Dobar clanak iz americkog magazina Cycle World ...
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Posebno interesantno , druga strana , ako treba prevod , moze nocas na poslu
Inovacije na delu ....
And then there’s the hidden electrical technology that improves reliability and feel without offering any hint of its presence, not even getting a real mention in the bike’s press release. BMW’s new-generation hand switches are fitted to the 1600s, made by German company Kromberg & Schubert GmbH. Take your average motorcycle hand switch apart and you’ll find internal electrical connections made by short or long lengths of wire screwed to copper stampings and springs, usually a bit of a crammed mess inside. You look at the finicky internals and the wires and screws and you’re just glad your days aren’t filled by assembling the damn things one after another at some factory in Japan or Taiwan. Many motorcycle switches haven’t been fully weather sealed, either, relying on the fact that they’re switching relatively high currents and will tolerate a little water and current bleeding without really screwing anything up. This isn’t acceptable, however, when you start into the digital world BMW has ventured down of CAN buses and remote solid-state relays, where the switch is merely signaling the relay whether to supply current to, say, the high beam or not, and not actually switching the current directly. In the digital world, a little bit of leaking current is a confused signal, and a problem.
But BMW’s new switches are nothing like a conventional motorcycle switch. Kromberg & Schubert developed a process whereby the plastic of the injection-molded inner switch body is filled with a small percentage of copper nano particles. After popping from the mold, the inner switch body is laser-etched to expose copper in appropriate areas, which can be plated to create a three-dimensional circuit board to which sealed and ergonomically delightful switching elements can be robotically placed and wave-soldered. An outer switch body with appropriate levers and plastic buttons fits over the inner body and gives the rider big buttons to engage the actual switches, and the electrical connection between wiring harness and switch assembly is a simple plug-in connector. All of the internal wires are gone, every single one. The switch is improved in every way, yet with the handwork gone, is no more expensive than what came before. This is the magic of continuous technological progress (progress I only happen to know about because Kromberg & Schubert was in discussion to supply the next generation of Buell switches).