Rapid Prototyping of a Mechatronic Engine Valve Controller for IC Engines*

The exhaust emissions legislation for motor vehicles with combustion engines is complicating the manufacturing of environmental yet powerful engines more than ever before. Common approaches of this problem from manufacturer side are downsizing, hybridization and the development of electric drives. The subject of this project is the development of an innovative mechatronic control unit as replacement for the camshaft driven valve train of common combustion engines. The system's aim is a contribution to the progression of the development of modern combustion engines satisfying current demands in terms of economy and efficiency. Before this complex mechatronic ”Full Variable Valve Train” (FVVT) system was manufactured, rapid prototyping was utilized to generate a prototype of the overall system, which proved to be an advantage as the system design could be evaluated and fault finding simplified (rapid prototyping in this case refers to the manufacturing of hardware components). The technology used is the fused deposition modeling (FDM) carried out with printers by Stratasys, the company that commercialised the technology. The paper outlines the FDM technology, takes a closer look at the influence of the printing direction on the parts' accuracy and shows the obtained research results with the mechatronic engine valve controller.