cryo treatment

nz1 stark · Guest

does anybody know anything about cryo treating parts??? i know the process but are there really any gains from it???(hp. strength.......) just interested if its worth the investment.

noah stark

Pete Muller · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2002 3:42 pm Post subject: cryo treatment

Here's a thread from the Tech Forum regarding cryo treating.

I only searched this Forum... I'd guess you'd probably find quite a bit more if you ran some searches on the other Forums.

Pete

joseph hollinger · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2002 5:34 pm Post subject: cryo treatment

quote:
Originally posted by noah stark:
does anybody know anything about cryo treating parts??? i know the process but are there really any gains from it???(hp. strength.......) just interested if its worth the investment.

noah stark

Racecar Engineering ran an article about
cryogenics last year. It was so bad, and
so unresearched that I cancelled my
subscription. Things may have changed since
I looked last, but the most amazing thing
about cryo is that no one does any real
studies on its effectiveness. Instead, you
see endless testimonials from people who may
or may not know. But no real data.

Now, before I step on too many toes here,
I'm willing to have my mind changed, and I'm
no expert. But I'd like to see real data,
done under controlled conditions. Otherwise,
I'm saving my money.

Jimmy Moore · Joined: 26 Jul 2001 Posts: 664

I'd like to see a method to prove it's really been done. You send parts out, they come back, how can you tell you didn't get ripped?

Pete Muller · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2002 6:24 pm Post subject: cryo treatment

I can tell when a set of KT100 cases has been cryo'd by how they machine.

Not really better or worse... just different.

PM
Muller Machine

joseph hollinger · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2002 6:52 pm Post subject: cryo treatment

quote:
Originally posted by Jimmy Moore:
I'd like to see a method to prove it's really been done. You send parts out, they come back, how can you tell you didn't get ripped?

It's the perfect business.

Tim Doll · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2002 7:20 pm Post subject: cryo treatment

quote:
Originally posted by Pete Muller:
[QB]I can tell when a set of KT100 cases has been cryo'd by how they machine.
[QB]

OK Pete, those that checked the old thread know how I feel. How about you, as someone who has worked on more KT100S motors than most of us will ever see, what's your 'opinion'.

Tim

Pete Muller · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2002 9:41 pm Post subject: cryo treatment

Tim,

Most of the "hard data" that I have on cryo work is on high-speed steels. My Dad had a company that makes gear cutting tools... and as you might imagine, heat treating is super critical. We made cutting tools out of a variety of material, but we experimented with cryo treating on M-42 and Rex76 primarily (M-42 in CPM and normal type, and the Rex76 exclusively in CPM). Our conclusion? - If the part was properly heat treated, cryo treating made no difference in hardness, toughness, or how the material responded to grinding (as far as we could test). If the part was "slightly off" after heat treat (which only takes 5 or 10 degrees either way on these materials), cryo treating seemed to finish the job... though we never saw anything that was cryo treated actually test superior to something that was correctly heat treated.

Your mileage may vary.

afa something like a KT-100 case...

As stated earlier: I've noticed that the material machines a bit different after cryo treating. I haven't taken any cryo'd cases (or any other aluminum parts for that matter), and tested them for hardness or tensile post cryo treating. Testing for stability is also something that's a bit difficult to do since most every case I machine is out the door never to be seen again. So... to answer your question: in what I do, I see no difference, though admittedly I don't do any destructive (or non destructive) testing on cases for comparison.

I think your comment in the other thread (about choosing/preferring the properly made part) is spot-on. I'd take a permanent mold style KT-100 case over any other type... cryo treated or not. The material is simply better.

PM
Muller Machine

Steve Slebodnick · Posted: Mon Oct 14, 2002 11:20 pm Post subject: cryo treatment

We use to send a lot of Kt100s out to get them cryo’d and the theory was that they wouldn’t distort as bad when they got hot, and when we first got them back I use to joke about weather there was really anything done, but once I started to port them I could instantly tell there was something different about the way the aluminum cut but weather or not it would help performance was another story, all we could go by is what other peoples experience was with using it and one of them somebody told me was pretty interesting. He was a expert marksman and on his un- Cryo’d rifle barrels he could only get 3 perfect rounds out and once the barrel would start to heat up from the 3 rounds he would start getting flyers. Once his rifles barrels were cryo’d he could get over 12 rounds out before he would start to get flyers so by the barrel getting hot it wouldn’t affect the straightness as much on the Cryo’d barrels. I thought this was pretty convincing evidence, and I have herd a lot of other convincing facts also, but weather or not it will give you more HP out of you kart motor is hard to say but I don’t think it ever hurt. I know if I were to ever build a KT for my self I would have it Cryo’d. After I tore down about 35 motors and found the cylinder with the best blow down LOL.

nz1 stark · Guest

how does it machine differently???? easier to cut?? what about porting??? easier nicer finish. are you using carbide for your machining????? what about brake rotors and bearings?? will it help them??????

Rodney Ebersole · Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2002 6:19 am Post subject: cryo treatment

Noah, I am a kart racer that has a cryo chamber. I'll have to dissagree with Joseph, My perfect cryo bussiness is definitily in the red. I am not a good marketing person, but I do sleep well, knowing that I have not ripped off anyone that I work or associate with. I agree that it would be nice if we could see with our eyes or a tool the differance in a cryo'ed pease of material compaired to a non-cryo'ed pease. I posted a Companies name that offers that service, and the equipment needed to see it, a long with some web sites that link you to controlled testing results in many fields of study.
The race season is over, and now that I have some time and maybe some money, I will be doing some cryo batches of my own parts for next year, in hopes of learning more about benifits to be had in the field of kart racing studies. I am glad to offer my cryo treatment service to others that want to study it for them selves.
"just interested if its worth the investment"
I still wounder that myself. As Pete stated above, There are parts that see a remarkable change and parts that only see a incremential change. Yet, yesterday at the races the winner won by an increment of a secound. Now I just have to find out how to get it for a minimal amount of investment.

Rodney Ebersole · Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2002 6:37 am Post subject: cryo treatment

Rotors , depending on there original heat treatment and composition of meterial, most will see a remarkable improvement. They would be my bread and butter if I were to jump threw the hoops of red tape and liability issues needed to do business with mass transportation.
Bearings, I have seen problems treating assembled bearings. The thin outer race contracts faster than the thicker inner race, causing the balls to divet the outer race. Depending on the class of bearing, the cheep or lower class lives threw the process as they have a looser clearance between the races.

Steve Slebodnick · Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2002 12:28 pm Post subject: cryo treatment

quote:
Originally posted by noah stark:
how does it machine differently???? easier to cut?? what about porting??? easier nicer finish. are you using carbide for your machining????? what about brake rotors and bearings?? will it help them??????

what I noticed is it actualy made the aluminum stick to the carbide cutter and would also clogg the sanding rolls much quicker over the non Cryo'd cylinders.

Dean Graves · Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2002 8:01 am Post subject: cryo treatment

This is about Briggs engines but the cryo and cylinder sealing theory are the same.
Joe Mondello has been doing it for years.
http://www.oilstick.com/chute/joe/paper1.html

Terry McGonigal · Joined: 18 Jul 2001 Posts: 42 Location: Canada, ON, Ottawa

Hi Rodney...

quote:
Originally posted by Rodney Ebersole:
Rotors , depending on there original heat treatment and composition of meterial, most will see a remarkable improvement.

I'm not looking to be a pest, but this seems at odds with some of what I've read. For example:

quote:
From Those poor rotors...:

Last year we bought 4 rotors. Two were bone stock, and two were subjected to a process know as Cryogenically Treating – one of the high-tech buzzwords floating around the paddock. The rotors were run back-to-back on the same track on the same car on the same day with temperatures taken to make sure that they saw the same level of heat. Following the track session, the parts were removed and we had them literally dissected by a materials lab.

The testing conducted included surface hardness, grain structure analysis, density, and surface scanning with an electron microscope. Guess what – after seeing the heat of use, the rotors looked identical in every regard. This is not to say that there is not a benefit from treating other parts which see lower temperatures and/or have different material properties, but treating our rotors on our car showed no tangible benefits (note that it didn’t seem to hurt anything either). Come to your own conclusions, but in our case, we’ll pass.

Ob disclosure: I've not done my own testing, and am not associated with the above web site in any fashion [but they have some good brake tech articles]...

Cheers,
--
Terry McG