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New
VMC-1250 and VMC-1250C Give DEI Racing Team the Competitive Edge
The Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI) racing team drives pedal-to-the-metal for victory every time it is Chevrolet Monte Carlos piloted by Dale Earnhardt Jr., Steve Park and Michael Waltrip roar onto the track in NASCAR Winston Cup races around the country. And to gain the checkered flag on Sunday, the DEI team relies on the best technologies available to give the drivers a clear competitive edge. The work that is performed Monday through Friday at the spotless DEI racing complex in Mooresville, NC, where technicians build the team's racing engines from the ground up, determines what happens over the weekend on the track.
Performance is the business of the entire DEI team and Cincinnati Machine is helping to ensure that it gets all the speed and power needed on the track by supplying state-of-the-art machining technology. In its partnership with DEI, Cincinnati Machine has added a new Arrow Series 2 VMC-1250 and VMC-1250C Vertical Machining Centers to support DEI's in-house engine development programs.
The new machines, particularly the Arrow Series 2 VMC-1250 is making an incredible difference in the DEI CNC department by allowing it to bring more and more machining in-house.
The Heart of the Engine
DEI works with some of the most powerful engines in the automotive industry - typical DEI V-8 engines run at 780 hp at 9,500 rpms with a 358 cubic inch displacement and a 12.0-1 compression ratio, generating speeds as high as 200 mph.
There are many ways to make a race car engine gain more horsepower, but one of the most difficult and surely the most secret, is cylinder head porting. 'The cylinder head port is the heart of the engine," said Jeff Brooks, DEI's CNC supervisor. "The power gains come from the head and the port. It's critical to the success of the car."
Cylinder head ports allow air and fuel to travel through the cylinders. In cylinder head porting, engineers reshape the ports to improve efficiency by removing flaws in cylinder heads from the factory. Porting also reduces restrictions in the engine's intake and exhaust tracts, allow more air and fuel into the cylinders, thus increasing horsepower. But for years, DEI subcontracted its cylinder head porting out, Brooks said."Since we didn't have the means to do it in-house, subcontracting was our only choice. The proprietary aspects of our head port designs were always a concern. If we developed a design that gave us a real advantage, we were still at the mercy of the contractor who might sell it to our competition.
DEI explained to Cincinnati Machine what they wanted to accomplish by bringing the cylinder head porting as well as other engine and chassis component machining in-house, and Cincinnati advised on the size and functions of the two machines that would accomplish the task, Brooks noted.
The large frame Arrow Series 2 VMC-1250 with a Siemens A2100 CNC was installed in DEI's CNC shop in December. It came fully equipped with optional fourth and fifth axes to perform the intricate and complex porting process, plus tool setter and spindle probes to speed set-up time, and a mold package for smoother operation in the extra axes and a higher quality finish.
Keeping the Bookkeepers... And Engineers...Happy
Besides the crucial advantage of allowing DEI to keep its head porting designs in-house and secret, the VMC-1250 has delivered two other great benefits for the CNC shop, Brooks said: tremendous cost saving and immensely reduced turnaround time.
Porting one set of cylinder heads costs in the range of $5,000, he explained, which previously was being paid to the sub-contractor. "But now we're keeping all of that money in-house and the bookkeepers are really happy about that!"
Before the VMC-1250 was installed, any new head porting designs were sent to the sub-contractor while DEI engineers waited days or sometimes weeks to see the results, which was frustrating and counter-productive, Brooks said.
"Now we can machine port a cylinder head in approximately four hours." he explained. "When our engineers need a particular design, the VMC-1250 can manufacture a complete set of newly-designed cylinder heads. and fire it up. In eight hours the engineers have a complete set of heads with the new design in their hands. And that's been an important benefit."
The VMC-1250 is real workhorse, Brooks said. "We typically run it 15 or 16 hours a day. We leave work and it's still sitting there, turning out heads until the program is finished. It's really an amazing machine."
With its 60" x 30" (1,524 x 765 mm) table bearing up to 4,400 lbs. (2000 kg) and 10,000 rpm, 25 Hp spindle, the VMC-1250 can easily handle the cylinder heads, Brooks said.
Bringing It All Home
The new Arrow Series 2 VMC-1250C featuring Ultimate Performance™ technology, installed at DEI in October, 2001, also presented significant benefits since it, too, allowed DEI to bring a wide variety of machining in-house.
The VMC1250C is primarily machining chassis and suspension pieces as well as engine brackets and engine components such as motor mounting plates, all of which were purchased from suppliers before it arrived.
"Again, it was a case of not having the proper machine to complete the job and being forced to buy the components. That left us with little control over the quality, and no way to refine or modify the parts."
In addition, buying the parts meant the DEI team was running exactly the same pieces as every other NASCAR Winston Cup car so it was impossible to gain a competitive edge, he continued. "But now that we're machining all of our own parts, the quality control has really increased, and we can come up with advantages that our competition doesn't have."
The VMC-1250C can machine larger parts, such as motor mounting plates, to the smallest components, such as the brackets to which the cars' spoilers are mounted, Brooks said."But the real beauty of the 1250C is its big 60" x 23.5" table, which allows the CNC shop to run multiple parts, as many as 30 pieces at a time of the smaller components, he explained.
The VMC-1250C was equipped with an optional fourth axis, as well as tool setter and spindle probes, Brooks said, and he is highly impressed with machine's ability to machine fast and accurately with its 25Hp, 10,000 rpm spindle.
"With these two new machines, DEI has to be one of the best equipped, if not the absolute best, in Winston Cup. We might not always take the checkered flag, but very few teams on the circuit can match the technology that we possess."