enginehistory.org

[wallan]

Off home for Christmas, today, (on holiday for 24 days: sorry if you are a working American!) and seeing that the forum has quietened down a bit, I thought I’d ask a couple of questions, to see if anyone can help me.

1/ On the question of unusual engines, can anyone confirm that the J.O. Almen who designed the Almen barrel engine, is the same J.O. Almen, who worked for GM and invented the Almen gauge, the first real method for measuring the level of shot-peening an item has received? Seems highly likely. (anyone got any drawings of it?)

2/ There is a good description in Mackerle’s, “Air-cooled Automotive Engines”, on how BMW produced the cylinders for the 801. (they got a slug of metal, like a giant ice hockey puck, pressed it into a tankard shape, with a thick flared base, punched a hole in the bottom, straightened the thick section at the bottom, then pressed steel discs into it while it was being rotated, which raised the fins and bottom flange, before machining and nitriding) Just noticed in a report on a Junkers Jumo engine, that the cylinder liners on that particular engine had also been made by this method. (that’s what the British experts thought) Can anyone confirm that this was the method used by Junkers? Does anyone have further information on this method? (I have the book on the metallurgical examination of German, and Italian, aircraft and engine parts)

Thanks.

[kmccutcheon]

>>On the question of unusual engines, can anyone confirm that the J.O. Almen who designed the Almen barrel engine, is the same J.O. Almen, who worked for GM and invented the Almen gauge, the first real method for measuring the level of shot-peening an item has received? Seems highly likely. (anyone got any drawings of it?)

Same guy. Please see US Patent 2350440 at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm
for drawings and description.
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Kimble D. McCutcheon