Beam me up Scotty

For years we’ve all been mesmerized by the laser. From the common pointer, to tools we use daily, the laser has always possessed huge possibilities all of which have only grown in number with time.

My most recent memory of its mention was when Mike Myers’ Dr. Evil spoke of “Lay-Zers” in his infamous rant about sharks with “frickin' laser beams” mounted to their heads. As I said before, their possible uses seem to be endless.

Almost 11 years ago a friend of mine hinted at yet another use as an ignition source for our cars. I’ll admit I forgot about it until 2002 when I heard of it mentioned again. I figured some day there might be technology enough and our ability to build the necessary bits to do this economically. It isn’t far now.

A few days ago Ford mentioned that along with the help of Liverpool University, they have developed a laser ignition for gasoline engines. This is exciting because of what the laser can bring to the game.

• Lasers permit a wider range of mixture ignition possibilities (remember the talk of the stratified-charge engines not too long ago? Very hard to ignite)
• Engineers are limited to placement of the existing spark-plug due to size, and charge tuning is hindered because of the same single point ignition source. Now that direct injection has become common, the possibilities grow rapidly.
• By splitting the beam a laser can have more than one source in each cylinder giving rise to a much greater ability to fire the highly atomized but very lean mixture.
• Laser’s can be used to read combustion as it happens (reducing the need for other sensors to give the same information)
• Lasers will permit much leaner mixtures allowing fuel mileage to go up and emissions down.

So Doctor Evil, we might not have them mounted to living Sharks today, but for the Hyundai Tiberon, it won’t be long now. Does it make you randy baby? Doesn’t it?

Later, PC