John Goddard looks at the work and engineering solutions available from Active Technologies Design Consultancy.
Active Technologies is a company dedicated to working with professionals to design, develop and integrate engineering solutions across a wide range of industries. It prides itself on being able to evaluate specific customer requirements and then design innovative systems tough enough to withstand the harsh nature of motorsport, or delicate enough for precision tasks.
With a combined 200 plus years of engineering experience in many fields including automotive, motorsport, marine, aerospace and other machinery, Active Technologies can offer you a full engine design, or simply component optimisation.
Safe torque
With the latest computer analysis software at their fingertips, you can feel assured it will deliver you the optimum solution, backup up by real world testing.
With such an array of software available, Active Technologies can integrate into your existing systems seamlessly. Active Technologies does not stop there. The company is adept at designing for many environments, which comes from an understanding of the job at hand. A design consultancy like this can also be used to cost down existing products and find savings in areas not previously considered.
However, they remain accessible to the lone entrepreneur, or inventor, and can even work towards developing patents for your ideas and technology.
Manufacturing capabilities
Alongside high quality internal manufacturing capabilities, which include advanced co-ordinate measuring machines (CMMs) and full five-axis machining, Active Technologies has developed good relationships with local manufacturing companies. This is often proved useful when time is of the essence, and the advantages of the designer overlooking the manufacture are obvious.
This means that prototype work can be carried out in house, and you can have your idea come to life in a very short space of time.
Knowledge of manufacture like this is also an advantage when projects are either physically too large to make in house, being mass produced or are assembled on location as a sharp eye can keep watch over the progress.
Of course you would expect a design consultancy and manufacturer of this calibre to put into practice what they preach. This is demonstrated no better than in their range of high quality motorsport throttle bodies.
Under the AT Power brand name, Active Technologies has been distributing its patented in house design and manufactured throttle bodies for a number of years. These billet CNC throttle body systems with their shaftless design, are the latest technology to hit the track.
The main drawback of a butterfly throttle body is the restriction of flow caused by the shaft and screws holding the butterfly in place.
AT Power has done away with the shaft and screws, using just a 2mm thin profiled, knife edged throttle blade instead.
Until recently the alternatives have been roller barrel throttles, or slide throttles.
Both of those systems can have their own problems, be it sticking, being prone to getting dirty, or not being able to seal well enough to give a correct idle.
Butterfly system
The AT Power system gives you the advantages of a butterfly system, and with flow tests showing 99.5 per cent of the same flow from an open bore, the advantages of a roller throttle.
AT Power is proud to boast the flow data is backed up by dyno data showing over 99.5 per cent of the power delivered by a roller barrel system.
All this means they can package correctly sized throttles onto the cylinder head where space is tight, increase the air velocity to improve torque and still offer the flow of a larger system.
Motorsport
AT Power has already had some motorsport exposure in the form of the Proton Satria Super 2000 spec WRC car. Active Technologies designed the inlet manifold and throttle body system for this rally car from scratch.
The limitations of the Super 2000 regulations meant close attention had to be paid to critical areas to gain an advantage, and the use of a 64mm single throttle.
Along side being the preferred manufacturer of Formula Ford throttle bodies, AT Power continue to work with other companies who are developing their own cylinder heads, and want the best performance from the throttle system.
With the company going from strength to strength, it will be one to keep an eye on for the future.
Enter X at www.engineerlive.com/ede
John Goddard is with Active Technolgies, Hethel, Norwich, Norfolk, UK. www.active-technologies.co.uk or www.atpower.co.uk
