Manufacturing

Machinery, Excluding Computers

Thompson Lightweight Rotary-Yoke engine Confidentially offered for sale Ref. no: IH014 Location: Re-locatable Asking price: £150,000 Asking price includes: Intellectual property rights to technology Excellent growth and expansion opportunities Developed by precision engineering business with trusted and respected name Half the weight and smaller volume than a conventional engine Post sale support, handover and training Developed by Thompson Engine Developments, a leading precision engineering business in the South of England, this highly innovative SI Rotary-Yoke engine has been designed and details specified using modern design tools. Costs of development to date, which has involved several stages of detailed research are estimated at £750,000. This engine was originally designed for Formula 1 use in collaboration with a specialist engine builder. Four-stroke, in an eight cylinder, three litre format, this unit is designed to provide well over 800bhp (600KW) at 23000rpm in normally aspirated form. It does this within a unit design which is only half the weight and has a much smaller volume than a conventional engine layout – approximately half the volume/weight and 60% of the components of a conventional engine. The engine incorporates a skirted disc valve with two ports running at one quarter engine speed enabling size and weight reductions. The skirt of the valve acts as a cylinder liner covering the full stroke of the piston. In detail each valve is driven from an integral gear on the crankshaft via a jockey pinion located in the engine block. Drive is picked up by a face gear on the bottom of the skirt with a valve itself rotating at one quarter engine speed. This valve has two opposing ports and rotates against a bearing face in the block. The bearing face is positively lubricated and is coated with a low friction, hard wearing coating. The valve itself is also coated. Combustion is initiated by two spark plugs for each cylinder, one for each of the two combustion chambers present within the cylinder. The bearing surface of the valve has been designed with guide channels and pad thrust bearings to uitlise the lubricating oil flow. The oil is fed through a central gallery, in which there is a retaining bolt, which restrains the valve along its axis. The oil feed is picked up by the rotary valve, which forces it, outwards radially in a centrifugal action. Most oil passes over the face of the disc as a cooling medium, while some is routed to the trust pads for lubrication purposes. The oil then passes through the crankcase scavenge chamber, where it is recovered back into the oil circulstion system, which cools the entire engine. The valves are machined from solid and then coated. This environmentally friendly engine is compact by the choice of rotary valves and the use of a piston asembly utilising a ‘Scotch yoke’ mechanism, a basic design concept that has been in use from as far back as 1910. The concept can best be described as a twin-row horizontally opposed design, based around a four-cylinder module consisting of two cylinders above two cylinders. An important feature is that this basic unit can be multiplied lengthways to produce eight-, twelve- and sixteen- cylinder versions as desired or alternatively a single row two cylinder version by removing the two upper cylinders from the basic module. For the twin row variants, each row has its own crankshaft. These rows are counter – rotating and geared together giving an engine being in complete primary and secondary balance. The selction of a skirted disk valve with two ports running at one quarter engine speed has been made to accomodate size and weight reductions. The skirt of the valve acts as a cylinder liner covering the full stroke of the piston.

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