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Technical Information Page

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  Kettler Bicycle, Flipper, Bingo, City Surfer Air Valves

  The oddball tire inflation valve on the air tire Kettler Flipper, City Surfers and Bingo training bike is really not a problem. Each item includes a little adapter that fits as follows: Remove the rubber cap, thread the rubber insert side of the adapter over the exposed metal threads, use a regular air chuck on the open end of the adapter. When filled to the recommended pressure, lift off the air chuck and remove the adapter only, don't loosen the lower part. Save the adapator where you can find it again, and replace the rubber cap. Lose the adapter? No problem, we don't bother with them anymore since a small tapered nozzle or a common football inflation needle will inflate it also without the adapter by pinching fingers around to it prevent air escape. Before you decide that such an inner tube has a leak, make sure that the knurled metal keeper is tightly threaded on the brass stem. If you get a flat a patch kit will usually fix it without any dissassembly. For a ruined inner tube or to get an air valve adapter there is Kettler parts toll free at 866-804-0440, but also a regular 12" (or 16" CitySurfer XL) bike tube fits perfectly, and they have the ordinary Schrader air valve just like a car. The Kettler Jumbo Air and Happy Air trikes and Formel 1 and Targa Air pedal cars use the Schrader air valve, no adapter needed. Kettler bicycles have yet a different Presta style air valve but the bicycles come with a hand pump with frame mount.
  
  

• Difficult Air Tire Valve Access

  If your pump nozzle end it too big or too short to properly fill an air tire, solutions are available. Some toy wheel rims with trim covers may be made more accessible by taking apart enough of the axle to pull away the cover, exposing more stem length. A handy solution is also a valve stem extension which replaces the cap. They are usually sold in sets of four to allow filling tires on cars with access to the too short valve stem reduced by full wheel covers. Look in a hardware or auto parts store for a card with four pencil diameter black cylinders about 1.3" long. Leave it on the wheel if it is not interfering or subject to damage with use or keep one with your pump.
  
  

• Flat Tires

  Flat tires from punctures are very rare especially where the tire loading is only a small fraction of its capacity. A common issue for small tubeless tires is a break in the tire to rim bead seal covered below. A new wheel/tire assembly purchase may be simpler especially if the rim is rusted, but be sure to obtain a new axle retainer if used. Most flats can be repaired without any disassembly only prying the tire half way (one side) off the rim. Tires may have have an inner tube or have a sealed rim and a tire that is coated to stop leaking- a tubeless tire. It is an option to add an inner tube where it was previously a tubeless tire. Spotter's guide: A tubeless tire will have a valve stem that is much thicker at the base than the diameter of the hole in the rim. It is set tightly as a grommet and won't be easily pushed or pulled. An inner tube's valve stem will be only slightly tapered and you will be able to see the edge of the hole in the rim.
  
  First verify that the valve stem is tightly set and not itself the source of the pressure leak. A drop of detergent water on the valve under the cap will bubble if leaking. It can be threaded tighter with a tool that you may already have on the outside of a plastic or metal cap on some other valve stem. If no valve stem tool is available, needle nose pliers or tweezers often work as a wrench. A leak at the valve stem base on a tubeless tire means that the valve stem is bad or the seal to the wheel hole is a problem. If a tubed tire leaks at the base of the valve stem the leak can be anywhere in the tube but just exits the rim at the stem hole.
  
  When you get a flat with a tubeless tire look for the leak by wetting the tire with dishwater. If either side rim to tire bead seal leaks, look below for a procedure. If the flat is on the tread or sidewall there are some choices. One option to fix a cut or hole in a tubeless tire is to simply put a tube in it. Only half of the tire need be pried off the rim to insert the tube. A tire pro can also patch the inside of the tire and reseat the tire on the rim.
  
  If there is an inner tube with a leak, it can be patched or replaced by prying the tire halfway off the rim- carefully so as not to lance the tube. Patch or replace the tube, stuff it in enough to avoid pinching possibly with a little air to fill it out. In either tube or tubeless case, make sure that the tire is well centered and seated before gradually adding air up to at most the tire's maximum pressure.
  
  

• Mounting A Tire On/Off A (%@$#®) Rim

  Easier said than done, especially putting a tire onto a rim; this may be too ambitious for some readers. Disclaimer: Use this information at your own risk. Beware of the hazards of finger pinches or a sudden slip of the tool, and eye hazards such as from a tire valve. CAUTION: Use of foul language could occur. Tire, valve stem (or tube) and wheel should be inspected or known to be in good condition. New valve stems are recommended with new tubeless tires, they easily insert from inside before the tire is on the rim. Rims are made to facilitate the tire installation from the front side of the rim.
  
  To mount a tire onto a wheel, secure the wheel rim outside up and place the tire outside up on top of the front side of the rim. Lubricate the tire beads with a minimum amount of tire mounting lube or vegatable oil. Hook as much as possible of the back tire bead over the front rim edge by hand, about halfway around. Use a flattened hook-shaped prying shape to put more of back bead of the tire over the front edge of the rim. Hold the tire so that the back bead is in the deepest recess of the rim on the side opposite your pry bar. A second pry bar is useful to prevent the tire bead from coming back onto the front side after working hard to put in under the rim edge. Work the pry bar(s) around until the whole back bead is inside the rim while the front bead is still outside of the front of the rim.
  
  Insert the tube, if used, at this point and spread it into its approximate place, but beware- avoid puncturing it. If present, inflate the tube just enough to give it a soft inflated shape. Then start about half of the front bead over the front edge of the rim by hand. Start prying the front bead over the front of the rim with the hook end pry iron. Continue to push the part of the front bead that is already in the wheel opposite the pry site into the deepest recess of the rim. This reduces the effort at the pry location and it is part of the tire/rim design. Once on all of the way around with both beads, seal small tubeless tires per instructions below, and larger ones with instructions from a tire maker.
  
  To pull a tire off a wheel rim, start by letting out all of the air by unscrewing the valve body from inside the stem, catching it in a rag. With no pressure possible in the tire, break the bead adhesion to the rim on both sides. Pressure from a piece of wood or shoe heel will break the beads loose on small 4"-6" rim size tires. A purpose built bead-breaker with a long lever is usually the only solution for 13" and larger automotive tires. Once the beads are free to move away from the seating portion of the rim on both sides, secure the wheel outside up. Use a flat pry bar or "spoon" shaped end of a double ended tire iron tool. Pry the front of the tire from the front side of the rim all of the way around, while the back bead is in the deep part of the rim opposite the pry area. Then lift the tire so that the back bead is fully within the top part of the deepest recess of the rim, and get your pry tool under the bead from the front rim edge. Work the tool or tools sideways under the back bead up to the front edge of the rim, and rotate the tool with bead over the front edge of the rim. Work more of the back bead over the front of the rim until nearly the whole way around to free the tire completely. Tires are nearly perfect at trapping water so they should not be stored where rainwater can enter and foster insects.

• Sealing Small Tubeless Tires on Toys

  It is often hard to get a tire without an inner tube to seal all the way around both sides of a tire/rim bead. Tire pros have a device at the shop to blast a lot of air in all at once, and it works well. For the rest of us haplessly at home, try this- but WARNING: your pants could fall down. Jack up the tire so that it has no flattened side or loading and wet both beads with tire mounting lube, vegetable oil or water and detergent (dishwater?). Take a belt from your waist or a cargo strap or rope and put it around the circumference of the tire along the center of the tread. Pull it tight and then put the air in, it may also help to thump your fist on the tread to momentarily displace some trapped volume outward at the beads. When the bead seals be careful not to suddenly overinflate (especially a small tire) beyond the maximum pressure on the sidewall.

• Automotive Tire Safety

  More general information on tires for automotive use and tire safety are on this link from the Dean Tire Company Safety Instructions page. Dean Tires is a brand of the Cooper Tire Company, a reputable USA maker of all types of tires. Dean Tires and other popular brands are available from Vulcan Tire Sales, an excellent pure web outlet at vulcantire.com. DurableToys.com owner's family have experienced the worst of outcomes that were probably rooted in incorrect replacement tire size selection. We have also learned a lot from AutoCross (A-X) and drag racing plus on-track driver education at Charlotte's major racetrack. We select and order tires online, and when UPS brings them we mount and balance them ourselves for our business and personal vehicles. Goodyear and Cooper are two of our favorite brands, and the quality is affirmed by the minimal amount of balance weights needed for them. See if you can spot two cars from DurableToys.com family members on the Cooper Tire web site "rides" page- hint, we are in the wagon business and have had one fast durable toy for over 23 years. In the past tire dealers selected tires for us based on their stock rather than the correct match. What we have learned about another's profession has served to make us safer as we travel on public roads and try to avoid repeating past tradgedies.

Kettler Tricycle Size, Feature and Accessory Fitment Chart - Kettrike Pictures, Descriptions, Prices

Powder coating is an advanced method of applying a decorative and protective finish to a wide range of materials and products that are used by both industries and consumers. How does it work? Powder coating is a dry finishing process. Finely ground particles of pigment and resin are electrostatically charged and sprayed onto the products to be coated. The parts to be coated are electrically grounded, so that the charged particles adhere to them until melted and fused into a solid coating in a curing oven. The result is an attractive, durable, high-quality finish. The powder coating process itself offers another advantage -- it is environmentally friendly, virtually pollution-free. Unlike liquid paint, no solvents are used, so only negligible amounts of VOCs are released into the air. In addition, unused or oversprayed powder can be recovered, so any waste is minimal and can be disposed of easily and safely. Look for products with the powder coated tough logo on our pages and learn more at the source: Powder Coating Institute

bare metal gets a pH balance wash and primer

item is heated to 350° C (662° F) in the Thermal Tunnel

item is dipped while hot into a dry powder mixure of: paint pigments, resin particles, and aluminum flakes.

Powder coating sears to the hot metal

Innermost part of 8 mil layer dries and hardens, outer half becomes tacky

item heated again in Thermal Tunnel until it reaches 200° C (392° F) to dry and seal outer coating wall

Cooling is followed by inspection and packaging Shop for sintered powerder coated outdoor furniture products on the DurableToys.com furn/kiron.htm page.

A new use for powder coating has been developed by General Motors for the LS9 engine that will appear in the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1. The LS9 is a derivative of the 6.2L LS3 V8 with the addition of an Eaton supercharger to boost the horsepower peak to 620 (not yet SAE certified) according to GM's Small-Block V8 Chief Engineer Sam Winegarden. In GM's 100 year plus history, this engine has the highest output power second only to the Allison aero inverted V12 that powered WWII fighter planes. The belt-driven supercharger is a postitive displacement pump that forces more combustion air under pressure (10.5 psi) into the engine than would be drawn in at atmospheric pressure. The supercharger's two four-lobe interleaved impellers have a graphite based abradable powder coating that is designed to seal the lobe interface very tightly. The two 160 degree helix shapes have a self machining break-in process to close the rotor-to-rotor tolerences. The mere 0.3kW that the supercharger consumes under cruise conditions helps maintain high fuel economy even in GM's most exotic performance car. (Automotive Engineering International, Feb 2008 p26-28.) DurableToys.com family member Kate has an Eaton supercharger on her Buick V6 that has a Teflon® coating to make the lobes slippery.

Aluminum (Al) is an element, in fact the most plentiful metallic element in the earth's crust. Oxygen is the most plentiful element overall with much of it bonded to aluminum to form the oxide alumina. Aluminum is characterized mostly by its light weight- one third the density of steel and also by its high corrosion resistance. Until the 20th century, resonably pure aluminum was costly to extract from naturally found ore and thus rare- making it a novel metal worn as jewlery by the wealthy. The Hall-Héroult Process uses direct current electricity to extract the metal from naturally found alumina. This very low cost technique, not superceded in a century, has changed the basic uses and even the perceived image of the lightweight metal. Aluminum is highly conductive of heat and electricity so it is used in electrical wiring, integrated circuits and heat sinking forms. It can be left unpainted because it immediately skins over with a thin clear coating of oxide, stopping further corrosion. Aluminum can be polished to a mirror finish with Mother's Aluminum Polish or sputtered on glass to make a mirror. Structurally, aluminum can be cast, forged, arc welded or extruded into complex shapes, often with no further finishing steps. Aluminum wheels on vehicles are stylish while self protecting, strong, low inertially and dissipative of brake system heat. In fact, modern painted plastic wheel covers are almost all styled to look just like aluminum wheels- such as on the new Kettrike Spash. There are many other ways to form aluminum, with some methods actually creating a functional grain structure within the metal, further increasing its useful specialization. A wide variety of alloys mixed in vary the desirable characteristics of the metal for many uses; it is hardly ever used in pure elemental form. Decorative and protective coatings are many; paint, powder coating, plastic dipping, electro-plating. Further classes of finishes add nothing but contact, such as shot peening, sandblasting and solvent etching to give any desired look. Aluminum is popular in boats and aircraft where its two primary traits in combination plus a non-magnetic nature (compass use) are ideal. Powdered Aluminum is used as pigment in what we call "silver" paint. Aluminum has more oddities such as use as a low neutron absorber in nuclear reactors, in cryogenic vessels and in addition to more common packaging or architectural uses. Automobiles use increasing proportions of aluminum in body panels, engine blocks and cylinder heads, heat exchangers and suspensions. Aluminum is highly recycleable, from making the low end "pot metal" which contains the alloy soup of the day to highly pure metal for the same uses as newly refined material. We know from drink cans that it is generally too valuable to throw away.

Iron (Fe) is an element- a single atom weighing only 9.28 x 10 -23 grams is still iron. Iron is very plentiful in the earth's molten core and its rotation-induced flow is believed to be the source of the magnetic poles. Pure iron has limited uses such as in the making of electromagnets and galvanized sheet. Generally, iron is used in processed form such as wrought iron, cast iron or steel. Wrought iron is hammered into shape when hot by blacksmiths, it is naturally more rust resistant compared to steel. Cast iron is poured as a hot liquid into a mold where it hardens upon cooling. Steel is an alloy primarily of elemental iron and 0.04% to 4.4% carbon (C) and possibly more elements alloyed to create a stronger, harder metal. Steel has many possible solid phases that vary by temperature and alloy to set the molecules into different patterns. The greatest part of the effort in isolating iron and making steel goes into a series of chemical reactions to burn out the excess carbon and other impurities from the iron. A clever arrangement of air or oxygen, carbon for fuel, lime and other materials are arranged and introduced in a vertical vessel in the blast furnace method. The temperature layers' convective draft, pumps and gravity move the intermediate forms on their way up or down reacting out the desired liquid metal from everything else. Temperatures of 2500° F (1370° C) are needed to purify the alloy using one of several processes, open-hearth, basic oxygen or electric furnace. Even the leftover materials are useful as lawn fertilizer or black slag "cinders" for traction on snowy northern roads. Learn the technical details of blast furnace steelmaking from The American Iron and Steel Institute.

Steel is highly elastic, meaning it can make springs which absorb little energy internally when flexed. For example, a steel ball bounced on a steel surface will bounce very high and steel wheels on rails offer low energy loss. Yet steel can also be malleable enough to absorb energy to allow shaping into complex curves which require a thickness variation to avoid wrinkles. Steel is finished by forming it while still hot to both shape the mass of metal as well as cause the internal crystal structure to freeze into the correct molecular form- making for desired characteristics. Steel can be heat treated or cold treated to reshuffle the tiny amounts of alloying elements within molecules of mostly iron resulting in dramatic effects on the material's overall strength. In continuous mills the metal enters rollers as an ingot of 13' long by 35" wide and 4.5" inches thick. After successive pairs of closer and faster moving rollers a sheet emerges with the same width but it may be 1210 feet long and 0.05" thick. Tool steels have tungsten, molybdenum and other alloying elements to make very hard cutting tools. Stainless steels contain chromium, nickel and other alloying elements that keep them bright and rust resistant. Stainless is both decorative and useful for tough environments such as marine, space and food and chemical handling. You see stainless in mixing bowls, milk shake makers and in automotive exhaust pipes. It is inert to living tissue making it useful for joint repair parts and skin contact jewelry. What is chrome plated steel? Electro plating is like recharging a battery. Dissimilar metals are connected through immersion in a liquid electrolyte allowing for the movement of the ionic forms. Direct current electricity is forced across the two "electrodes" (opposite of the accidental battery) then the more noble metal will swim across and stick to the less noble metal. Done right, this is a three layer process. Copper then nickel then chrome is the order of the plating on steel to achieve the required durability with correct compatibility. The result is very corrosion resistant with the classic mirror finish of real car bumpers. Electro plating is similarly done with lots of other metals.

Rust is an oxide of iron, chemically Fe₂O₃ and other oxides. We have some experience with rust, with vehicles from northern climates where salt is used to melt snow. Our former exhange student Marco is now a chemist working back in Switzerland and he is a reliable font for answers to any chemical question. Marco also translated the German language message below on this page. We quizzed Marco recently on the merits of rust treatment products in which a claim of "conversion" or "catalyzing" to form a paintable inert barrier to further rusting is made. In his highly technical response we seem to get a yes, that it is possible.

To Mark:

...I bought some stuff that seems like clear [spray] paint and claims to turn rust into black primer. Seems true except that I did not read the label for recoating directions until it was about gone. Worst spot is a steel servo- steering line under the hood, totally rusty...

Marco replies:

No, I've never heard of such a "rust-seal" material, but what you write sounds reasonable. Rust contains Fe₂O₃ and other oxides of iron. These iron ions probably catalyze a polymerisation. Lots of chemical reactions are catalyzed by metal or metal ions. For example catalytic converter: coated with platinum, as far as I know...

We have used products from RustOleum, mar-hyde "One Step", Klean-Strip and Dupli-Color directly on rust with good results. One noticable outcome is that it does not work over paint, remaining a clear coating that later peels off. Another interesting characteristic is that the material cannot be applied by dipping a brush into a can, rather only by spray or squeeze bottle onto a brush. Any flakes of rust contacting the supply will catalyze all of it, ruining the material.

After many years, two available rust treatments have emerged as favorites. For smaller areas of the worst or most critcal areas of rust we use Klean-Strip brand Rust Converter. It comes in an black and white 8oz. bottle that is poured out and brushed on to form a hard, sandable black primer over encapsulated rust. Without gloves it will also discolor your hands in a way that resembles dark superglue. Rust Convertor is a good base for touch-up finish painting over it with conventional primers and paints. Tough areas like rusty bathroom vents that you can no longer replace have been brought back to new life. Rust Converter or equivalent is available at many discount or home center stores.

The other product works well on larger areas where over-application is not a contamination or cosmetic issue. "Rust Kutter" by Sanco Industries, Inc. in a quart size pump sprayer or gallon refill turns into a dark stable surface on rust and a chalky surface elsewhere. Rust Kutter can also be a fierce skin and eye irritant during use especially with the spray set for a fine mist. A drippy, acrid residue sometimes remains for a day or more especially where there is not rust prior to the product drying or is cleaned off. Up to three applications really seal the rust well to stop propogation cold. The oxide formed where rust wasn't can be ignored or cleaned off with scrubbing. Rust Kutter can also be damaging to low grade paint finishes and bright autmotive trim so clean up promptly. It also marks plastic with white spots and leaves a chaulky salt deposit where it drips onto concrete.

This effective chemical nicely blackens surface rust such as on classic car frames where the area is unprotected steel or deteriorated black paint. Other practical uses are on steel wagons and farm and garden tools of all sizes especially those that are stored outdoors. Rust Kutter is even used on highway bridges so it is likely available to pros in much larger quantities. In spite of the significant negatives the beneficial effects are appreciated. Rust Kutter is only known to be available at Tractor Supply Company in our area. At DurableToys.com we are in the small pull wagon business while the owners have several large classic station wagons that are preserved using Rust Kutter.

Welding - method of joining metals without fasteners

Fusion welding is the process of melting two or more pieces of like metal together, often with more filler metal, to form one piece. Welding is distinct from the brazing process technically known as non-fusion welding. In the (fusion) welding process a metal work piece and possibly identical or very similar filler metal all melt together to solidify into literally one piece of metal. Non-fusion brazing and its subclass soldering work by melting and wetting a lower melting temperature metal over the unmelted work pieces, then the filler freezes solid. Several methods of (fusion) welding exist from earliest known form: blacksmiths pounding hot metal with a hammer- forge welding. A later method is cast welding where molten metal is poured into a mold around the joint area. Carbon-arc street lighting was noticed to make useful amounts of excess heat, enough to locally melt metal together.

By 1948 arc welding grew out and diversified from the carbon arc heat source into three common and mature welding techniques. The first is known as Shielded Metal Arc Welding or commonly as simply arc welding or stick welding. A welder (machine) is a power supply as simple as a transformer stepping down its supply voltage into a lower voltage with current capability from 30 Amp up to 230 Amp or more. Since the physics of the molten metal within an arc establishes a relatively low and stable voltage, the power for heating is set by controlling the current flow. An arc welding rod is a stick of metal between about 1/16" and 1/4" thick by 14" coated in "flux", material that makes inert smoke over the weld site promoting arc stability and oxidation prevention. The rod is held by a bare end in a spring clamp with an insulated grip electrically connected with a heavy wire to the welder. The other side of the electrical circuit is the work piece with typically a spring clamp and another thick wire back to the welder. The weldor (person) slides the rod or "stinger" over the work area like a match and pulls back as the initial arc immediately expands into a stream of molten metal and plasma from the heat and effects of the flux. The rod consumes over a few minutes by depositing metal in a pattern using a hand motion like a series of cursive "e" or "&" strokes. The weldor also moves the grip closer to maintain about a 1/4" long arc as the rod shortens. The weldor's advancing technique produces a repeating process of lapping new and existing liquid metal while the molten pool cools behind at a constant distance behind the arc. The results have to be cleaned of hardened flux deposits to reveal the "bead" of shiny metal and some hardened splattered metal.

As you might expect, looking at a 6000 Watt arc with brightly glowing liquid metal at arms length from a font of molten droplets requires some protective gear. A full face shield with very dark movable glass covers the whole front of the head. Leather gloves and jacket are generally worn to protect the arms and chest, even when the weather may be already hot. Sweating inside a heavy jacket is more pleasant than sunburn or splatter burns that could ignite clothing. Some newer face shields have a lens of liquid crystal display (LCD) to darken on signal at the first 0.001 second of arc, this helps to locate the original point of contact using an unattenuated view. This is the same system used to darken many automobile rear-view mirrors from glare. The typical uses of a basic system are for welding steel in thickness ranging from 0.10" to 0.25" with current settings between 90 A and 140 A AC (alternating current). This is often referred to as "farm welding" where strength is vital but appearance is unimportant at a reasonably low skill level. A step up is DC (direct current) arc welding which opens up the possibility of welding aluminum and increases the options and variable characteristics of steel welding. The DC flow can be either direction for more penetration or cutting- or it can be the opposite way for more build up of the filler metal both with less unsightly splatter around the weld. A variation is "spot welding", where a big pulse of current is forced through the two sides of an electrified clamp squeezing a small area. The resistence to a large burst of current makes a hot spot fusing a 1/4" or so dot of weld on a larger area while the clamp ends are not melted. No protective flux (or inert gas) may be needed for such a short duration, but molten droplets fling outward.

The better form of arc welding is known as Metal Inert Gas or MIG welding. MIG does not need the flux material coating as on a straight 14" rod, so the consumable filler and arc source together is bare metal wire fed from a spool, a.k.a. wire feed. The lack of flux also means that there is no flux residue to cause porosity or contamination of the weld area; important for strength and for food, medical or chemical contact. A tank of Argon, Helium or other inert gas protects the weld area by excluding the oxygen in the atmosphere to prevent oxidation. MIG is usually DC with fine control over the arc and new material feed rate thus it makes for both strong and better looking welds almost devoid of splatter; this is important for smooth fluid or aggregate flow and even wear within welded pipes. Using inert gas instead of flux smoke makes it easier to see and thus gain better control of the heat and metal feed rates, often with a foot pedal. A distinct variation of MIG is "heli-arc" or Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding. TIG has separate heat source and filler metal feed, with a pair of non-consuming tungsten electrodes supporting the arc to generate heat. Tungsten has a much higher melting point than the weld metals, so it stays relatively intact as it does in a light bulb filament. Filler metal is in the form of bare rods are fed in by hand, and again inert gas is supplied to keep the area bathed in clear gas that does not allow oxidation. Collectively, MIG and TIG are referred to as simply inert gas welding.

Gas torch welding uses a flame torch fueled by a hydrocarbon fuel known as acetylene made ultra hot by metering in pure oxygen. Gas welding, or oxy/acetylene welding is much like TIG except for the heat source. Two pressure tanks with a long double hose terminate in a highly adjustable mixing torch head. After lighting, the torch head is adjusted manually with valve knobs for correct flame shape, color and sound. Gas welding is especially good for thin metals where difficult arc stability or melt-through would be a problem, i.e. applications such as automotive exhaust pipes. The torch head usually has provision for a temporary boost in the oxygen flow to make it better at cutting metal, since the oxidation helps consume metal to be removed.

Electric welding is understood well enough to have observed master weldors and programmed welding robots. Typical robotic welding is by MIG or spot welding used for mass production consumer product or automobile manufacturing. Welding can even be done underwater or in space with the correct skill, materials and equipment. There are also many more technical solutions to specific welding challeges adressing costs, conditions or materials not covered here.

Wood

What is wood? Duh ha!? We all thought that we knew more than enough about the hard, tough material that forms in the trunks of trees! Useful as both a construction material and fuel, wood has been used for tens of thousands of years. The technical term "wood" even includes the "veins" in leaves, but for this discussion only the materials that have commercial importance are mentioned. The structure of wood visible in the grain is primarily vertical fine cellular ducts which carry water and dissolates from root to leaves. The grain results from seasonal variation in growth rate and thus the new wood layer's density- darker is more dense. Classification of wood as hardwood or softwood depends on the type of tree from which it came. Hardwoods come from broad- leaved trees and wood from coniferous trees are called softwoods, regardless of the actual hardness. In softwood, life fluids are transported cell to cell and there may be resin ducts but hardwood has long continuous ducts parallel to the grain. Wood's physical properties vary over a wide range, and if it is not attacked by living organisms, wood lasts for centuries. One preservative is zinc chloride used in pressure treating wood for ground contact. Surface protection against weathering for wood is effective unless there is underlying deterioration caused by insect, fungi or borers. Factoids: Some fresh water wooden boats actually have salt placed in the bilge as a preservative. Spruce is the only material with the right resonance properties for piano sounding boards. Most US lumber is softwood with hardwood reserved for flooring, funiture and of course durable wood toys.

So You Think This Is New?

Some clever ideas that appear in DurableToys.com products and all around us date back farther than you might believe. Sometimes innovations are lost for centuries before being independently reinvented i.e. batteries. The progress built up over time is a result of effective written language and its use in documentaion. Heavy lifting happened at the Pyramids and Easter Island and plenty more feats human engineering occured before anyone would guess.

An early example is the reaction turbine steam engine that Hero set up as an exhibition at the temple. He had remote control powered door openers as well, activated by hot smoke expanding into a source of force. The earliest engines were still too big or integrated with terrain in thier needs or output functions so they were purely stationary fixtures. Pumping water especially to open up mining operations was an early break for horses trudging endlessly around in circles. At some point around 1800 the engines had changed from atmospheric pressure on reduced internal pressure towards pressurized steam acting on pistons, and the power conversion went way up. Steam engines became somewhat portable with maturity that enabled them to be installed in riverboats no later than 1786, likely before. In 1802 a commercially viable tugboat towed two 70 ton barges against heavy wind as a demonstration. Shareholders of the canal blocked the use of that steam powered tug fearing that the new phenomenon of a powerful wake would eronde the banks. Riverboats continued to improve with high and low pressure boilers. By 1840 the Cunard liner "Brittania" served cross-Atlantic passengers with massive 740 horsepower output from a single cylinder.

Powered "cars" or traction engines began with a 1769 effort and improved over time; a locomotive on a Welsh railroad had all wheels powered in 1804. An amphibious powered vehicle cruised the streets of Philadelphia and the Delaware River in 1804. Powered wheels benefitted from the 1828 differential gear to prevent a battle between the inside and outside powered wheels seeking different speeds when rounding a curve. The independent wheels on a horse-drawn chariot could blissfully ignore that effect. Four wheel drive had been used for soft surfaces without benefit of differentials earlier as do some modern 4WD vehicles. The same 4WD system still seen in powered toys using bevel gears at the wheels dates from a vehicle of 1825. Steam engines also enabled bus service around London in 1827 later expanding to regular suburban routes. Back in 1833 a bus had a name like a ship, the "Enterprise" carried passengers many miles on a scheduled basis. Finally the long term average rates exceeded the best horse-drawn carriage. Terrible accidents with boilers and loss of control had to be overcome both technically and in the minds of the public. The various steam engines took on an evolutionary path with ever larger pulling forces and speed mostly in response to freight industry sponsored contest prizes. The Timkin roller bearing really brought the railroads into heavy cargo capability.

Solid fueled sky rockets were just entertaining fireworks centuries ago but powdered fuel was tried out for an early attempt at an internal combustion engine in 1807. By 1826 liquid fueled internal combustion engines were doing useful work though the first gasoline car didn't appear until around 1896, a long time compared to other progress. Gasoline was already a common industrial solvent, dangerously flammable dry cleaning fluid. Of couse a carburetor to atomize the fuel was not on the hardware shelf so that essential element was made from a perfume sprayer. Somebody had to invent the word as well. Two world wars created an environment for rapid progress in self-propelled vehicles of all types. The "tank" label was only that, meant to be disinformation about the contents of the large crates hiding the fighting machines. Caterpillar also known as CAT branded crawler machines brought the technology to civilian use. CAT® branded toys are on our web pages and CAT® Diesel engines power bigger toys like yachts and motorhomes.

A 1714 attempt to cure tipping at the steering end of a wagon with dual pivots (kingpins) with stub axles created a new geometric problem when steered parallel at a sharp angle from center. The Ackerman arrangement of 1818 takes out the scrubbing error by steering the inside wheel at a sharper angle than the outside wheel as they make circle segments of two different radii. This Ackerman feature appears on your street car and most of our pull wagons, visible as a connecting tie rod made shorter if behind the axle or longer if in front.

Hand launched toy gliders emulated birds centuries before aircraft but the design would be recognizable as though quite modern. The Wright brothers has to await their own engine development and collection of available bicycle parts to take large gliders from dangerous sport into useful sustained flight. Only decades later, Douglas DC-3 aircraft were hauling passengers for hire and later flying through clouds with instrumentation and remote radar (radio detection and ranging). Plenty of DC-3 airplanes are still in use today (fully amortized!) a tribute to the greatness and maturity of David Douglas' design of the 1930's.

Signalling has taken every form in which information can be embedded. The fife and drum corps in armys were not for upbeat morale but to convey orders over distance. Sound and light were known to travel at far different rates with attempts to measure the speed of light centuries back. Electricty was well known to exist before becoming usefully controlled. Electro-plating using direct current electrcity was going on around thousand of years back by evidence found in and about the clay immersion vessels and pottery batteries. While touring a steel mill in 1982, our guide pointed out a two-foot diameter electic motor and announced that it had been in service for over 100 years. The manufacturing environment showcases frugal preservation of mature equipment diametrically opposite our own tendancy as consumers to repeatedly crush and remake cars. One brand, Rolls Royce, actually markets the product as fully intended to last a lifetime. DurableToys.com has long lasting products that go back to the invention of the wheel like the Radio Flyer Kids Wheelbarrow. Some Kettler and other products are improved by fresh thinking and protected with patents from this year.

If you have a new current year car, what is obviously a fresh design might also have been fifty years out of date by now. A labarinth of permissions, monopolies, taxation and effective competitive lobbies have led governments and leading citizens to thwart the natural rate of progress. We have a whole era called the "Dark Ages" of technical stagnation but roadblocks happened even during years of rapid advancement.

Wagon Brake Retrofit Installation

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Lubrication

Kettler recommends a drop of oil periodically on the bearings of its products, and we add especially if they are always left outdoors. On wagons with grease fittings, it will take a long time with a lot of use to really need to relube the wheels. On other wagons with ball (or sleeve) bearings infrequent oiling will do. My favorite lube is heavy synthetic gear lube intended for marine stern drive units. (We use synthetic lubricants a lot.) The SAE 90 rating is thick, so it won't drip after the initial wipe and then will stay on the bearings. More readily available motor oil of SAE 10W-30 or similar is rated by a different viscosity standard and is almost as thick as gear lube. If you find that the greased fitting wheels on small wagons feels like there is too much drag then purge them with a spray solvent/lube.

Wagon and Pedal Car Steering Geometry

Correct steering geometry makes your family car or a toy corner without excessive tire scrub during tight turns. The wheel on the inside of the turn is best angled more sharply than the outside wheel. The mechanical solution has been known for hundreds of years and is known as the "Ackerman" arrangement beyond 1818. It's easy to see and design without the math backing it up. Lines through the vertical pivots, the kingpins, and the tie rod end pivot points (on each side) need to cross at the center of the rear axle. This makes for very low rolling direction error even at hard over angles. When steered off center, lines extended from all axles converge together at the turn's center of radius on the inside of the turn- straight out from the back axle. A well designed tie rod is longer than the kingpin span when placed ahead of the axle and shorter if mounted behind. The low geometic error allows for very hard over steering limits and highly manueverable wagons- such as the VR280G wagon fleet aboard the Queen Mary hotel ship or the Berlin wagons at a Texas children's hospital. Kingpin and tie rod steered vehicles that we sell with the most accurate geometry are: Kettcars, Berg Pedal Karts, Rhoades Cars, Valley Road wagons, Speedway wagons and EZ Flyer wagons, Berlin model F600- only, Rolly X-Trac, Rolly Caterpillar pedal tractors, Caterpillar Dumper, Scale Models and RC-Ertl wide-front pedal tractors. Six and eight wheel wagons have a only slightly less precision from use of a shared design. A center pivoting solid front axle or "fifth wheel" steering on Radio Flyer wagons, narrow front Scale Models pedal tractors, Radio Flyer Tiny Trike and Kettler Baby's First Car are inherently correct, but they may include turn angle limits to prevent instability from wheel tuck-under. L&L wagons with a design shared with four-wheel steer versions cannot easily adapt to the Ackerman system since both ends are linked. All L&L wagons, smaller Berlin wagons and Power Pumper cars have less accurate (at hard angles) parallelagram kingpin and tie rod arrangement.

A further steering geometry refinement is the use of kingpin inclination to induce a camber (side tilt) change with steering input. Featured on Berg Pedal Karts the intent is to cause benign front end breakaway at the cornering limit. The rear axle of Kettler Navigator tricycles also have inclined kingpins, more below. A secondary benefit of this design is that a tighter turning radius can be allowed within safe handling limits. The two kingpins (vertical steering pivots) are tilted off vertical so that their tops are closer to each other than the bottoms. The kingpin to axle angle is such that the wheel is vertical when steered straight ahead. When steered to 45º off center, the outside front wheel adopts a positive camber of half of the kingpin tilt- biasing the loading toward the outside sidewall by a that number of degrees. The primary result of the camber change is to diminish the grip at that tire relative to the others. Thus the front end with the stressed outside and lightly loaded negative cambered inside tires will break away before the back end during hard cornering- making for an understeer condition. Understeer is also called "push", "plowing" or "tight" handling. The famous book by Ralph Nader "Unsafe at Any Speed" about dangerous oversteering characteristics of rear engine cars in the 1960s has caused automobile makers to be quite sensitive to oversteer or "loose" handling cars in the hands of the driving public. Highly adjustable race cars are generally finely tuned close to "neutral" between loose and tight except for intentional loose handling on dirt or gravel racing surfaces. There are ways to tune in the relative cornering grip between the front and rear by means of "roll stiffness distribution" in the frame, suspension and tire selection and pressure, among others. One way to measure the handling balance is to take the surface temperature of the tires to get a view of the immediate past cornering stress. Other ways are to highlight the short term wear pattern with paint dots or to look at the markings left on the pavement. Look at the report on cornering force measurement of a pedal car for evidence of cornering balance in a car without kingpin inclination as evidenced by marking left on the pavement.

The Kettrike Navigator and Air Navigator tricycles have lockable caster steered rear axles designed to work intuitively for the person controlling the pushbar. Both or either end steers or locks straight ahead for use in one of several different modes. The unique feature of the Navigators is the moderately complex geometry of the steerable rear axle. Applying force on the pushbar toward the left from far behind the center of the tricycle steers the trike right from rear wheels steered forward side of each tire to the left. The kingpins (steering pivots) are inclined toward each other at their tops with spindle links made to keep the tires vertical when steered straight ahead. Kingpin inclination makes for stable self-centering at low speeds since steering in either direction raises the ride height in opposition of gravity. The kingpin inclination also is what makes the axle act like casters. When the bottom of both tires experience a sideways force in a given direction it will cause a matching tilt to the outside along with a steering action in that direction. The rear steering axle thus yeilds to the same direction as it experiences a cornering force. Without a pushbar in play and a rider on the pedals, the unlocked rear wheels will stay close to the center position at low speeds but will begin to assist slightly in the turning direction with increasing speed. At speeds beyond what could be pedalled this could be undesirable. Advise children to limit speeds to the tire's "A" speed rating of 20 mph or lock the rear steering out. As a plus, the simulation of oversteer does seem to take the base out from under the possibility of a rollover. If you could go fast enough this could also be useful training for someone who will one day drive a car on rain or snow. Counter steering at the handlebars must be learned fast- otherwise the tail will hang out more than a good-ole boy outrunnin' the revenuers. In summary, the rear steering is a great feature that can be disabled for use like a regular tricycle. A member of the Society of Automotive Engineers, the author has been a design consultant for two products. He checked his life insurance before exploring the performance envelope at the cornering limits of toys. His mama also reported that his first word was "car".

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