Have you any ideas for getting the data into the PC without expensive NI cards? I'm dicking with rotary and linear encoders just now ala the Cam Doctor.
Just found Arduino that looks promising.:sweat:
fantastic find BTW, I envy you. My mentor did all his work on a 60's Heenan-Froude dyno. I wonder if he'd remember any details? I can give you his forum site if interested...
Absolutely i'm interested...
Untill now i only did get a good look at the NI card. Currently the most cheap examples are the ebay sellers. However I do have some time, so i'll shop around on the second hand forums here. Every now and then they turn up. I do need a 16 channel input card. Still have to figure out how many output signals (at least 3, waterpressure, sluices and throttle) I'm going to have. Depends on how much automatisation there is on the controls.
I've found a quite interesting site here of a college for engineers that were doing there 'eindwerk' on the subject of dyno's. It goes from the aspect of implementing the hardware to encoding the software. All the rough data is there, so I think i'm going to use this as a baseplan.
I went to the machineshop today to have the 'tube' machined. Should get the quote this week.
I'm going to have a look at the axle that has to connect the dyno with the trans (going to use the trans to gear it down some).
I'm still a bit in the dark about the power figures on these things.
it has actually 3 ratings : 400 contineous, an then a HP rating of 1100, but it almost looks like a formula in the way that above this figure is written W X N and then a line under it.
The guy who sold it, told me that I could adjust the resistance of the thing with the pressure of the waterinlet. He told me he got it from a shop that rebuilt tractor engines and the hooked up up to 6 engines at once ...:huh: All I could find on the net was that this is a sluices type dyno/constant volume (which is not the same as pressure)
Anyway, i will have to figure this thing out some more...but i guess this will be the fun part.