Welcome. This issue’s cover photo is a still from yet another test video, this one of a machining operation on the inside of an aluminum sleeve with a thermally sprayed steel coating. This was part of the production implementation work for the thermally sprayed bores in the engine(s) in your Mustang and/or F-150. One of the problems was machining the bores to final dimension, because the coating material is hard and abrasive and tears up conventional tools. As the project’s assigned tooling resource, I was asked to come up with something that might work. In this image I was using a large corncob-type cutter slightly smaller in diameter than the bore to side mill the coating. The cutter had multiple peripheral cutting edges and moved in a circular path as it advanced in steps down the bore. Due to the hardness of the coating, the layers sheared off absorbed a lot of energy and glowed bright yellow from retained heat. So it was always a big day when we milled some sprayed bores and threw sparks and streamers all over the inside of a particularly skittish and temperamental machine. We ultimately put something much less spectacular in production.
This will be the last gas engine cover for a while, since I got an electric car, which I really like. It’s like driving a big roller skate, and I’m impressed by the engineering. So I’m going to electrify my lineup with some electric drive component covers. Expect more discussion of my new ride in the next Editor’s Note.
I received notice that US patent 11633823, with the intriguing title “Lance and Minimum Quantity Lubrication Tool Having a Lance,” issued on April 25. It’s for a super-advanced, hi-tech oil lance, codenamed “double-secret mystery lance.” The pleasing repeating signal graph used in the Welcome issue and as the official Pulsebeat logo came from hole pattern tests I did to quantify the benefits of the mystery lance. I don’t think anyone else on the team ever got the reference to Elvis Costello’s “Mystery Dance.”
Since I retired from the engineering business, reading poetry for Pulsebeat has become my job, more or less, and like a machine operator I need to be kept busy. So please send me musical poems, the more the merrier. The reading period for Pulsebeat 06, which will be posted in September and which will close out our second year, begins June 1. Until September, enjoy the wonderful poems in this issue.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 