Author Topic: A better diesel engine  (Read 23403 times)

Offline Darren

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #25 on: September 08, 2009, 12:44:15 PM »
I second all the above, I had an idea, produced it and sold all over the world.

Did quite well out of it too for a couple of years, right pleased with myself I was and quite rightly too...

Till it was stolen, copied and sold openly on Ebay.

Nothing I could do to stop it, hard to fight someone in another country, esp if their laws are on their side....

Patents, they are only to make the lawyers and patent attorneys rich. Won't help you one iota.....
You will find it a distinct help… if you know and look as if you know what you are doing. (IRS training manual)

bogstandard

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #26 on: September 08, 2009, 01:01:29 PM »
I wasn't trying to put you all off open discussion, far from it. Discussing things in a friendly and open way can help everyone that is involved.

We all learn 'new' things every day, but that 'new' thing to you, might be 'old' to another.


Bogs

Offline RipSlider

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #27 on: September 08, 2009, 01:46:56 PM »
Straying slightly on this one.

Quote
Re: A better diesel engine


But it doesn't really matter.

I will just bring you into the real world, without piddling on your shoes too much.

If you can think of an idea that gives just 0.01% efficiency increase, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone has already thought of it and slapped a patent on it. Awaiting the day someone comes along with some similar idea and starts to market it.

Then you get a letter from some slimy corporate lawyer stating that if you don't pay the patent holder X squillion bucks, they will drag you thru every court in the land and make sure you end end up hanging yourself thru frustration.

Unless you aim for improving very modern technology, you can almost guarantee anything to do with old technology has already been thought of and covered.

You maybe hoped that by throwing ideas around, you would come up with an easy solution. It doesn't work like that in most cases. Homework is the key to anything like this, hours upon hours of frustrating research, followed by heartache when you find something the same or very similar has been done before. If you do find a small niche, you have got to keep your mouth shut and share it with no-one, not even the dog. Only releasing the results when you have it proved and covered by the legalities of a patent. Even then, unless you have squillions in cash to fight legal battles, you can find your ideas stolen and into production before you can even get someone interested in your design. By the time the robbers have been tracked down, they have made their bucks and disappeared into the night.

I worked for a small American company for a few very unhappy years, and as usual, they had you covered under contract, that any ideas you came up with while working in their factory, became their property. I had to catalogue everything I did to the machinery in there, and the boss would check my workbook each weekend. I am sure he patented a lot of the ideas I had come up with to get his machinery running more efficiently. His office wall was covered in metal plaques, engraved with all sorts of patented ideas. If I had took the time to look closely, I am sure a lot of them would have been mine, as the wall started to fill up with each passing month.

It is great having discussions of this type on here, but you take the time to reflect, unless you are the one in a billion, you just will not be able to realise your dreams of ever getting anything truly inventive into the marketplace.

Just resign yourself to helping out a few modellers who take the time to read your ramblings.
I made that decision a few years ago, and it gives me great enjoyment and satisfaction seeing one of my ideas being used. When I see someone post, 'I pinched this idea from a chap called Bogs', you know you have been recognised as someone who has helped others along their way.

Bogs

I think I have three main points here - both of which may seem critical, but are not intended to be personal in any way. They are just my views

First - and thank you to all who posted in a thread triggered by a rant of mine a few weeks ago - the original post was about MODEL sized diesel engines - for planes and boats. The reason being that they have the potential to be hugely useful, and if a good design - or even just a LARGER design - was available - a lot of new people would enter the hobby just to be able to skill up enough to build one.

Somewhere there is - either on paper or in someones head - a design for a good 15cc or 22cc diesel engine. were the general R/C modelling public aware of this there would be a lot of clamour to go and build it.

A MODEL diesel engine is a very different beast to a diesel engine in a car or train - especially if it's a "home brew". It doesn't have to last forever, just for 20 minutes at a time. It doesn't especially matter if it needs completely stripping down after every use, as long as there is some level of benefit to be had from a better design. It doesn't have to be a huge lump of cast iron, as the volume under compression is far smaller. It doesn't have to be in the order of billions to research - it's enough to have a play with when your bored in the workshop. Etc etc etc.  A model diesel engine runs under an almost totally different set of "rules" as a full sized engine in a car, but they seem to be designed with exactly the same mind set. So my question was "Could this not be done differently..." becuase the rules DO seem to be different.

Second - the issue of patents. If you want to give an idea to the community then there is the full recourse of CopyLEFT to use, and the full gament of open source licenses as well. You can - for no money and no real effort - "copyleft" a patent - it means it can't be used commercially without the ENTIRE commercial design also being given away free to the community - a huge disincentive to "borrow" for big business. You can declare any work Public Commons, and ANYONE can use it, but they have to attribute the work to you.

This site uses PHP as a coding language. Some of my own code is inside PHP - I added very minor pieces to the language a few years ago. ANYONE can use PHP, but no-one can claim to own it, or change it and sell it without giving their changes back to the PHP group, as they use a CopyLeft license on their work. Other lanaguges have "evolved" out of PHP, but THEY have to be free to the world as well, becuase they are built on an originally free language.

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses

for more information.

Lastly - the attitude of "if it was possible, someone would have already done it" drives me insane. More than anything else, it's this thinking that has destroyed the innovation culture within Britain, and will turn the country into a second world country. Why has it become unacceptable to ask "stupid" questions which sometimes hit a jackpot? Even if only 1:20 idea's is a winner and you have 40 idea's a year, your still flying by the end of year one, while buggins who is sitting back waiting for someone ELSE to have a "cunning plan" has got no-where.

Strong words I know, but my make my money from going into companies and asking "why not?" a lot until things change. My present contract is at a company where they truly believed that they had tuned they systems ( I design computer systems ) to the maximum - that if there were any other idea's left, someone would have had them.

So I start to ask "Why" a lot. "Why do we use these systems?". "Why do we sell these products?". "Why don't we throw our entire, £200m computer system away and start again" "How do we know the mathematicians we employ are actually right?" "How do we know that digital computers are the right type for us?"

One year later - a frustating year without doubt - the company has removed over £100m in cost, we employ nearly 70% more people, have more than doubled sales, we found that the maths that we'd based 20 years of previous work on was wrong, and we're just about to start hunting out enough retired electrical engineers to see if they can build us an analouge computer. One of the absolute fundentals of our system was wrong. We were using a computer that "talked" in "1's" and "0's", when actually we needed a computer made from WWII bomb-sight technology.

I didn't do it all - not even most of it - I just made it OK to ask if there MIGHT be some cunning plan somewhere - and once people realised it was OK to ask "stupid" questions, then a revolution - and it really is a revolution -  took place.

If your happy to settle for "there's nothing else left" or "Someone else will have beaten me to it" becuase it makes for an easier life, than that's OK. But I have NEVER seen any mechanism, any system, any idea, any tool or computer platform that can't get benefit from someone stepping back and saying "lets ignore the fine tuning, and look at the big picture - and be willing to ask stupid questions. Can we make this better?" It could be that the benefit is "yep - that's about as good as it can get" - which is always nice to know, but usually there is at least scope for a discussion about improvements.

I drive Circlip - Ian H to his admirers, of which I am one - demented with my "how can this be better" questions. Most of the time - maybe 19 out of ever 20 times - he has a strong, reasoned argument as to why something is the way it is, and after some grumbling I drop the question. About one time in 20 though, the answer is "erm... that's the way it's always been", and then the long e-mails happen about different idea's and possible cunning plans.




OK, so here are my "stupid questions"  on an improved, R/C sized diesel engine:

1) Why does the piston head have to be smooth? What happens if foamed brass was used on the piston? Would it create a lot more turbulance, and so better mixing? Would cataylsis occur ( because it SHOULD ) - if not, why not? What about other foamed metals? What about something like wire-wool, on the piston itself? Wouldn't last long, but perhaps enough for 1 race, and it would impove ( could improve??) more complete ignition? - the glow plug on the piston, and not the top of the engine space.

2) Could a diesel version of a bourke engine be created? Would the inherant torque and "solidness" needed for a diesel engine over-come, or partly over-come - the issues with Bourke's petrol engines?

3) Is it possible to create a "model sized" injector system at an economiocal price? A mechanical one rather than a highly electric system? Or perhaps - could a bubblejet printer be canabalised to make a fully electric injector system?

4) Ford have a standing $1m prize for the person or firm who come up with a way to reliably chill air prior to the injection cycle without condensation occuring. VERY hard in a full sized car. But what about on a 20cc model engine? Perhaps it's easier? Small peltier elements are now getting into the £20 region. SMALL amounts of air are much easier to dry as well.

5) Why don't the standard Porting and Gas Flow tuning techniques which work so well on full sized engines - including diesels - seem to have any effect on model sized diesel engines? What's different? Why? Can that difference be exploited?

6) Seeing as it's already well mixed together so well, would there be any benefit  in feeding back some of the exhaust, which is carrying a good amount of unburned fuel-air mixture, into the inflow?


I know this is a very long post, but let me just re-make one  point:

This forum contains posts by some of the most intelligent people I have ever encountered. And each of THOSE people knows a whole raft of OTHER very clever people who do not post on this forum.
      Baring the likes of Google and Xerox, very few businesses have EVER been able to assemble to capacity for new thinking and cunning plans that this forum could - could - wield when it comes to the world of small mechanical devices. So is the idea of coming up with a cunning plan that MIGHT make a small model engine slightly more efficient really so crazy?


Steve



bogstandard

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #28 on: September 08, 2009, 02:37:50 PM »
I've got to defend my honour here about some statements I have made.

But first I need to say something about using other people for free R&D.

I get requests from people to help them with their R&D all the time, even a US government department has personally asked for my help on one of their projects (it goes to show that they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel at this time).
 
There is a big difference between sharing general information on the net, and someone trying to get me to make them money. I don't give two monkeys nuts about who it is, unless they want to pay for my expertise, they get NOTHING.
You will find people trawl sites like this, asking for a bit of help here and there, all in the hope that someone will give them a bit of free R&D and allow them to make their fortune. Over on HMEM, and a few other sites, I have sent people on their way with a flea in their ear, and they have never been heard of since.

Quote
Lastly - the attitude of "if it was possible, someone would have already done it" drives me insane. More than anything else, it's this thinking that has destroyed the innovation culture within Britain, and will turn the country into a second world country. Why has it become unacceptable to ask "stupid" questions which sometimes hit a jackpot? Even if only 1:20 idea's is a winner and you have 40 idea's a year, your still flying by the end of year one, while buggins who is sitting back waiting for someone ELSE to have a "cunning plan" has got no-where.

You will find that almost all patents and ideas from the past were never taken up because the technology of the time wouldn't allow it to be done profitably. Most of the ideas are there, waiting to be rediscovered and brought to the market because technology and materials would now allow it. Hence my quote further below.
The problem in the UK is not lack of thinking power and innovation, but on the greed of a few who think that everything they do should be for massive profits.

Quote
Unless you aim for improving very modern technology, you can almost guarantee anything to do with old technology has already been thought of and covered.

Quote
Second - the issue of patents. If you want to give an idea to the community then there is the full recourse of CopyLEFT to use, and the full gament of open source licenses as well. You can - for no money and no real effort - "copyleft" a patent - it means it can't be used commercially without the ENTIRE commercial design also being given away free to the community - a huge disincentive to "borrow" for big business. You can declare any work Public Commons, and ANYONE can use it, but they have to attribute the work to you.

Do you honestly think something like that would stop a little Chinese or Indian fella from going into full production making the bits you have designed? You know what he would use the paper it was written on for.
By the time you have found out where they they are, they would be back in the woodwork and disappeared from the face of the earth.

All your other ramblings seem to be about modern technology, of which means nothing to the original  posting, and is covered by my quote above.

Now onto this bit
Quote
OK, so here are my "stupid questions"  on an improved, R/C sized diesel engine:

1) Why does the piston head have to be smooth? What happens if foamed brass was used on the piston? Would it create a lot more turbulance, and so better mixing? Would cataylsis occur ( because it SHOULD ) - if not, why not? What about other foamed metals? What about something like wire-wool, on the piston itself? Wouldn't last long, but perhaps enough for 1 race, and it would impove ( could improve??) more complete ignition? - the glow plug on the piston, and not the top of the engine space.

2) Could a diesel version of a bourke engine be created? Would the inherant torque and "solidness" needed for a diesel engine over-come, or partly over-come - the issues with Bourke's petrol engines?

3) Is it possible to create a "model sized" injector system at an economiocal price? A mechanical one rather than a highly electric system? Or perhaps - could a bubblejet printer be canabalised to make a fully electric injector system?

4) Ford have a standing $1m prize for the person or firm who come up with a way to reliably chill air prior to the injection cycle without condensation occuring. VERY hard in a full sized car. But what about on a 20cc model engine? Perhaps it's easier? Small peltier elements are now getting into the £20 region. SMALL amounts of air are much easier to dry as well.

5) Why don't the standard Porting and Gas Flow tuning techniques which work so well on full sized engines - including diesels - seem to have any effect on model sized diesel engines? What's different? Why? Can that difference be exploited?

6) Seeing as it's already well mixed together so well, would there be any benefit  in feeding back some of the exhaust, which is carrying a good amount of unburned fuel-air mixture, into the inflow?

For me personally, could you read my opening few lines about free R&D.

How much are you offering?


Bogs



Offline Tinker

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #29 on: September 08, 2009, 04:38:10 PM »
Ripslider:

Thank you!  You've just proven my thinking that caused me to start this thread.  When I read your original post, I thought "Now there's an excellent idea...get some discussion going about possibilities."  I kinda figured that was what you were getting at...

Bog:

Um...Uh...

I've got to defend my honour here about some statements I have made.

But first I need to say something about using other people for free R&D.

I get requests from people to help them with their R&D all the time, even a US government department has personally asked for my help on one of their projects (it goes to show that they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel at this time).
 
There is a big difference between sharing general information on the net, and someone trying to get me to make them money. I don't give two monkeys nuts about who it is, unless they want to pay for my expertise, they get NOTHING.
You will find people trawl sites like this, asking for a bit of help here and there, all in the hope that someone will give them a bit of free R&D and allow them to make their fortune. Over on HMEM, and a few other sites, I have sent people on their way with a flea in their ear, and they have never been heard of since.

I understand your anger here.  I've spent far too much of my life solving problems for others.  I finally learned my lesson about intellectual property clauses and have since caused a few headaches.

You will find that almost all patents and ideas from the past were never taken up because the technology of the time wouldn't allow it to be done profitably. Most of the ideas are there, waiting to be rediscovered and brought to the market because technology and materials would now allow it. Hence my quote further below.
The problem in the UK is not lack of thinking power and innovation, but on the greed of a few who think that everything they do should be for massive profits.

Not just the UK.  Same problem everywhere these days.  The average person these days seems to be far too self-centered for me.

Quote
Unless you aim for improving very modern technology, you can almost guarantee anything to do with old technology has already been thought of and covered.

Who the hell said old ideas were worthless?

All your other ramblings seem to be about modern technology, of which means nothing to the original  posting, and is covered by my quote above.

I seem to recall starting this thread.  While I'm quite aware that diesel engines are nothing new, Wouldn't an improved design be considered modern?

Back to this concept of free R&D...

While it's quite true that I, personally, would love to find a small diesel suitable for all those applications where you tend to find crappy little 2-strokes, I'd love just as much to have a little baby diesel that does nothing more than make a little smoke and bring a smile to my face.

Anybody wanna teach me to build a baby diesel?

Offline RipSlider

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #30 on: September 08, 2009, 05:16:20 PM »
There is no need to defend your honour, as I said, it was in no way meant to be upsetting to you.

What am I offering? Nothing.

What am I asking for? Nothing more than a discussion - the purpose of this board. There is no mechanism where I can demand your input.

Do I want you to design a new engine so I can make millions from it? Nope. I earn enough money that Mrs Steve can only JUST spend it by month-end unless she REALLY tries, so that's enough for me - although I suppose Mrs Steve wouldn't argue with having some more.

I have a house built by cowboys, a 7 month old kiddie who's teething and also learning to crawl, a job which takes 14 hour days and a wife who gets stroppy if we don't have a chat and a glass of wine once in a blue moon. I swear that you could GIVE me the perfect engine design, and I wouldn't do anything with it for the next 20 years, because the diary is already looking fairly booked up. Ask Circlip - he thinks the whole thing is hilarious...  :(

Before anyone reads what you wrote as an actual implication that I am some bandito - which of course you didn't mean, but can be read as much if you squint hard enough -  who's decided the next fortune is to be made in minature diesel engines, please let me re-state that this question - "how could we make a better diesel engine" was my response to your thread about the lack of innovation being shown today. That there were no new idea's and no new people entering the hobby.

So my response was "there's probably plenty of innovation possible, and people need something the are actually interested in or need" - for example, a small, more efficient diesel engine. I gave other, less mercantile options, such as flash steam. No one is going to get rich on flash steam.

Your right - people would probably end up making money out of it if a "cunning plan" actually seemed like it would work. God knows how much has been made out of PHP, or Python, or Linux or any of the other projects I've contributed to. Billions - tens of billions more likely. IBM turn over a billion dollars a year just out of Linux. Some people would find that vexing - Mrs Steve for one, but me - I just like the fact that people have gone and done interesting things with my little contribution to a great big project.  But no one can take away from me the fact that every time someone loads a page on this forum, somewhere on a server about 20 lines of MY code, along with tens of thousands of other lines of code, from hundreds of people, executes. That makes me happy.


So what if Big Company X "steals" your idea's and makes millions? If you accept that they WILL, then why get upset if it actually does happen, which it probably won't? Lets say that all the clever chaps on MadModder get together and come up with a new clever way to design a small engine. They decide to call it the "MadModder Engine" and sell plans from the site at £1 a time to help cover admin costs.

What happens? Lots of new members. Lots of people take up model engineering. All the contributors go to bed with a smile on their face. Lots of newbies discover that bothering bits of metal can be great fun. If Big Company X comes along and DOES steal it, and it's under copyLeft - then every copyleft organisation in the world pounces on them. Looking at who's been beaten by the copyleft brigade, we see Reliance - biggest company in India, TaTa - second biggest company in India, Microsoft - you know who they are and Cisco - at the time the 5th biggest company in the world. It might take a while, but the copyleft fanatics always get there. And it doesn't cost you personally a bean.

You finished with a pointer to your R+D comment, so I feel I should finish with mine.

Some people have an idea and think "I should be renumerated for this". Other people think "That's an interesting thing - lets throw it out into the world and see what cool things happen" And it could be said that people in the second group are not very bright - that they are missing a trick. And that might be true. But lets look at the internet. There is virtually no "big business" that has done ANY R+D for any of the foundation internet technologies. pretty much everything - all the "hard stuff" - has been donated for free by people who had a chat on a mailing list or a forum and then coded something up just to see what would happen - what interesting things would happen.

What would have taken literally hundreds of billions of dollars in R+D has developed pretty much during e-mails and forum posts becuase people thought it might be interesting. Every piece of technology you used to get to, and navigate around this site - from where you typed in "www.madmodder.net" and pressed enter, to the site itself, to the database, to the XML, to the HTML, the JavaScript and the PHP, even the forum code itself, to the design of the wire that links your router to the computer, was all developed in e-mails and forums, by interested people, and given to the world, for free, becuase someone might find it useful, or interesting.

For me, and I suspect plenty of others, the question is not "Will I get paid for this" or "Will Big Business come and steal my idea's" but "Is this something I'm interested in" and, if so, "hmm... I wonder how to make this thing better".

You don't have to give away your idea's. no one does. But some people don't mind doing so - they enjoy it in fact. My personal view is that as soon as you have had the idea, everything else is fairly dull - it's the thinking which is the interesting part - so I don't care if some one makes a bit of coin from it - all power to his elbow - and good for his wife and kids too.

If I ever get more than 30 seconds peace and quiet, and if I ever come up with a cunning plan about a diesel engine, or a flash steam engine, or whatever, I promise here in front of all readers, on my ( scream, snot and drool filled)  sons life, I will gleefully document it in full and with no conditions here on MM. Because I think it would make me very cheerful to think that maybe, someone, one of this group of people that I hold in very high regard, will think to themselves - "Actually, that isn't entirely stupid...." That said, those are two VERY large "if's.."


Steve

bogstandard

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #31 on: September 08, 2009, 06:27:45 PM »
Steve,

I am glad you took my post as it was meant to read, and as I keep saying all the time, share what little you have and make everyone happy. Most of the time, I am only passing on information from elsewhere, usually that which has been lost over the years, or something with very little profitable information contained within it. Really information that is only relevent to the members of this site.

But on the other hand, you have to be very careful in this world about people living off the sweat, toil and hardship or even lives of others.
It is those people I despise more than anything else in this world, and would gladly assist them to cease breathing, if only they would ask, but they never do.

There is a great difference between sharing a bit of info on a site such as this, and making those other bast fatherless people pay for any of my intellectual or physical work.

My very cynical outlook was caused by the years I spent in the employ of that American family, seeing myself being used and treated as a money making tool, rather than as a person.


Bogs

Offline John Hill

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #32 on: September 08, 2009, 06:55:32 PM »
Gentlemen, there are many ways our brains and effort can be 'stolen' to make others richer but if we allow that to dampen our enthusiasm for what we do we may as well stay in bed all day!

It is only a few years since a government in Europe asked for a detailed functional specification for one of our products. They took this specification and after much discussion back and forth they declared this was exactly what they wanted but instead of buying from us they used our specification (complete with my spelling mistakes) as a tender invitation to all and sundry and awarded the contract to a company in their own country.  That company is now our major competitor around the world.  This sort of thing can be really annoying but dont shorten your life by worrying about it, just go onto the next thing.

At my age I accept that I have made all the millions I am ever likely to make and there are more important things.

John

BTW, my software is in use at airports and airlines in NZ, UK, Iceland, Afghanistan, Iraq, UAE, Pakistan, China, North Korea, US, Bermuda, Phillipines, Czech Republic, Australia, Cook Islands, Niue, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Argentina and there might be one or two places I have forgotten  but I still drive a ten year old ute and I do not regret any of it.
« Last Edit: September 08, 2009, 07:07:30 PM by John Hill »
From the den of The Artful Bodger

Offline Darren

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #33 on: September 08, 2009, 07:02:59 PM »
I'm a firm believer in if you have nothing they can take nothing.......and you don't have to be a slave to pay for it either......

Almost everything I own is pretty worthless....except to me...that's the important bit.... :thumbup:
You will find it a distinct help… if you know and look as if you know what you are doing. (IRS training manual)

Offline RipSlider

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #34 on: September 08, 2009, 08:02:09 PM »
Can we go back to Tinkers original question now?


Steve




Offline Tinker

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Re: A better diesel engine
« Reply #35 on: September 18, 2009, 10:25:19 PM »
Can we go back to Tinkers original question now?


Steve

 :poke:

What happened?  It was a good thread...