GEARING UP FOR THE FUTUR
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With Eaton's SAMT poised to burst on to the European transport scene, marketing director Dick Tooker has been talking about the company's plans.
• It is now only a matter of months, even weeks, before the first production applications of Eaton's Semi-Automated Mechanical Transmission (SAMT) are announced. Just which of the companies known to be developing SAMT-equipped vehicles (they include ERF, Foden, MAN and Iveco) will be first with the transmission is still unclear, What is clear, however, is that a significant number of vehicles fitted with at least partially 'intelligent' transmissions will be on Europe's roads by the end of the year.
Eaton's director of marketing for truck components Dick Tooker, says that the speed with which SAMT is offered will be dependent on the vehicle manufacturers. Eaton originally planned to put the transmission into limited production by September of this year, with a target for the first year of some 800-1,000 units going out into the marketplace.
"Frankly," says Tooker, "the way things are heating up, we may be pushed by the market into going a bit further. What we've got to achieve is a balance between a controlled phase-in and demand."
According to Tooker the gearbox itself is certainly ready for the market, with some six million kilometres of testing completed. There is the advantage, of course, that SAMT is basically a sophisticated new means of operating what is an already-established gearbox, the Twin Splitter.
The Twin Splitter has been on the market for long enough for its operation to be proven: by the end of last year it was accounting for some 6% of Eaton's European gearbox sales, and is on target for a 20% share for the whole of 1987. By the end of 1986, 1,400 Twin Splitters had been sold: the target for this year is around 5,000.
That level of acceptance has been achieved even before there is a full range of Twin Splitters available.
At the moment the maximum torque which can be put through a Twin Splitter is 1,520Nm (1,1501bft). Later this year a strengthened version of this gearbox, with the same external dimensions but beefedup internals, will boost the torque capacity to 1,810Nm (1,400ftlb). Beyond that will be a physically bigger Twin Splitter altogether: that will make the concept available for use on engines with up to 1,940Nm, which is at the top end of European road truck outputs. It has been suggested that this gearbox will differ fundamentally from the smaller ones, in having a three-speed main gearbox and a four-speed splitter, to cut gear-lever movements even further. It would still rely on the blocker technology which is at the heart of the Twin Splitter concept and which was tried out years ago in the ill-fated American-market 'Snapper' gearbox.
The plans for SAMT are less clear-cut than for the products already on the market, but Tooker says he's looking for sales of some 5,000 a year by 1990. If that was the case, and the Twin Splitter continued to move ahead as rapidly as it has done, then Eaton might have to reconsider some of its manufacturing.
MASSIVE SWING
At the moment all Twin Splitter production is at the company's plant at Saint Nazaire in France. There are no current plans to build that transmission at the Eaton plant in Manchester, or at any possible future site in Britain, but Tooker says that "the way we tool our plants, it is quite easy to move production around from one plant to another." He also points out that there would have to be a massive swing to Twin Splitter and its derivatives like SAMT to justify such a move.
Even at the talked-of levels, the new transmissions are heavily outnumbered in production by the traditional Fuller gearboxes which make up most of Eaton's European capacity of 65,000 units a year.
SAMT was originally seen as a stepping stone to a fully-automated mechanical transmission, called — logically enough by Eaton — AMT. The reception accorded to SAMT has altered that view, however. According to Tooker: "The current reading is that SAMT will push off into the future the need for full automation."
Pointing out that SAMT, unlike other electronically-enhanced transmissions such as the Mercedes-Benz EPS and Scania's CAG, does not require the driver to use the clutch pedal except during starting, Tooker claims: "We are technologically closer to a full automatic than the competition." Given that, he says that Eaton is better placed to make the cost comparisons and meet the technical challenges involved in fully automating a mechanical gearbox. The real problem, Tooker says, lies: "... not in the hardware, but in the intellectual property it takes to make the system work. The algorithms needed to duplicate the human nervous system are much more complex than those needed for a transmission using driver input." From that point of view alone, he says that it is difficult to see how anyone would want to spent the sort of money needed to get to a full automatic.
The big problem, he says, is matching the transmission to the individual vehicles. "It won't be a 'black box' that you can just plug in for several years to come," he says. Eventually, it may be possible to build up enough data to put in a standard system, and to be then able to programme each vehicle as it comes off the line.
In the meantime, says Tooker, "I'm not sure that the vehicle assemblers understand the full complexities of installing electro-pneumatic control systems on transmissions." The result is that components suppliers like Eaton will have to work much more closely with the manufacturers, in more of a partnership than a traditional arms-length relationship. That in itself could create problems, with both sides looking for a degree of exclusivity and a reluctance to share valuable information.
Even when (or if) most manufacturers are fitting transmissions like SAMT, there will be a demand for different features from different manufacturers. For example, says Tooker, there is the question of a "limp-home" device. Some will want a simple mechanical device to enable a vehicle to limp onto the hard shoulder. Others might want the vehicle to be driven, even in a somewhat inhibited state, back to base. Others might want full back-up electronics. "Hell," says Tooker, "we can produce anything the guy wants. It just depends on how much cost he wants to put in."
The differences for each customer will also embrace the actual controls for the transmission. MAN, in its early installations, has opted for a steeringcolumn-mounted stalk control; others are said to be intending to mount a small lever in the traditional position on the engine cover, like Scania's CAG control.
Actual costings are a long way off yet, and would depend on the numbers of transmissions involved and what the vehicle manufacturer puts on the price of the unit as installed in the vehicle. As a rough guide, however, Tooker says that if the cost of a Twin Splitter is taken as an index number of 100, an SAMT would cost about 200, and an AMT up to 600.
That might sound expensive, but as Tooker points out, "Even at 2-3 times the price, the AMT would still be no more expensive than an automatic with a fluid coupling, yet its efficiency is much higher because it has a mechanical clutch."
While all this is going on, companies like Eaton also have to consider the present trends in developing electronic engine controls, and their influence on electronically-controlled gearboxes. Tooker says such developments are going to accelerate in the next four or five years, but that Eaton is not sitting back waiting to see what the effects will be.
Eaton's electronics will work, he says, whether or not they are fully compatible with those used on engine controls. Obviously Eaton would prefer it if there were greater integration between the two, but in the event that such integration doesn't happen, says Tooker, Eaton is working on its own system. All that raises the possibility of a fully-integrated set of powertrain controls, but that must be some way off — if, indeed, it is ever put into Practice.
El by Allan Winn