RC10Talk - The Net's Largest Vintage R/C Community

The May 5th issue of Machine Design has an article on a new independent suspension design. It's an interesting read, although the design seems overly-complicated to me at first glance. What's cool, however, are the prototype pics built using RC components. Here's a link:

http://machinedesign.com/article/inventors-corner-a-new-twist-on-a-fully-independent-vehicle-suspension-0504

So who here is going to build one first?

Let's play a game... how many components and moving parts can we use to make a suspension arm?



Good grief. Way too many parts in that Rube Goldbergian contraption.

No doubt...imagine if such a design made it into production vehicles, the maintenance costs for worn parts 5 - 10 years down the line?

Reminds me of Microsoft with every new iteration of their O/S or Office software. How much more useless crap and "features" can we add to this software to make it perform slower on better hardware than previous versions?

KISS .

Well guys, I think everyone would agree that it's overcomplicated and unnecessary, but I think the post was meant to show how cool and inventive it is. And it is just that... From a hobby standpoint I think it's great!

Cool, maybe. But not very inventive. It is essentially just like the Tekin active suspension system from 25 years ago -just a little busier . It just looks different because of the colors, and the round-about machined parts. The Tekin system was a deviation of a previous suspension system from the automotive industry. And currently Serpent is (at least was) using a deviation of that on some of their gas on-road cars. If the guy came up with it all on his own that would be really cool. But any designer worth his salt does research . There is a very famous saying in the engineering/design world -"There is nothing new under the sun". Basically no one invents crap out of thin air. Every thought, every idea is built on everything you have seen in the past, and although you think you have an original creation it is simply a modification of an exitsing design. There are however landmark scientific discoveries that allow people to make cognitive jumps prevoiusly unreachable. Unfortunatelly this isn't one of them. Btw, thanks for the link. Although somewhat jaded by the professional design world, I still love mechanisms. -Jeff

Jay Dub wrote:It is essentially just like the Tekin active suspension system from 25 years ago

can I see some pics of it? the informations were very limited at 80's here. and now I'm wondering what it was

found it
http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=13563