Archive for July, 2009
This 1911 Oldsmobile … remember Oldsmobile? … is not elegibile for the clunker program … it’s more than 25 years old! We found out today that the EPA, over the weekend, changed the MPG ratings of many cars and trucks…
Published 15 07 2009 – Ontario’s government will announce a plan Wednesday to offer purchasers of electric cars incentives of up to $10,000 in a bid to make the environmentally-friendly vehicles more …
Washington, July 30 : Shrimp is no longer just a sophisticated appetiser, it has re-invented itself to become a component of bio-fuel.
TCP/IP-compatible servo drives have simplified the construction of an innovative automotive component tester.
The new machine by Dynamic Testing & Equipment (DTE) fully automates the accelerated life testing of the flexible boot seals used to protect ball joints in automobile steering assemblies. The use of programmable AC servos – instead of conventional hydraulic actuators – provides an unprecedented level of control flexibility, enabling test parameters such as joint articulation angles to be varied on the fly.
Capable of testing up to six boot seals simultaneously, testing regimes can include continuous articulation of the ball joints, hot and cold brine sprays, elevated humidity levels and air temperature cycling from -25 to +80 degrees Celsius.
DTE’s boot seal testing machine employs two motorized movement axes – one vertical and one horizontal – each driven by a Baldor Electric MotiFlex e100 3-phase servo drive and servomotor fitted with a multi-turn absolute encoder. The precise feedback signals enable both axes to be programmed to absolute zero, facilitating optimal positioning of the machine’s tooling for parts loading and unloading, and ensuring ease of start-up.
The servo drives are connected via industry-standard Ethernet to the test machine’s host computer, which runs National Instruments’ LabVIEW software, and are controlled via TCP/IP using the built-in ActiveX commands in Baldor’s Mint programming language.
Want to get up close and personal with Captain Slow? This is your chance then. James May is looking for volunteers to help him build his Lego house. If you’re one who shares James’ penchant for the anal (retention), then this has got be a real treat for you.
James is making a new series called “Toy Stories” and as part of the series, he will be making an entire two-story house made of Lego bricks. Report has it that three million Lego bricks have already been delivered to the site.
He’s really ambitious with this plan and would want everything to be made of Lego. “I’ve got a man working on a flushing Lego lavatory. We think it’s possible… Things like power supply, sanitation and plumbing coming into the house are as they could be for a real building… everything within my Lego house must as far as possible be Lego,” he said.
This news bit isn’t really car news but this is Captain Slow. Deserves a mention in our book.
Source: BBC
No one expects automakers to make a profit in this world economy. But don’t tell that to the creators of the world’s cheapest car. Tata Motors saw a 58% rise in first quarter net profit. In a year that saw the bankruptcy of two of Detroit’s Big Three, this is something really amazing.
The Indian automaker who also owns known British luxury brands Land Rover and Jaguar defied analyst’s forecasts with the number. This is thanks mostly to accounting policy changes that it made.
Tata made $107 million in the quarter. It’s overall revenue, however, went down by 8% meaning that the company’s cost-cutting had a lot to do with its profit.
Still, concerns over Jaguar and Land Rover remain. “We are going ahead with their proposals and this is going to improve the cost reduction efforts in JLR,” Vice Chairman Ravi Kant told Reuters. More job cuts and plant closures are expected.
Source: Reuters