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Thu Feb 12, 2015 12:32 pm

Has anyone used this in their VW applications? Looks very interesting.

A company called WPC Treatment does this. It's a Micro Shot Peening treatment that essentially puts micro dimples on your metal parts that reduce friction and thus increase performance and durability.

Here's their website: http://www.wpctreatment.com/
And here's a price list from a business that deals with them: http://ep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/twincamtech/wpc2011pricing.jpg

If the prices are still about the same it seems like a great deal for certain parts.

Anyone have any experience with something like this?

Checkout their demo video:

Thu Feb 12, 2015 12:53 pm

Some of the valve spring manufactures use this but lowering friction ???????

We will see. Dan

Thu Feb 12, 2015 4:37 pm

Could be worthwhile on a top end race car when your racing for a world record or a National Championship.

A complete waste of money for a regular street driven engine.

Thu Feb 12, 2015 5:01 pm

vwracerdave wrote: Could be worthwhile on a top end race car when your racing for a world record or a National Championship.

A complete waste of money for a regular street driven engine.

I kind of understand what you're saying, but if it really does reduce friction - then doesn't that translate into more reliability and maybe even better performance or mpg. The prices didn't seem outrageous. And even if you just did bearings at $5 a bearing that's not too bad.

Thu Feb 12, 2015 10:56 pm

Micro dimpling works by compacting areas...the dimples...which harden those areas somewhatcjust like regular shot peening.....and creates risers where the shot or dimpler does not contact. Those riser areas are partially squeezed upward from between the ar3as dimpled.

It creates lower friction simply by creating a texture that has lower contact area. Think of the surface you treated as no longer being flat....but having thousandths of little hardened fingers it rides on. Less contact area and the ability to carry lubricants in the low spaces between the fingers. That extra lubricant can help form a thicker oil film with more surface area to keep it in place So it cant be squeezed out so easily.

We have used it on numerous types of plane bearing surfaces in my industry.

But.....although it might lower friction.....on some materials and in some applications It can lower the load rating of a surface simply because it now has less surface area to carry load with. It may havd less friction in the short term but a shorter lifespan. If you were using it in something like a constant speed compressor system....where I have seen it....and not a system that has highly variable speed and load likr a car engine....it may be good.
Certain types of pressure fed bearings...sure. A sliding surface that requires extreme pressu4e oils like gears .....no....I would not use it. I would ask a lot of questions to some p3ople who have used it a lot in an automotive application before I used it. Ray

Thu Feb 12, 2015 11:48 pm

It has been used on roller bearings, engine parts and trans parts with generally good results.

Eagle sold cranks and rods treated with a similar method and proved more horsepower in back to back dyno tests.

Truckers are doing their wheel bearings looking for more MPG.

Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:03 am

raygreenwood wrote: Micro dimpling works by compacting areas...the dimples...which harden those areas somewhatcjust like regular shot peening.....and creates risers where the shot or dimpler does not contact. Those riser areas are partially squeezed upward from between the ar3as dimpled.

It creates lower friction simply by creating a texture that has lower contact area. Think of the surface you treated as no longer being flat....but having thousandths of little hardened fingers it rides on. Less contact area and the ability to carry lubricants in the low spaces between the fingers. That extra lubricant can help form a thicker oil film with more surface area to keep it in place So it cant be squeezed out so easily.

We have used it on numerous types of plane bearing surfaces in my industry.

But.....although it might lower friction.....on some materials and in some applications It can lower the load rating of a surface simply because it now has less surface area to carry load with. It may havd less friction in the short term but a shorter lifespan. If you were using it in something like a constant speed compressor system....where I have seen it....and not a system that has highly variable speed and load likr a car engine....it may be good.
Certain types of pressure fed bearings...sure. A sliding surface that requires extreme pressu4e oils like gears .....no....I would not use it. I would ask a lot of questions to some p3ople who have used it a lot in an automotive application before I used it. Ray

Thanks, this is the kind of answer I was looking for. Now when you say load. Do you think that it would make the main bearings for a crank weaker? Or are you talking extreme loads, like you would see in large industrial applications?

Also, why would it go from less friction to a shorter lifespan? Doesn't less friction inherently mean a longer lifespan? What about this would shorten its lifespan? I would assume less friction, the ability to hold more oil would lend itself to a longer lifespan.

Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:29 am

CaffeineJunky wrote: raygreenwood wrote: Micro dimpling works by compacting areas...the dimples...which harden those areas somewhatcjust like regular shot peening.....and creates risers where the shot or dimpler does not contact. Those riser areas are partially squeezed upward from between the ar3as dimpled.

It creates lower friction simply by creating a texture that has lower contact area. Think of the surface you treated as no longer being flat....but having thousandths of little hardened fingers it rides on. Less contact area and the ability to carry lubricants in the low spaces between the fingers. That extra lubricant can help form a thicker oil film with more surface area to keep it in place So it cant be squeezed out so easily.

We have used it on numerous types of plane bearing surfaces in my industry.

But.....although it might lower friction.....on some materials and in some applications It can lower the load rating of a surface simply because it now has less surface area to carry load with. It may havd less friction in the short term but a shorter lifespan. If you were using it in something like a constant speed compressor system....where I have seen it....and not a system that has highly variable speed and load likr a car engine....it may be good.
Certain types of pressure fed bearings...sure. A sliding surface that requires extreme pressu4e oils like gears .....no....I would not use it. I would ask a lot of questions to some p3ople who have used it a lot in an automotive application before I used it. Ray

Thanks, this is the kind of answer I was looking for. Now when you say load. Do you think that it would make the main bearings for a crank weaker? Or are you talking extreme loads, like you would see in large industrial applications?

Also, why would it go from less friction to a shorter lifespan? Doesn't less friction inherently mean a longer lifespan? What about this would shorten its lifespan? I would assume less friction, the ability to hold more oil would lend itself to a longer lifespan.

Make note.....I am not saying that this surface treatment is bad in any way....but please do your homework before having this done.

Somewhere in my archives I have numerous articles about it. All positive but all with warnings that it does not always reduce friction on every surface....with every lubricant...kn every location/application.
Also there are numerous methods for micro dimpling....rangint from micro end milling, micro shot peening, laser dimpling and one of the most common ...photo chemical micro-dimpling.
Its main purpose is to change surface area.

Did you notice in that video in that link....how the pin trapped air and floated in the bore?......the surface area can trap air/gasses, liquids etc. This same technique is used in air bearings as well.

The reason why friction can be reduced....and still have a shorter life in some materials and assemblies.....is that friction is not the root cause of all wear. In many cases.....you can have generally low friction surfaces. ...but if the machine is prone to operations that bring those surfaces in occasional contact with heavy load....you get sliding wear and galling....even with generally low friction surfaces.

It has to do more with micro surface profile and one surface trying to extrude into another. Metal gets ripped off......

so a process that increases surface area to hold more lubricant.....mat not actually be creating a low friction surface....but rather creating a better low friction Local lubrication environment between that surface and another. In reality.....the surface itself when bare....wil have higher friction.

One thing to note about that video....and spinning the rod in tue bearing with no oil.....those two parts had "0" load on them. Introduce side loading and friction and wear go through the roof.

Higher friction does not always cause wear. Its also an assumption that friction is wimply between metal surfaces.
For example....on a roller bearing crankshaft as compared to a pressure fed plane bearing like we have.....its often noted that you have much lower friction on the pressure fed bearing....but higher rolling resistance. It does not rotate as easily. What the statement, forgets is that there is much more surface contact of the oil to the metal surface. The viwcosity and tack level is drag. Drag is friction. Low level friction. ...but high volumes of it.
The roller bearing has much more actual friction points......but less drag....much freer revcing/lower rolling resistance.

In a perfect world an oil fed bearing will always have a perfect film 360° around it that cant get squeezed out. But with reciprocating parts that does not happen. On start up there is always metal contact. Since these dimples surfaces....and it depends on how they were dimpled.....are less flat.

If they are dimpled by micro shot Peening...they have peaks and valleys. The peaks are subject to wear because they are smaller and more delicate.

If its laser dimpling or micro etched dimpling.....like what was done quite a while back on some Porsche and aircraft cylinders.....those are still very flat.....and just have an array of uniform pits that hold oil. Back about 10 years ago I played with photo etching some pits. Ran out of time. Ray

Fri Feb 13, 2015 12:12 pm

when dfl is applid it is also very simular to this as the parts are blasted( with the right meida at the right pressures and leave a pattern like this, just barly etched then the dfl is applied to the part.the dfl is a oil atractent.
crane cams partnered up with a company a few years back(about 10 or so) micronight or something like that they also did sefrace preprations.....that was the down fall of crane cams. it all went on the chopping block ,being peiced out, the S&S cycles(S&S cycles,of harly fame) bought most of it and relocated then reopend a while lator.I douby they will ever be anywhere neer what crane once was.
like ray said you loose some serface area.also if there is a burr....it eats and if a hard peice is done and it runs on a soft peice...it eats.so.....do the soft parts.I dfl all my soft parts :shock: (in the engine)and some hard parts depending on what they are&doo.I did do my camshaft........10 years lator with empi lifters and .420 lift,1.34 raito,duel 4046 bugpoop springs and my foot....still all there. if you have a old set of pistons that have a lot of clearance they can be built up to reduce the clearance using a slightly diferent dfl,or....Ive used a corser grit at a slightly higher pressure to raise the aluminum witch makes the piston biger, then dfl coat that.it works and works good.
I would not do this with out a dfl coating.!!!

Fri Feb 13, 2015 5:42 pm

Micro-peening is a good term. i haven't heard that term before, but it does seem to be the same result.

My father developed a similar result when he used a tumbler full of nickles to clean parts. no abrasive used just nickels!

Fri Feb 13, 2015 6:20 pm

modok wrote: Micro-peening is a good term. i haven't heard that term before, but it does seem to be the same result.

My father developed a similar result when he used a tumbler full of nickles to clean parts. no abrasive used just nickels!

We use it to change the shape of silver flake .....a ball tumbler mill using .177" steel balls. We do this when we are making conductive silver inks for some applications. Ray

Fri Feb 13, 2015 10:38 pm

Less surface areas in contact may mean less friction, but more force per contact area

Example, smooth horizontal metal plate, topped by another metal plate with a 5 pound weight on top, slide them across each other, and you notice the friction, now repeat the test, but this time put a hard steel ball between the plates, now the friction will be much less as you move the top plate over the lower plate, Success!!!!!

However with the ball between the plates you may find the ball cuts a deep groove in the plates, lots of wear as the two plates come closer and closer together as the ball wears the groove (worse the harder the ball and softer the plate is) the tolerance between the plates could rapidly change (ie wear) if the ball is hard and the plates soft.

If you remove the ball and simply slide the plates against each other, you may have more friction, and the plates may still wear away, however they may wear at a rate that does not change the tolerance between the plates as fast as that ball wearing the groove did, even if the plates lost the same amount of material to wear as the ball wore out the groove, (say grams of metal removed per 100000 sliding cycles from the plates is equal regardless if the friction reducing ball is used or not) in the case of no ball, the material removed is likely evenly removed over the entire surface of the plates, and thus the dimension tolerance (ie total thickness of the plates) is reduced by the thickness of the metal removed from both plates, however if the ball is used and the same amount of metal is removed weight wise, but it all is from out of the groove, the plates will now sit much closer together, and the over all stack will be reduced in thickness much more than in the case with no friction reducing ball.

some ways to help improve wear would be to engineer the materials of the plates and ball so that they are hardened enough to prevent the groove from being worn. In this case the plates may need to be made of a harder material if using the ball to keep the total stack thickness from wearing down more so than with the plates not using the friction reducing ball.

think of crank bearings, the bearing shells are made of a fairly soft material, riding on a hardened crank, wear level is usually acceptable. If you use roller bearings crank, you have to have a pretty hard surface for the rollers to roll in, else the roller will dig into the softer material and wear a groove fast you cant use a soft material in a roller bear shell if you want it to last long. roller bearing cranks do promise less friction, but the materials they are made of are much harder than that of shell bearings, because the load at each roller contact point is much higher than that of a shell bearing.

does that make sense?????

Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:14 pm

FYI, glass beads are micro beading if you get the right size and there infact glass beads, not glass abrasive witch is offten passed off as glass beads. and when glass beads breakdown they do become abrasive. beads do not open the pors of the mettell but abrasive does.I use a garnet 140(I think,it may be 180 grit) abrasive the etch the parts for the application of DFL and or ceramic at a specified pressure for each diferent material.the pressure is low so it dosent kick up any burrs like high presure does.
Ive seen guys that have seen parts that have been glass beaded the corect way , they do not know the right meida to use and they just blast the shit out of thier parts with abrasive and wonder why thier shit dosent last.the finish looks very simular,but it aint. beads usualy leave a shineyer aparance than abrasive.

Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:14 pm

bluebus86 wrote: Less surface areas in contact may mean less friction, but more force per contact area

does that make sense?????

A better said version of exactly what I was getting at.

Also as I noted.....micro peening is one method...and like normal shot peening it compacts yhe surface and creates high and low spots.
Other methods like micro end milling, laser dimpling and etched dimples create no high spots....but can lead to wome similar issues if the dimple size and spacing are not calculated and correct. Ray

Sat Feb 14, 2015 8:09 am

I would not do it to a crankshaft,nor ristpin. if you want to know if it work in an engine to help power/reduce fricksion....just look to see if nascar is using it :shock: there not, but they do use casidum coatings on wristpins,&lash caps and coated crank bearings.and dlc coatings on valves.all of witch are very expensive. I hace dlc coated lashcaps&casiduim coated wristpins,their extreamly nice.
I dont realy see much application in these engines for this prosess

Sat Feb 14, 2015 1:10 pm

This doesn't really add much to the discussion, but did anybody else notice how the host in that video can't seem to stop smiling? :-s He looks like he's stoned! :shock:

Sat Feb 14, 2015 1:21 pm

Won't do cranks? roller bearings have less friction?

Quite the opposite! I bet many forms of racing are using this on cranks and gears and pins too including nascar, but the many trade names for it and different companies with their own flavor.
The new thing here is being able to shoot it out of a gun rather than using a tumbler or vibratory system.

Sat Feb 14, 2015 3:43 pm

modok wrote: Won't do cranks? roller bearings have less friction?

Quite the opposite! I bet many forms of racing are using this on cranks and gears and pins too including nascar, but the many trade names for it and different companies with their own flavor.
The new thing here is being able to shoot it out of a gun rather than using a tumbler or vibratory system.

No...roller bearings have more FRICTION...but lower rolling resistance. Inter-related but not the same thing.

I missed that one in Bluebus's post. This has been well known for ages.....roller bearings have much more friction but the lower rolling resistance may make operation of whatever machine is using it use so much less fuel....that the wear is very affordable.

I read a really interesting article years ago about the years of change to roller bearings in Steam Locomotives. That is what actually put Timkin on the map. They literally converted a massive 4-8-4 Northern type locomotive at their own cost and it toured the country for about 2 years with a dynomometer car...proving that savings in coal could be as high as 20% on some locos. Even though friction and wear is higher....an oil fed roller bearing still lasts a very long time.

A few inaccuracies here in this wiki...but the gist is right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timken_1111

The micro-peening they are talking about is not new.....they may have a new "version" of it....but its been around.

None of the methods here are new (micro-peening, laser dimpling, micro-endmill/ball mill, micro texturing by photo chemical process)....but they are starting to find new applications so they get talked about as if they are new.
Ray

Sat Feb 14, 2015 9:07 pm

Ive seen and have worked with a lot of nascar stuff, I have seen none.Im sure if it was better than casidum coating on the pins they would do it,but ....they dont. and most gears are rem polished. most other highly stressed parts are dlc coated or another type of coating.I wou;d like to see a cam done like this both flat and roller with the springs run today& over an inch of lift.I doubt they would last real long.but it is possiable the nascar guys have just missed out of a good thing :shock: but i doubt it.

Sun Feb 15, 2015 9:23 am

mark tucker wrote: Ive seen and have worked with a lot of nascar stuff, I have seen none.Im sure if it was better than casidum coating on the pins they would do it,but ....they dont. and most gears are rem polished. most other highly stressed parts are dlc coated or another type of coating.I wou;d like to see a cam done like this both flat and roller with the springs run today& over an inch of lift.I doubt they would last real long.but it is possiable the nascar guys have just missed out of a good thing :shock: but i doubt it.

The micro end mill/ laser dimpling. ...which does not change how planar or flat the surface is...just adds carefully sized and spaced pits that hold oil.....have been used on race cars and aircraft of various types off an on for a while. Porsche has done some of this.

But thats not micro shot peening which imparts texture to the surface (high spots and low spots). And the only thing I know that micro end milling/laser dimpling has been used on was pistons/cylinders. Not parts like pistons pins or cams. Ray