[gordonmichaellee]

I first heard about these a few years ago and expected to see them everywhere but have yet to see one except in the youtube advertorial. Anyone ever seen one being used in real life??? Do you think it is a good design???
YouTube - the Thompson Coupling in action

Cheers Gordo'

 

[MOARY]

Might be the end of broken CVs in years to come MOARY

 

[Bushscrubber]

Money theres your problem....
If Boeing are getting on board they will want sole rights to it if they pump cash into it..
Bloody good idea.
I have a mad scienetist behind my factory and some of the stuff he does is unreal.
Running cars on coal,yep you want to hear when it goes wrong...

 

[GUTourer]

Man gotta loves those!! Wonder If I put my troll up for a prototype for them whatcha reckon lol!

 

[bennoGU28]

Gents, Ive looked at these things for a heavy industry application, and even a small demonstrator version was eye watering and heart stoppingly expensive.

Brilliant design, vibration free running with far longer service life, but even at five times the service life of a voith coupler they still didnt make a change economically viable.

 

[gordonmichaellee]

Maybe, but

Not worth it for 1 or 10 maybe but if you are FORD or BP and you are making 20,000 or so the unit price would fall considerably I am sure.

Also the fact that they are vibration free means that less other parts get damaged and can therefore be made out of less material and they are safer aswell.

If it costs me $20 to replace a uni I think I would happily pay $100 for one of those, and look how shiny they are, mmmmm shiny ( Homer Simpson dribble ).

Cheers Gordo'

 

[bennoGU28]

$10,000 would be nearer to the mark for the small ones. $100 is very very castle territory even at 20,000 unit batches. Well north of a couple of grand atleast. As for BP then yes they will buy them and if the service life checks out they would pay $20k a unit as it will save them in downtime on some oil rig in the middle of the oggin (or under it going on thier past record).

Less material, might want to see one in the flesh, also a much higher grade than standard crap metal thrown in CVs with much more machining required. Safe baah who gives a rats about such a insignificant part on a bombadore, far far far more likely to focus on interior trims or altezza tail lights before mechanicals.

Until Thompson join forces with a major gearbox/transmission/power transfer company to offer intergrated powertrain solutions then they will be a wall decoration. As for challenging the Voith-MTU-DetroitDiesel-Allison alliance...... good luck.

 

[Goldtrol]

How eye watering are we talking?? I understand it's a very long way off it at all a possibility but I just love seeing these sort of engineering advances.

 

[davway]

Seen these a couple of years ago and was going to invest in it.
As good as it was/is, i just couldnt see it going anywhere in a hurry.
They only need to get 1 FWD car manufacturer on board and they would be set, but even 4 years later, it hasnt done anything.

 

[bloke83]

once boeing finds a way to mass produce them for their helicopters it will be about 2 to 5 years until they start filtering into automotive designs.

 

[OSH]

wasn't this on the tv programme 'the new inventors' a few years back?


im sure of it.
and I recon he went on to say that these units would would retail for about 60% more then a universal cv joint.

anywhoo.. i could be mistaken.

 

[69conroy]

HI
is this another aussie invention that will have to
go O/S to do any good?
pity if it has to!

Daryl

 

[Bushscrubber]

Would have been good if Kerry Packer would have given him half what he used to throw at the casinos each year,he would have been on a winner...
Did he end up putting a patent on it?

 

[gf0012-aust]

I first heard about these a few years ago and expected to see them everywhere but have yet to see one except in the youtube advertorial. Anyone ever seen one being used in real life??? Do you think it is a good design???
YouTube - the Thompson Coupling in action

Cheers Gordo'

Disclosure. I invested in this tech about 4 years ago when I was working on windturbine technologies.

I've visited the eng shop and seen it tested under load. we were deadweight lifting a 1 tonne pallet and the uni joint was still freely spinning without duress.

there were some approaches to use the tech in military vehicles (US, UK, German and Aust interest) and there was some significant interest from the mining industry

we looked at some other uni/CV joint tech including some very tricky stuff coming out of israel, but this one seemed to be more robust and was certainly impressive when trialed in front of us.

Note self disclosure above.

 

[gf0012-aust]

once boeing finds a way to mass produce them for their helicopters it will be about 2 to 5 years until they start filtering into automotive designs.

see prev.

one of the things that we did look at was adapting it to heavy lift helicopters - and the interest for 2mw wind turbines was with respect to pitch control. one of my US business partners at the time was the uniformed project manager for the SeaHawk/JayHawk (navalised blackhawks). there are some very tricky elements to this that are useful in pitch control - and the fact that it took some serious load management tests and didn't bat an eyelid under load.

TCV do have some contracts in place, but they are heavy (seriously heavy) engineering solutions, the focus has moved away from smaller vehicles from what I understand.

 

[gf0012-aust]

Seen these a couple of years ago and was going to invest in it.
As good as it was/is, i just couldnt see it going anywhere in a hurry.
They only need to get 1 FWD car manufacturer on board and they would be set, but even 4 years later, it hasnt done anything.

not exactly true. they do have heavy engineering contracts in place, they're still in negotiations with US Army HV manufacturers and they have sold the tech into heavy printing press shops.

the interest in small vehicles faded because the royalty stream was crap. eeg as a similar analogy, the royalty for barrel sleeving a 9mm handgun is crap compared to barrel sleeving a 120mm arty piece. eg the royalty for 40,000 sleeve swap outs for 9mm handgun would not even reach the royalty for re-sleeving one 120mm arty barrel. the same economies of scale apply to passenger vehicle CV's compared to heavy truck and the mining sector.