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Meeting emissions through "Smart" Manufacturing: Veri-Tek's in-process verification systems designed to help engine manufacturers build cleaner engines - Manufacturing Technology - Veri-Tek International Inc

Diesel Progress North American Edition, August, 2002 by Mike Brezonick

While quality of design is important in any product, a good design is only half the battle. The best engineering in the world doesn't count for much if the product can't be made in a verifiable, repeatable and efficient manner to the design's specifications. That is especially important in products like engines, where fits, tolerances and positions are critical, especially as such factors can ultimately impact engine emissions.

Testing and verification have always been part of engine manufacturing, and it has included both end-of-line hot testing and more recently cold testing, where engine functions are driven mechanically rather than through actual engine firing.

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Even more recently, greater attention is being paid to the concept of in-process verification (IPV) and testing, in which components and sub-systems are precisely tested during and as part of the assembly process. One company that has pioneered IPV application is Veri-Tek Inc., Wixom, Mich.

Founded in 1993, Veri-Tek designs and builds manufacturing stations that incorporate "Smart Manufacturing" and IPV systems. The company's primary application areas are engines, powertrains and gear systems, such as those used in vehicles. Over the last several years, the engine side of the business has been particularly active, which is not surprising given the history of founder and company CEO Jim Juranitch, whose career has included stints in advanced engineering and research at Waukesha Engine and Putt & Whitney Aircraft.

Juranitch is an advocate of IPV and the process he calls (and has trademarked) "Smart Manufacturing." According to Juranitch, Veti-Tek's Smart Manufacturing system is the next generation beyond IPV and it entails building near-perfect engines cost effectively, using cost-effective components. At the same time, Smart Manufacturing is intended to maintain or even increase the throughput and process flow needed in a production environment. Toward that end, Juranitch said, "we have developed new measurement tools that allow us to build ever more precise and cost-effective engines using Smart Manufacturing.

"We are now able to build cost- effective, near-perfect engines using Smart Manufacturing, rather than using the expensive "dumb metal" that has been used in past processes."

While it's a simple concept, the execution is something else altogether and Juranitch pointed to the accurate measurement of parameters such as piston protrusion, cam/crank angles and start of injector timing as examples of how small differences in manufacturing can have a significant impact on engine operation down the line. Modern engines use technology such as Hail effect sensors on gears and cranks to determine positions and timing, which engine electronic controllers then compare with fuel maps to determine how much fuel to inject and when. "If a stick-up of tolerances on items such as crankshaft throw angle, gear train lash, camshaft radial location, engine control module firing pulse radial location and spacing, connecting rod length and piston heights, works against a manufacturer -- which happens all the time in production -- all of a sudden, many important things in the engine's combustion process are very wrong," Juranitch said.

"We've seen engines off by as much as 3[degrees] on a cylinder's injection timing, due to normal production tolerance stack-ups. Every engine manufacturer is emphatic that they have minimal to no errors in this area before they have our machines and process. After they get a significant sample size of actual production data from our equipment, they usually have a deeper understanding of their engine's variability We also see many engines vary in effective compression ratio and so instead of having a compression ratio of 16:1 as designed, now it's 17:1 or 15:1 in that cylinder."

Since engine electronics utilize information from sensors to control fuel injection sequence and timing, Juranitch noted that, "it don't know what it don't know; to use the old Three Stooges line."

"The "garbage in" is misdirecting a very accurate injection at the wrong time. That makes for a very rough engine, the emissions are going to be in trouble, and the fuel economy is going to be bad.

"What we are able to do with our patent pending machines and process, is measure on a per-cylinder basis during assembly many critical parameters and program the ECM on a per-cylinder basis. This is a prime example of using Smart Manufacturing rather than attempting to get the same results using expensive, very precisely manufactured dumb metal."

Veri-Tek was originally part of another company founded by Juranitch, Power-Tek Inc., which manufactured engine dynamometer and test systems. In 1993, Veri-Tek was spun off as a separate company to focus on computer hardware and software for inprocess verification, the manufacture of IPV stations and the design and building of assembly cells incorporating IPV and Smart Manufacturing technology.

At the foundation of the company's product line is the VT-1000 universal signature analysis system, a combined hardware/software system that is fully integrated with Veri-Tek's manufacturing IPV systems. The VT-1000 uses intelligent digital signal processing technology to retrieve and analyze data. Using signature analysis and patented algorithms, the VT-1000 is designed to validate quality (i.e., meeting manufacturer's design specifications) in a real time production environment. The system is flexible enough to be tailored to each manufacturing environment and to the specific component without software rewrites, the company said.

Manufacturing Industry

Meeting emissions through "Smart" Manufacturing: Veri-Tek's in-process verification systems designed to help engine manufacturers build cleaner engines - Manufacturing Technology - Veri-Tek International Inc

Diesel Progress North American Edition, August, 2002 by Mike Brezonick

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