Mercedes AMG F1 Team 2012

[Richard]

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Breath in .... hold that breath ...... and ....... breath out ..... relax.

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Lets have some positive and constructive posts about the engineering organisation that is the Mercedes AMG F1 team.

So back to topic - Would Merc benefit from FMEA, PCDA, DRBFM, fault tree analysis, or perhaps root cause analysis?

Perhaps an Ishikawa diagram would help? Then again the inventor of Toyota's Kanban system Dr. Taiichi Ohno said “My system does not make sense at all, but by God it’s working”. So maybe it's not that easy to rationalise the route to success?

[marcush.]

Richard.. =D> =D> =D>
I love your constructive approach to revitalising the thread.

Mercedes Grand prix as any team in formula 1 has a quality department so APQP rules are implemented -sure?

I have to admit that all I have seen in terms of FMEAs is not really complete and most companys fall into the trap of aftermath FMEA recourse instead of putting the FMEA at the start of it and living the expert system.

[Morteza]

I have had enough of reliability problems for car number 7 while car number 8 has had none!



I have no idea what to expect for Valencia, but I know there isn't anything good (hope I'm wrong). Is W03 a very fragile car that makes it hard for the team to provide two reliable ones for a race weekend? What's the reason?

[marcush.]

I have had enough of reliability problems for car number 7 while car number 8 has had none!



I have no idea what to expect for Valencia, but I know there isn't anything good (hope I'm wrong). Is W03 a very fragile car that makes it hard for the team to provide two reliable ones for a race weekend? What's the reason?

the law of averages would tell you the distribution of dnfs is quite unlikely as we see it here.

But on second thought we don´t really know what happened to the fuel system in Monaco -it may well have been triggered by the impact at the start for example and who knows just what triggered Schumis bad stop.
Was he parking the car exactly were he should ? Or was the issue purely a technical issue with the gun and it was simply coincidence that it was schumacher and not rosberg who fell over it.
More so The DRS was not the first time giving trouble on schumachers car ..was ärosberg equally affected but just at other less punishing times?
And with the gearbox both clearly had issues with the oldand new box already.

Inmy book the wheel fixation issue is something not really under control since ages and as you increase the number of stops + try to minimise the pit stop elapsed time you will soon find yourself at the ragged edge with a wheelgun in your hand and the car is flying into its allocated slot.
No question you can practise and optimise the choreography but you cannot elimnate the risks .thze car can stop short or overshoot can get in sideways or half a meter to the left or right .There is just too much that can go wrong in the process -you got NO control over bolt pretension -so you never know if the wheel is fitted proberly when raising the hand.
You have no control over the removal of the nut as well .The airgun will apply its realease torque and hammer away but what do you know about reléase force ? the mechanic may have that mushy feel in his hand and senses there is something different but else?
I feel the whole wheel fixation is a huge risk and not on a level required for the time you have at your dísposal to change the wheels .
To me the wheel gun should only pretension the hub and throw off the wheel .The mechanic should replace the wheel the pretension mechanism should grab the wheel securely .End of stop.It may be a requirement of the regs to fix the wheel with a bolt though -so maybe the last action of the wheelchange may need to be tensioning the fixation bolt in the lock position.

[Raptor22]

Wheel fixing issues is a result of poor workmanship. Look at Lewis Hamilton's stop. Its always the one of the rear tyres.
With schumacher it was the Front left in China, the Rear left at Spa last years, the rear right in Malaysia last year.

The repeat of similar problem on the same car is indicative of a people problem

[Morteza]

Wheel fixing issues is a result of poor workmanship. Look at Lewis Hamilton's stop. Its always the one of the rear tyres.
With schumacher it was the Front left in China, the Rear left at Spa last years, the rear right in Malaysia last year.

The repeat of similar problem on the same car is indicative of a people problem

That is very possible considering the fact that it has been a recurring problem on Michael's car (Lewis's pit stops has also been driving me crazy this season). Is it because Mercedes has sacrificed reliability for performance? Although it is odd that Nico has had none yet, but is it that his time has yet to come?

[xpensive]

Those wheel-nut problems are a bit mysterious, perhaps they should rip a page from Ferrari's book with the steep double-entry?

[marcush.]

Those wheel-nut problems are a bit mysterious, perhaps they should rip a page from Ferrari's book with the steep double-entry?

just to call bs on the poor devil handling the gun BECAUSE you can see him fail is not on.The problem starts earlier.
Theres not much room for error in the current wheel fixing and you only ever know if everything has gone to plan when it´s already too late to fix the problem...So the complete system is BS.
Ferrari have really stepped up with their wheel fixation and : they have not encountered any issues yet..statisticaly irrelevant but a zero fault result looks a lot better than Mercedes who had I think 2 wheel issues since introducing their new system last year...

[xpensive]

Rats, my number of supports are rapidly diminishing here...I wonder..but anyway, the fine-thread wheel-nuts MGP/AMG is obviously using just doesn't seem right for this application, does it?

[marcush.]

so Mr.x ..we need to go on WOT again to do a bit of balance redress methinks...
Just why would you use a fine thread in this application? do you really need the mechanical advantage to increase clamping force ? How does this tradeoff against the thread being less tough simply as there is not much meat available..
To me the whole fine thread thing already looks wrong and prone to issues.

[xpensive]

Just to be painfully engineerish marcush, what do you need the nut for? Not to convey torque, that much is for ceratin, but you need it to fix the wheel laterally, while making sure it won't come adrift during running.

A fine-pitch thread will obviously need less tightening torque for the same clamping, but is that really the objective here?

This is why I'm sucker for Ferrari's solution, an outrageously coarse and easy to find thread, with what I would imagine to be a soft Alu-nut against a harder male and then abuse the former. Throw the nuts away as you go, who cares anyway?

[marcush.]

Just to be painfully engineerish marcush, what do you need the nut for? Not to convey torque, that much is for ceratin, but you need it to fix the wheel laterally, while making sure it won't come adrift during running.

A fine-pitch thread will obviously need less tightening torque for the same clamping, but is that really the objective here?

This is why I'm sucker for Ferrari's solution, an outrageously coarse and easy to find thread, with what I would imagine to be a soft Alu-nut against a harder male and then abuse the former. Throw the nuts away as you go, who cares anyway?

there we go.
The objective is to provide a drive free of any slack to avoid shockloads eating up thehub wheel interface -which might causing secondary damage within the drivetrain as well.

So the clamping force is ,in my view only there for "securing" the thing and to me a positive ratcheting or snap in locking device could provide this job a lot better .
I have the idea that anything separate (wheelnut)is one piece too much and securing it to the wheel is just shifting the potential problem.
My view of it :A monkey should be able to perform the job perfectly -no potential for anything going wrong is the KEY for constantly lightning sfift wheel change under Racing conditions.

[yener]

Very interesting Q&A with Ross Brawn..

What about Michaels reliability: "I dont believe in faith to much, we have one car which did al laps of every race and michaels car didnt.

Interesting answer, anyways Ross gives Michael a lot credit by telling a lot of fast drivers perticulary Michael didnt won a race yet.

[SeijaKessen]

F1: Mercedes Strengthens Schumacher’s Team For Valencia

Mercedes has beefed up Michael Schumacher's support team for Valencia, as the team bids to end his shocking run of reliability.

While Nico Rosberg has finished every race so far in 2012 and is right in the hunt for the title, Michael Schumacher's record features no fewer than five DNFs, leaving him with more points only than the six hapless drivers of the bottom-three teams.

Bild newspaper reports that in a bid to finally stop the rot, team boss Ross Brawn has decided to bolster Schumacher's support team with a new additional chief engineer.

His job will be to monitor the work of the regular mechanics, after Brackley-based Mercedes "double and triple checked" every component of the seven-time World Champion's W03 car ahead of Valencia.

"What is happening at the moment with Michael is not the standard that we are striving for," admitted Rosberg.

Brawn added: "Our standards here are extremely high. We haven't changed our approach or any of our procedures; we haven't taken any short cuts or let the system slip in any way, so it's been highly frustrating and peculiar.

"So we're constantly looking at how we can improve the way we work, and we can do better."

Hinting at his Concorde Agreement dispute with Mercedes, meanwhile, Bernie Ecclestone fired a barb at Mercedes when asked about Schumacher's troubles.

"I think that if he was still at Ferrari, he would still be winning today," the F1 chief executive told Germany's Sport Bild.

http://formula-one.speedtv.com/article/ ... r-valencia

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Stuttgart will pull the plug.

Dealing with this idiot is like dealing with an African war lord. Mercedes are best out of it if this carries on.