you still had valves opening and closing and wearing. In this case, the valve is just parked, though that piston is still going to move up and down. Since pistons are lubricated from underneath (mostly), that's not a big deal.

But the subtleties of the computer-controlled valve timing, as described in the article, claim to be quite interesting. It'll be interesting to see what this produces over time.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a31451281/koenigsegg-gemera-engine-specs-analysis/

ETA: thanks for the correction on Koenigsegg, schnee!

Comments

[acelightning]

I used to help my dad work on the car, 60 years or so ago, and I learned how to use a timing light, and how the sound of the engine changed when we advanced or retarded the timing. Putting all that under computer control probably gives you a much more responsive engine.

[thewayne]

I helped my dad with cars, also, when I was younger. It was a lot of fun. I could do a lot, but I don’t have the tools or the patience, and now you just can’t do a lot with modern cars.

I’m glad you replied: I was just thinking that I hadn’t heard from you in a while and I was a little bit concerned. I hope things are well with you and yours. All is within acceptable parameters over here.

[acelightning]

I think I'm a bit older than you; I remember the 1953 DeSoto my dad drove when I was in grade school. It's annoying that you can't hand-adjust the useful settings on todays' engines. My dad saw that I was interested in machinery, and he taught me everything he could, and especially how to use tools correctly and safely. He knew that nothing was going to keep me away from it, so I might as well know how to do it right. And he wasn't put off by superstitions about "a girl can't learn that!", because he'd already seen me learn things.

I'm okay, but I had a few doctors' appointments in distant parts of the state, and each trip killed a day. So I was resting a lot when I could. And, my son and his wife came to visit on the 4th of July. In March, I didn't get a chance to make a birthday cake for my daughter-in-law. She asked me if I'd make her a strawberry-rhubarb pie instead. My son's birthay was July 10, and he loves strawberry-rhubarb pie too. So I baked a pie and stuck a birthday candle in it, and everybody enjoyed it. It was so good to have them here, and to be able to HUG them! But nothing else is new.

[thewayne]

My joy has been a sinus infection. I went to Las Cruces 3 weeks ago and had it cultured, and it came back MRSA. Fortunately it was only resistant to two antibiotics, I’ll be finishing up a 3 week course of cipro tomorrow and getting recultured Monday. My wife is doing a nasal swab antibiotic as she was cultured with a MRSA colony in her nose, and this should take care of it. Our house guest, Dave, was probably the source as he’s had this itchy arm for ages, he’s been on antibiotics and it has stopped, but they never cultured it as he’s on bargain basement health insurance because he’s unemployed.

Wife and I celebrated our 15th anniversary a bit over a month ago, I made an Alton Brown City Ham, which is always amazing, also his Glazed Carrots, some green beans, but the biggie was my chocolate mousse cake. The core was a 6” flourless chocolate cake, then in an 8” PushPan(tm) I buried it in chocolate mousse. You have to start making it two days before you want to eat it, so timing is important. It all came together perfectly, albeit very late in the evening, but we weren’t back to work at that point so it didn’t matter.

[armiphlage]

I wonder if it would be better to go to electrically-operated valves for even faster response time? Or would that be wasted, since there's a physical limit on RPMs?

[armiphlage]

I disagree with their last paragraph describing the engine - if you can turn cylinders on and off, so your engine is always running at peak efficiency, that takes away most of the benefit of an IC-electric hybrid vehicle, other than regenerative braking.

[rain_gryphon]

Somebody, either Ferrari or Williams, IIRC, used hydraulic cams about 30 years ago in F1. They also had a laser for ignition. They gave up on it, and went back to desmodromic cams and spark plugs, for whatever reason.