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| The End of an Old Song |
So I am now available to assist in the areas of hydraulic pump design, automotive transmissions and energy storage systems. Call me. Please.
My history with the Ifield pump goes back a long way – to long before Ray Evans of Ifield Technology Ltd acquired the license to the technology from the Ifield family.
I first started work with R.J.Ifield & Sons Pty Ltd of Dural, NSW, Australia in 1968. I was seconded to Joseph Lucas Ltd for a short period to work directly under Dick Ifield, then returned to the family company, which changed to Ifield Engineering Pty Ltd and then Hyden Engineering Pty Ltd as time passed. Altogether I was with the Ifield’s for 18 years, Chief Engineer for the last years, before hanging out my slate as an independent consulting engineer in 1986.
The present pump is predominantly my design, from about 20 years ago, and has been little changed since. It was developed from the 3.5T transmission unit, also my design, first as a V300, then down to a V150. At this stage Ray Evans took over the technology, with the design then being scaled, with my assistance, to V60, V10, V22 and V40 sizes.
The original concept for this design series is shown below, from a drawing initialled HF 3/80, nearly 25 years ago. This was called the V18 because the pistons were 18mm in diameter. It shows the ported pistons and hydrostatic bearing that are the keynotes of the concept.
That old song is now over, and the next step of concept development will no longer be an Ifield pump; perhaps I will get lucky enough to call it the Frazer pump. I have had lots of time to think of improvements over the last twenty years, but there comes a time in every design journey when it is necessary to “go back to the drawing board” – with a clean blank sheet of paper, starting all over from scratch. A new melody.
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