Engine Concepts...

Tognum announced last year they were investing more than $800 million for R&D and another $800 million on R&D facilities including the South Carolina shop.

Unless the new bunch killed that deal I would say that the MTU R&D budget was pretty healthy.

Where on earth are you getting your numbers from? Considering they purchased the SC plant for $45 mill USD in 2010 and have put in about another $60 Mill USD since, that is about an $100Mill USD investment over the last 4 years. And these are plant/infrastructure/assembly improvements, not for engine technology.

Tognum America Inc. expanding in Aiken County | South Carolina Department of Commerce

Your numbers flow so freely and are an order of magnitude beyond reality, I can understand why controlling/finance keeps the doors "locked" on engineers.

I understand that the Buck Engine discussion is for marine diesel (piston)engines. That is why I am pointing out that your numbers/assumptions are off-base and in reality, you are just guessing.

You have no idea about the dollars spent on engine development for marine diesels it today's market or to what development phases they are directed towards. It does not serve the OP to make those claims. He faces an uphill battle in his quest for financing and product direction, and the waters do not need to be muddied with hearsay.

The vast majority of R&D dollars being spent today is for technologies that meet either EPA or IMO or other regulatory emission requirements. Period.

Tongue

2012 financial results for Tognum

EURO's

Revenue. 3,014.5

R & D. 241.5

Invest in plant. 183.5

Employees

Europe. 402
Asia. 805
USA. 944
Germany. 8,328

Those doors that you talk about have never been locked to me, I am sure if I could be bothered I could probably find some later reports but I am away to open the bar door. Lol

MTU - eReport

I will consider the source of the rest of the rude rant and leave it at that and join YJ for a tot and a couple of laughs.

And Tognum spent $286 million on R & D in 2012.

Ultimately, the only point I was attempting to make is that there is a tremendous amount of money spent worldwide on engine development. A start up company with no capital is at an extreme disadvantage. And if they are working on an idea and it's good, then highly likely someone else is as well.

Didn't mean to waste your time. I've tried to explain several times that all of the actual testing shut down in 2008 and everything has been in storage since then. Testing the first engine in a boat would not teach us much that we didn't learn in the test cell. Once again, I think it would be counter productive to spend the time and money for this. With all due respect to you and the others, my knowledge of what the benefits might be of testing the first engine in a boat, as it currently exist, is more understood by me than anyone else.

I am in discussions with three possible funding providers. All of them want me to go to other countries to produce engines. Maybe one of them will come through, maybe not. Either way I am comfortable with it. Over the last few years I have turned over a lot of rocks. I have found a few gems but a lot of snakes. One of the groups wants me to go to Mexico and build generator engines. They like the designs because these generators will be used in very remote areas. The potential for the engines to be much lighter and simple to service, got their attention. Needing no machining ever was also a benefit.

As for an engine that runs on water, there are a lot of those. The fuel is of course hydrogen. The rub comes when they try to generate enough real time hydrogen to operate the engine beyond an idle. Anyone willing to do the math knows that it isn't even close to possible.

Ms

I understand that a lot of people with this live fairly normal lives. Hopefully the doctors will stop the progression and Kevin can move forward. Thank you for the post.

Concepts

I have some information that one of you might find useful someday. A man by the name of John Kelly is consulting on the engine project. John operates Kaberous Solutions. John is a forensic investigator for diesel engines. He has some 40 years of experience. He should make a great expert witness if you need one.

John has studied the project designs and patents and has offered to speak with anyone who has interest.

I don't seem to be able to find their website or any information on Kaberous Solutions. Do you have a link?

I read that report as presenting 600 Mil Euro for R&D spread over 2012/2013/2014, which falls in line with the annual numbers previously stated in this thread, if all the business targets are met.

But your statement came across as R&D budgets would be 600 Mil Euro for 2014 which can not be supported by this or any document, but all this financial talk makes it feel like a CPA convention.

Sorry if you took my comments as rude, enjoy the evening cocktails.

So produce generator engines in Mexico. Perfect the design on a smaller scale, get something moving and dollars flowing, and then tweak your marine engine line with it and get everything up and running. A generator running non stop with a load on it would be a great way to see longevity in loads on it, get some real time testing it and more. There is no reason the generator division cannot be a totally seperate entity than the marine engine.........

New take on two old concepts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiTjyj9NO5I

A first year mechanical engineering student can tell you the difference between hardness and stiffness (rigidity).

I'm glad Ron has already pointed this out.

In his defense, he said nothing about rigidity. For some reason he was talking about ridged, as in having ridges.

something hard is always more ridged than something soft

Sorry, took me a minute to cotton on to the sarcasm there!

Concepts

John's web link is on this site. I tried it and it doesn't seem to be working right now. I have his email address. We shouldn't post email addresses here so you can find my address on the Buck Diesel site. Send me one and I will provide John's.

John E. Kelly III :: Engineering - Marine Engineering :: JurisPro Expert Witness Directory :: California

Concepts

I recommend kicking the dog, it has got to make you feel better.

Concepts

For those of you who are irritated by misspellings ( I hate it to), try typing Ridgid, with the R as lower case and see how the computer changes it. As stated in a previous post, I bought and sold Ridgid tools for 30 years and spelled it like the manufacturers name. Isn't it insane that anyone should need to explain????

Concepts

One more question. Most marine engines under 500 hp do not have replaceable wet sleeves. If a line was offered from sailboat kickers to 500 hp, all with wet sleeves, how important would that be?