The Future of Motorcycle Engine Production
Advanced production requires tighter tolerance. Making modern motorcycle engines, gears, valves pneumatics and hydraulics, to name just a few, requires honing of their parts with tolerances as tight as +/- 0.0002. As a result, engines, gearboxes and transmissions run quieter, smoother, and have a longer life.Honing or holing is one of the few metalworking processes where manual machines are still popular and used by many manufacturers and shops for basic bore sizing and finishing. However, as the needs for better quality and tighter tolerance parts increases, the motorcycle industry has responded with CNC holing machines; whereby some machine makers are capable of controlling hole sizes to accuracies of +/- 0.0001 with minimum variation and almost no operator intervention in the process.
It seems that to produce a part with accuracies of +/- 0.0001 is not a problem for most manufacturers; but when it comes to producing the whole batch with a good process capability, it is a different story. In the past, general manufacturing would be very satisfied with a process capability of 1.33, but this is not sufficient for the modern and future motorcycle production requirements. As customers keep asking for shorter lead times and cost reductions, so a honing process with a total solution that results in a higher process capability is likely to be strongly considered…
Nowadays, motorcycle manufacturers are looking for many things when it comes to replacing a honing machine. But as consumer you can be sure that the quality of the product you buy is even more accurate, higher quality and when it comes to a complete motorcycle you can be sure that it’ s even more fuel efficient than ever before.
