A few thoughts while reading this: In addition to a deeper understanding of engine manufacturing considerations than I even knew I cared to learn, this article helps me appreciate why people are into engine work. The perfect tolerances and synchronization of these machines makes me a little ashamed to use the word "engineer" in my title of "software engineer". There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.…
Excuse me, but modern CPUs are way more complicated than this, even if you only look at "arranging events in time". Like several orders of magnitude more complicated. Anyone who has touched VHDL/Verilog knows how delicate signal propagation is, and how crafty you have to be with the clock. And even if you never tinkered with transistors surely you've at least looked at assembly code, and the amount of painstakingly d…
Internal Combustion Engine
321–330 of 415 posts
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#322Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#323Seeing the complexity of an ICE in contrast to mechanically simpler and much more efficient electric motors is fascinating. It makes it obvious to me what will persist, and what will become the next steam machine.
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#324If you build a naive version of an ICE, it will have lousy performance, at best. It might not even operate without a lit of mechanical tricks and tweaks. An electrical engine, however, can be built simply and still get decent, if not great, performance.
The complexity of ICEs really is a huge disadvantage and there is no turning back.
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#325https://ciechanow.ski/archives/
I am curious about the 5 years gap between 2014 and 2019.
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#326This makes me appreciate even more the advantages electrical motors have over ICEs. If you build a naive version of an ICE, it will have lousy performance, at best. It might not even operate without a lit of mechanical tricks and tweaks. An electrical engine, however, can be built simply and still get decent, if not great, performance. The complexity of ICEs really is a huge disadvantage and there is no turning back.
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#327Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#328"Since the piston moves down twice and up twice, it does a total of four strokes and the engine we’ve build is known as a four-stroke engine. Notice that it takes two revolutions of the crankshaft for the piston to do one full cycle of the work as it goes through the four phases: intake, compression, power, and exhaust."
It should be: "the engine we've built", with a 't', not a d.
/pedantry
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#329A few thoughts while reading this: In addition to a deeper understanding of engine manufacturing considerations than I even knew I cared to learn, this article helps me appreciate why people are into engine work. The perfect tolerances and synchronization of these machines makes me a little ashamed to use the word "engineer" in my title of "software engineer". There is no real comparison of the quality of the result.…
> makes me a little ashamed to use the word "engineer" in my title of "software engineer". There is no real comparison of the quality of the result. I think that's because the barrier to entry is too low and anybody is being called a "software engineer" these days. But think about a system which makes proper use of synchronization primitives, like an OS kernel or a robotic control, or a CPU design like the other guy…
Re: Internal Combustion Engine
#330Looking forward to the same with turbo, intercooler and EGR. :)