SPECIAL purpose machine designer and manufacturer Brook Engineering is doing its part to eliminate steering column backlash in cars with a new machine it has developed with the help of SMC Pneumatics .
Brook Engineering is a small, integrated design and manufacturing engineering company that specialises in developing one-off automated machines used mainly in the manufacturing and food industries.
Recently, with some input from SMC Pneumatics, the company developed a new steering column burnishing machine for automotive component manufacturer Air International.
The machine has been designed to eliminate angular backlash from the steering column and make driving more enjoyable.
Car steering columns are built around splined shafts and mating splined tubes with an annular plastic spacer formed in grooves in the splines by injection moulding.
Brook Engineering's new machine burnishes these parts with an SMC cylinder which reciprocates the shaft within the tube at high speed while monitoring the burnishing load.
It does this until a predetermined sliding resistance - and a perfect fit between the shaft and tube - are reached. This ensures that when the steering column is adjusted there is no annular clearance so backlash and associated play are avoided.
According to John Brook, proprietor of Brook Engineering, the help of suppliers such as SMC Pneumatics has been valuable in developing this machine.
"Because there was initially some difficulty sizing the pneumatic cylinder, SMC custom made a cylinder with purpose built cushions to meet our requirement of five cycles per second," John said.
"As with most machines in automotive manufacturing, production speed is critical on our burnishing machine. We had to find suppliers who could understand our needs and provide solutions to our problems."
"SMC was very supportive during the development work on this and many other projects. As well as custom building components for us, SMC provided us with design software to assist in the design of the dynamic operation of the special cylinder and cushion," he said.
Brook Engineering has been operating out of South Australia for more than 10 years and has been a customer of SMC for the past seven years.
Unless specifically requested by a customer, the company uses SMC Pneumatics as a preferred supplier for all its pneumatic automation requirements. SMC Pneumatics 02 9354 8222.