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Minn Kota Parts

Minn Kota Parts


ENGINEERING Plastics AND Motorboatmotorsalready go together like ducks and water. Because of
their corrosion resistance and ever-improving structural capabilities, plastic materials have taken
the spot of metal in components both in and out of the engine compartment. Just consider the
newest minn kota from Mercury Marine for the lesson in all of the that plastic materials can
perform. The company's 225 to 275 horsepower, six-cylinder Verado motors, the very first
supercharged four-stroke models inside their class, make use of polymers for their air-intake
manifolds, cam covers, motor control unit housings, resonators, plenums that assist reduce engine
during idle, and the majority of of their fuel modules.
Three surpasses One
Maritime engine covers long ago went into plastic
materials, mostly single-piece types produced from
sheet shaping compound (SMC) or thermoformed
sheet. Verado's new motor enclosure, by contrast,
includes three injection-molded plastic cowls. The
topmost cowl sticks out because of its sheer size.
Produced from a 33-percent glass-filled nylon 66, this
part measures 33.5 X 22.9 X 16.4 inches and weighs
11.3 lbs. Mercury plastic materials engineer Mitesh
Sheth calls it the "largest injection-molded cosmetic
nylon part on earth," claims that DuPont Engineering Polymers, the content supplier, confirms. A
structural rear cowl created from the identical nylon mates together with the top cowl along a
diagonal split line and attaches with an aluminum structural member that joins the engine for the
motorboat. A smaller front cowl molded from two pieces of glass- and mineral-filled DuPont Minlon
nylon completes the upper motor housing.
A few other molded plastic parts go into the cowl assembly. A PC/PBT air dam cap, which channels
air in to the engine, attaches to the top cowl. As well as the rear cowl features a separately molded
nylon 66 structural rib that Mercury attaches by using a urethane adhesive. Finally, the Verado
sports a lower cowl to protect the drive shaft housing. Though it's mostly conventional in the style,
Mercury engineers chose to mold this lower cowl out from a DuPont Sorlyn ionomer, a type of
thermoplastic recognized for its capability to support high-gloss, molded-colored.
The whole assembly might seem a little complex initially. After all, maritime engine top cowlings
have until recently had simple, single-piece shapes. John Zebley, Mercury's director of model, goes
up to now with regards to describe these earlier types as "inverted trash cans by using a seal." Yet
using injection molded plastics and splitting the cowl into pieces worked to Mercury's advantage in a
number of ways.
Reducing cost is a big one. Sheth explains that this nylon components can reach a category A finish
with less paint than the SMC parts. "They have fewer defects, like orange peel, which increases our
yields," he states. And also the lower cowls, making use of their molded-in color, don't need any
paint whatsoever. Sheth estimates that these particular paint line savings give rise to a roughly 46-
percent lowering of piece-part costs when compared with SMC.
Weight reduction is another advantage. Tom Walczak, cowling project engineer, reports that
traditional SMC cowling represents up to twenty percent from the entire powerplant weight. At 35
lbs, Verado's cowling weighs 30 percent less than SMC. And that savings makes a huge difference
within an industry that equates performance with power density.
Some of that weight loss comes from the thermoplastic's specific gravity advantage versus SMC.
However the style freedom from molded plastic materials contributed with this click here for info
score as well. Sheth notes that plastic parts have relatively thin nominal wall thicknesses as the SMC
parts will have required "bulked up" regions to mold properly. And the injection-molded parts
allowed molded-in features impossible within a compression-molded part. Walczak cites the Verado
cowling's patented integrated latching system--through which formerly separate hinge mounting
points, cable guides, and brackets are already molded straight into the most notable cowl, as one
example. This model, integration saves some weight by eliminating bolted-on latches. Furthermore,
it plays a role in a decrease in assembly costs on top of the 46 percent savings in the paint line.
The multi-piece nature of the cowl like-wise furthered some important style goals--ones relevant to
packaging the motor and sprucing up its visual appearance. The Verado's straight-six supercharger
and configuration together led to a tall engine. Zebley says the diagonal split line and overall styling
of your cowling combine to "help mask that height." In balancing this industrial styleobjective
against engineering needs, Mercury's engineers and designers worked together right away from the
project and quite often were required to develop compromises. For instance, the engineers wanted
to leave some clearance within the engine compartment for air movement. Additionally they wanted
to leave some wiggle room to permit relative movement between the motor block, on its mounts, as
well as a cowling that rigidly attaches to the Verado's aluminum mounting structure. Walczak states
that industrial http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/fishing/ style wound up "tweaking their styling lines a
bit" to offer engineering so much-needed clearance.
Breaking up the cowling also solved a classic
draft angle problem. Obtaining athin and tall,
bucket-shaped cowl from a mold would have
been almost impossible without adequate
draft. Even a tiny amount of draft might have
flared out the base of the cowl. And that width
would have interfered with the 26-inch
spacing necessary to put more than one motor
on the motorboat. "Splitting the cowl made the
draft angle of your individual parts a smaller
amount of an issue," Walczak says.
Finally, the split cowling added an important
ease-of-use feature. As an alternative to
struggling to lift off a huge, single-piece cowl
externally the motorboat, boaters may now
reach across the top cowl, unlatch it, and
remove it from inside the motorboat.
Very hard Material
Apart from its role in dressing the Verado visually, the cowling also has to play a structural role to
be able to protect the motor. MercuryMaritimetypes the cowlings to face up to deflection under
static loads corresponding into a 200-lb person with size 10 shoes standing along with the engine
cover. "People shouldn't get in the motorboat that way, nonetheless they do," Walczak says. And also
the cowling must last to impact loads on every side of the outboard--both below and above the
waterline. One of Mercury's tests involves smashing a fast-moving fake log in the leading side of the
submerged gearbox, which forces the motor to pivot violently out of your water. This test can result
in 300G impact loads, which ultimately transfer from the cowling components, as outlined by
Walczak. So rigorous is this test that this makes a number of the company's other impact tests
almost a formality. "In the event the cowling survives the log test, it survives anything else we throw
at it," says Walczak. Ensuring the cowling did survive called for some design intervention since the
cowling matured. For Sheth, instance and Walczak added a structural rib on the within the rear cowl
to aid tie it towards the motor structure. Mercury glues from the rib using a structural urethane
adhesive that gives them a joint with a lap shear strength of more than 500 psi. Shaping inside the
rib would not have worked in such a case since the rib's stiffness would have interfered with all the
unique ejection system utilized to buy this horseshoe shaped part from its mold--a proprietary
"floating island" model from CDM Tool & Manufacturing Company. "The cowl has to flex in the tool
to allow ejection from your mold," Sheth says.
The Best Material
An excellent knowledge of material properties also helped the various components meet the
structural requirements inside the face of thermal and environmental factors that usually reduce
plastics' working mechanical properties. Sheth was required to account for a number of these
factors in choosing the right material for the job: The cowling parts experience temperatures as
much as 230F and also exposure to UV light, salt water,rain and snow, and chemicals which range
from fuel to suntan lotion. The demand for a category A surface further complicated the selection.
"Glass-filled nylon 66 was the very least costly material that was both structural enough and
aesthetic enough." Sheth says.
But even picking the right nylon wasn't straightforward given the conditions in which the cowls
operate. Before picking a material, Mercury engineers performed extensive finite-element-analysis
work on the cowl using ANSYS software. And that work told Sheth that he or she needed a material
with a flexural modulus of no less than 700 kpsi. Make your h2o the permanent address. A Person
realize what you want from the trolling motor. Minn Kota is actually a workhorse in which dives in in
order to the thick associated with it and functions right after ...That figure does fall well throughout
the capabilities of reinforced nylon 66. In reality, the grade that Mercury uses has flexural modulus
of roughly 1,300 kpsi. Yet Sheth's knowledge about plastic materials told him that this material
wouldn't perform anywhere near that well inside the field. "We needed something with 700 kpsi
after accounting for the impact ofmoisture and heat, and chemicals," he says. "And that's not
something that FEA will show you." It took extensive material testing to inform him what he did need
to know--the 1,300-kpsi grade under consideration will have a flex mod even closer to 800 kpsi
inside the engine's actual operating conditions. "That was still adequate for your application,"
according to him.
Sheth also put a great deal of effort into controlling and predicting glass fiber orientation from the
cowl parts. It additionally influences shrinkage and warpage which could have hurt the fit from the
cowl components, though orientation obviously matters for structural reasons. "The shrink at the top
and bottom would have to be exactly the same," Sheth says. In the event the fibers go through the
resin surface, What's more, the location of the fibers relative to the top of the part can hamper the
ability to get Class A surface--.
Through the style stage, DuPont performed a mold-filling analysis to see exactly how the fibers lined
up from the part under different gating scenarios and molding conditions. At a later time, he dealt
with experts from Mercury's molder, Bemis Manufacturing Inc., and from DuPont to fine-tune the
shaping methods and conditions influencing fiber orientation. They decided, for instance, to mold
the top cowl in a sequentially valve-gated tool, that helps manage fiber orientation by controlling
filling patterns.
Keeping Quiet
Another important role to the Verado's cowling involved its contribution to reducedvibration and
noise, and harshness (NVH). Each and every the engine's hushed sound boils down to the cowling.
"Many things happen to be done right to create this motor silent," says Tim Reid, director of engine
style for Mercury R & D. He cites a short list to the Verado that includes improved gear quality
within the drive train, a nicely-tuned air intake system, the plenum that tunes the idle exhaust, along
with a resonator that cancels out some of the rotor noise in the supercharger.
But the cowling undeniably helped noiseless things down and offset a few of the noise added by the
supercharger. "Before designing the cowling, noise measurements obtained from early motor
prototypes gave us some concern," Walczak recalls. "Initial noise measurements from the uncowled
Verado arrived in more than the noise measurements of a lot of our uncowled competitors."
Yet the design crew didn't just accept a noisy motor. Walczak reports that they can put extra effort
into optimizing the air intake system, for example the geometry in the air dam at the top cowl as
well as the intake-manifold passages. Noise considerations also informed the fabric selection
process. Sheth states that he sifted through dynamic mechanical analysis data and asked for sound
transmission tests over a panel samples before purchasing the information to the cowlings. Their
efforts have paid back. "We think we currently possess the quietest motor in the class," says
Walczak.
RELATED Document: And Also The WINNER IS ...
Mercury's cowling model for that Verado took home a pair of model awards with the 2004 Structural
Plastic materials Conference. Its top cowl won the Conference Award for the best innovative entry
within the conference's design competition. And also the cowl assembly won the People's Choice
Award sponsored with the Industrial Designers Society of America and Plastics News. For more
information on Structural

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