Today we’re looking inside the AMSOIL Mechanical Lab. Chris Orr, the lab manager, is going to show us around.
We opened the AMSOIL Mechanical Lab back in April 2013. It consists of three Dyno cells, 24 x 20 each with water systems, air systems and fuel systems to support whatever type of testing that we want to do in the Dyno cells. We test everything from passenger car engines to powersports equipment to lawn and garden equipment here. The main purpose of the lab is to validate technologies for product development and for comparative analysis in the market of AMSOIL products and make sure that AMSOIL’s producing the best products possible.
In Cell 1 we have a SuperFlow 902S Water Brake, the Land & Sea 7-inch Dyno set up to a custom chainsaw installation and we have three air compressors.
In Cell 2 we have a Midwest 1014 Eddy Current Dyno. It controls from 2 to 6000 RPM, up to 175 hp. We use that for passenger car motor oil development. We also have small engine testing.
In Cell 3 we have a SuperFlow CycleDyn Eddy Current Dyno, and we’re gearing up at this point to expand that Dyno to a double-roll installation.
Engines are very sensitive to the combustion air that they get in terms of repeatable power production, so we have a Munters Combustion Air Unit that provides 3000 CFM of humidity- and temperature-controlled air directly to the engines. We do a lot of steady-state dyno testing versus performance facilities that might do a very short-term test; so, therefore, we need a lot of cooling capacity. We need a lot of water capacity. So we do have a 4000-gallon water system that supplies cooling water and brake water to our test cells as well as a 60-ton evaporative chiller that is roof mounted so that, regardless of the amount of horsepower, whatever degree of steady-state testing we’re doing we can maintain the temperature of our supply water at all times. All of our fuel, air and water systems are PLC controlled. It’s basically a computer interface. It can monitor certain conditions, whether it be a temperature, whether it be a pressure. And it can respond automatically in the absence of human intervention. In our test design, if it’s desired, we can ramp up the severity of our test, heat, load, the length of time that that test is conducted for to separate high-quality oils.
One oil might sputter, cough and choke and just fall its way across 100 hours where another oil might breeze past 100 hours without breaking a sweat. Most high-quality oils are going to do okay in normal operating conditions. So, if you want to differentiate that, you want to see what oil is going to be better in severe conditions, you have to design things like that yourself. How do you determine what’s great? That’s what we want to do here. In addition to the test facilities, we have a very large work area. Everything off-test moves to the shop area. It’s disassembled. It’s laid out prior to photography for inspection. Build in our own facility allows AMSOIL to make decisions quickly and design testing to help differentiate high-quality oils, which is something that really isn’t available outside of developing your own testing.
The mechanical lab is a very unique facility at AMSOIL . This is the facility that allows us to do the testing that gets our products to that next level. Other companies just can’t do this. .
Find out what motor oil and filter are required for your truck or car use the AMSOIL look up guide
