FKFS aircraft engines

Professor Wunibald Kamm`s endeavours on aircraft engines date from the 1920`s, but the really interesting ones began with the "Bomber-B Programme", when he first designed, along with Wilhelm Krautter, a series of very interesting "gruppenmotoren" (32 and 48 cylinder). The "A" is well-known, but here I present you the "C" and "D", BOTH 48 cylinder engines.
Taken from "Wunibald I.E.Kamm - Wegbereiter der Modernen Kraftfahrtechnik", published by VDI-Verlag. The authors are Jürgen Potthoff and Ingobert C. Schmid. I strongly recommend this book to the ones interested in engineering. I would place Herr Kamm on a par with Ferdinand Porsche...
FKFS stands for Forschungsinstitut für Kraftfahrwesen und Fahrzeugmotoren Stuttgart

Seems to be available in the States Library Berlin ...
And I have no chance in the moment to fetch it there ! :-\
But the catalogue speaks of "Online Ausgabe" (online edition) ?
Let's see, maybe during the Easter holidays.

I`m sure you will appreciate, Jens. Other than aircraft related, you may fancy automobile high-tech of the late 1930`s. I loved his wartime aerosleigh projects (they came to hardware stage) and the "gummisparendereifen", all metal tyres. A must!

Please take a look on Bill Pearce`s superb article on FKFS:

https://oldmachinepress.com/category/aircraft-engines/world-war-ii/

Actually all articles deserve attention, although I`ll stick to the german aircraft engines. The article on the Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz Dz series is also a must.

Yes his article is very good he doing good job on that site.

Thank you gentleman! I'm glad you liked the article on the FKFS engines as well as my site. The link above may not always take someone directly to the FKFS article. Below is the link that should always go to that article, so five years from now someone reading this thread can go directly there.

https://oldmachinepress.com/2016/03/24/fkfs-gruppen-flugmotor-a-c-and-d/

Regards,

Hi Bill,

didn`t realized you`re a member of our forum. Great to know!

Wonderful article as usual. I really enjoy these articles and appreciate the skill and ability not only of the designers and engineers. But also the skills of the pattern makers, foundrymen and machinists in the development shops. Lately I've been trying to figure out the gearing on the Nordberg Diesel Radial. I know that the overall ratio has to work out to a 1:1 ratio in order for the master gear to maintain proper orientation of the link pins in the master gear to their respective cylinders. This is obviously on the 11 cylinder engine. I've been calculating the pitch diameters of the gears and can't come up with a combination of number of teeth, helix angle and diametral pitch that works. You wouldn't have any information on the gear train. The two things I'm sure of is the top pinion gear has 28 teeth and the gear centers on the top set is 8 inches less than gear centers on the master gear/lower pinion. I was wondering if you would have any information. I have been assuming is that the bottom set is either a 90/36, a 95/38 or a 100/40. Note all of these are the same ratio. Plus given the 1:2.5 ratio it means the top set has to be 2.5:1. With a 28 tooth driver on the second set that means the fixed gear has to be 70 teeth to maintain the correct ratio. The book* I have with gearing combinations list only a few combinations using 28 teeth and the needed 36, 38 and 40 tooth lower idler.

*An absolute thriller with the title of "14,000 Gear Ratios". I couldn't put it down. A real page turner :

Hello Kevin,

I am packing up for the Reno Air Races and will be there all week. I know exactly what you are talking about regarding the 11-cylinder Nordberg, but I'm not sure if I have any answers. I will have a look when I return and see what I can find. Sorry I can't get to it any sooner.

Regards,

Enjoy the NOISE I just wish they could of been able to bring the 100p replica to Reno. RIP Scotty

Hello Kevin,

The noise was awesome. The 100P crash is a tragedy (like Jim Wright's H-1 replica).

I could not find anything that detailed the Nordberg gearing, and I am certainly not an expert or even a novice with such things. My completely unprecise and unscientific analysis indicates the gearing as 84/28 for the stationary gear and upper pinion and 96/32 for the master gear and lower pinion. Would that work?

Sorry for the off topic drift everyone. I'm happy to continue this discussion via PM/email. I'm happy to continue it here too, I just know we have gone far away from a war-time German aircraft engine.

Regards,

Still off-topic but:

One of the interesting details with Nordberg radials is their true-motion connecting rod mechanism which provides an equal stroke for all connecting rods (other than conventional radials with a master and several slave rods) resulting in an equal ignition timing and balancing. Curtiss-Wright filed several interesting patents in the late 1930s and 1940s for true motion connecting rods for radials - you find them at Google Patents).

BTW: Bill, congratulation on your great site "oldmachinepress"!

Thank you Basil, I appreciate the comment. It is always nice to know others enjoy the effort.