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As March Designs' premises are located close to many car manufacturing plants i.e. Vauxhall, IBC and some years ago Bedford Trucks (AWD) and Renault Trucks together with Silverstone racing teams along with their suppliers i.e. BTR, Trico, Linpac Mouldings, McKechnie plus many others it was natural we should attract automotive business.
1) Testing for leaking fuel pipes!
2) Custom design work for research company.
3) Measure the force on the steering wheel.
4) Testing plastic car bumper bending! Page 2 >>
5) More leak testing applications.
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1) Fuel pipe assembly leak testing:
A large supplier to various automotive manufacturers had expanded their production capabilities to increase production of fuel pipe assemblies, 100% leak testing was required, but their existing leak test equipment suppliers only sold standard single channel testers, the company wanted to test up to 12 assemblies at a time, to reduce their bottleneck, their existing suppliers were happy to sell 12 of their leak testers for this purpose, at a price. The customer asked us for a possible solution.
We designed, built and tested a 12 channel leak testing instrument for half the cost of 12 individual instruments from their existing supplier.
Moral of the story: A custom solution does not need to be more expensive than off-the-shelf instruments!
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2) Custom design work for automotive research company:
ERA Limited (formally English Racing Autos) a local automotive research and test company for many car manufacturers, carried out innovative work on engines, engine control systems, exhaust emission reduction plus much more. They occasionally needed additional design work completed by sub-contractors who would observe the secrecy agreements necessary.
As we were close by and we knew the company intimately they sometimes chose us. Amongst the many pieces of test equipment we designed was a supercharger bypass controller, a fully variable fuel injector driver and much more.
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3) Measuring the force required to turn steering wheel:
AWD Trucks needed to measure the torque needed to turn a trucks' steering wheel for R & D of the power assisted steering.
This was awkward as the measuring instrument had to fit several types of vehicle, be powered by the vehicle and operate in road testing conditions. With minor modifications to the existing steering column a torque sensor could be fitted and with careful design electrical noise and power supply problems were overcome. The result was a small, transportable instrument that the engineers could move from one vehicle to another using just a few tools, that gave a digital display of torque on the steering wheel together with the road speed. Continued Page 2 >>
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March Designs & Measurements
Unit 11, Alfred Street
Dunstable
Beds LU5 4HZ England
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