I had the pleasure of a three hour tour today of [part of] Bosch's US engineering labs here in Michigan. Wow.
My first stop was the NVH (Noise, vibration and handling) test cell, where a hybrid truck was going through some NVH testing. No, not electric hybrid, but hydraulic accumulator hybrid. They have to ferret out all the little bits of N and V to quiet things down.
Then, onto other test cells where various fuel rail assemblies and fuel injectors were being tested. All with either this stuff called "Indolene" or n-butanol which are standarized gas or substitutes. Then, onto the diesel test cells--where some interesting American economy cars were present with diesel engines--you can't get them yet, but soon will. There were both eddy current and hydraulic dynos in use.
Most interesting was the prototype lab--they had both a "3D digital printer" as well as the coolest thing, the SLS (selective laser sintering machine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering). The latter allows them to fabricate extremely complex parts that they can actually use. The digital printer is for low-cost non-functioning prototypes.
Then onto the cold cell. Then the hot cell. I was having trouble keeping track of it all. I saw many cars from many manufacturers there all being tested. Pretty cool stuff. Some very cool hybrid vehicles from some interesting manufacturers.
My good fortune had to do with answering a call one day--Bosch was looking for some printed information on the old mechanical fuel injection pumps and had none. The call got to a friend of mine, who thought of me and my Pagoda, and I put them in touch with people like Pacific, Black Forest, etc and gave them what I had and what I knew. They thanked me with a free lunch, a copy of Bosch's 125th anniversary book, and yes, the 3-hour tour.
