Diesel engine specialists
and foundry men within the Fiat organisation are already familiar with CGI, following years of development work both at Fiat’s Teksid foundry division and
by the group’s diesel engine maker Iveco.
But the time is drawing
near for a decisive step to be taken if commercial vehicle maker Iveco is to
meet tougher Euro 6 emissions legislation. Euro 6 will emerge in two stages: newly type-approved vehicles from 1 January 2013, and all newly-registered vehicles from 1 January 2014.
The focus of attention centres on
Mexico where the Teksid foundry in Monclova has ordered a full refurbishment of
its SinterCast CGI process control technology, including an upgrade of its
System 3000.
However, only a few weeks back, Tupy’s
foundry in Saltillo ordered the SinterCast System 3000 Plus upgrade in line with a
major contract to supply 300,000 CGI engine cylinder blocks a year. The System 3000
Plus enhancement offers improved levels of automation, production capacity,
productivity and security. The 300,000 blocks-a-year capability can be achieved
during a daily cycle of 9.2 hours. The foundry's customer will be announced next year.
The Teksid foundry upgrade is
not of the same magnitude as Tupy’s in Mexico; Tupy is after all the world's leading foundry in high-volume CGI engine components. Nevertheless, Teksid has ordered the upgrade to support its preparation for series production of commercial vehicle and
industrial engine cylinder head programmes that are already under development.
That both upgrades are taking place in Mexico is more than a
passing coincidence.
Also, it should be noted that if cylinder heads are
under development within Iveco, it can only be a matter of time before cylinder
blocks follow suit. Other engine builders have chosen cylinder blocks as their
first port of call for CGI upgrades.
Iveco builds a wide range
of diesel engines including New Engine Family three-, four- and six-cylinder
units of between 3.4-litre and 6.7-litres, in both turbocharged and naturally-aspirated
form. In addition it has the Cursor I6 heavy commercial vehicle engines of
7.8-, 10.3- and 12.9-litres. Following on from these are the Vector series of
V6, V8, V12 and V16 configuration diesels spanning 15- to 40-litres swept
volume.
Should the engine maker
decide eventually to switch all of its engine models then its demand for CGI
could be quite significant. Much more likely, however, engineers will carefully
select CGI application according to pressing and immediate needs.
In this context the
upcoming Euro 6 legislation will impose challenges on Iveco’s engine design and
development engineers that can only be met by a switch to CGI.
Their only comfort is that
they will be following in the footsteps of those engine makers which have
already taken the decisive step many years ago – including companies such as Daf/Paccar,
Detroit Diesel, Ford, MAN, Mercedes-Benz, Scania and Volvo. More recently,
Navistar has come into the frame with its own in-house CGI production programme
to make cylinder blocks for various MaxxForce commercial vehicle engines.
These companies
have embraced CGI to a greater or lesser extent, but the fact remains they have pointed the direction that all engine makers will have to take sooner or later.
Iveco appears to have been
unwilling (for cost reasons) in the past to make a high-volume CGI commitment,
seemingly keen only to experiment with CGI engine components in police marine launch
applications. But now it seems the door is finally being nudged open. The only
questions are: when and by how much.
Now however there is no
question of closing the door.
On a quite separate front,
SinterCast has sold an automated feeder to an (un-named) European commercial vehicle
OEM to increase the efficiency of on-going product development for heavy duty
diesel engines in the OEM’s captive foundry, most likely Volvo’s foundry at Skövdeverken, Sweden.
