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The Need for a Portable Shock Absorber Test Indicator (STI)
The humble shock absorber is one of the components most often taken for granted on the average vehicle, yet it is also one of the most important. The task of the shock absorbers is not only to provide a smooth, comfortable ride; they make a major contribution to the vehicle's handling characteristics by ensuring that the tyres maintain optimum contact with the road under all conditions.
Worn shock absorbers will have a seriously detrimental effect on a vehicle's ability to brake and manoeuvre effectively. In an emergency, that could mean the difference between avoiding an accident, and ending up as yet another statistic.
Shock absorbers are critical wear items, just like air filters or tyres, and they require replacement when they are no longer effective. But how does one determine the point at which they need replacing? Until now, effectively evaluating a shock absorber's performance has been impossible without bulky expensive test rigs, or specialised equipment requiring that the shock absorber be removed from the vehicle for testing. It is not possible, even for an expert engineer, to tell if a shock absorber is functioning optimally simply by a visual inspection.
Previous testers that claimed to test shock absorbers on the car earned a bad reputation with members of the public, as they were seen merely as a means for companies to try and sell shock absorbers. This reputation was certainly justified in as much as those testers were inaccurate and inconsistent in the results they produced.
Why Shock Doc is Different
Shock Doc delivers accurate, repeatable results because it was developed in conjunction with a company that manufactures and supplies shock absorbers to motor manufacturers as original equipment. In developing the device, engineers used sophisticated laboratory tests to generate data from a wide variety of shock absorbers that had been manufactured with precisely known damping characteristics. This data was then used to develop the mathematical algorithm used by the Shock Doc testing device's electronic "brain", or CPU.
The same shock absorbers were then tested on vehicles using the Shock Doc tester, the results compared with those from the laboratory tests, and the algorithm fine-tuned to achieve the maximum correlation between the two sets of data. This process took three years, but at the end of it all we are confident that the results produced by the Shock Doc tester are as accurate as it is possible to achieve with a handheld device of this nature.
The Shock Doc Handheld Device
The unit is a compact handheld device powered by a rechargeable internal battery. It has an LCD display panel and keypad. At its heart is microprocessor unit which holds the test algorithm, performs the data acquisition and generates the results. Operator instructions and results are displayed on the LCD screen, and the unit has a serial port allowing it to be connected to a PC. The necessary serial cable and software are supplied, allowing test results to be displayed on screen in graphic form or printed out. The data collected can be saved in .csv format and manipulated using spreadsheet software.
Sensor
The transducer used to generate the data signal for the Shock Doc device is a solid-state semiconductor device which attaches to the vehicle via a suction cup, and is connected to the tester via a curled cord.
Eliminating Operator Influence
The CPU in the Shock Doc testing device compares the input sample provided when the operator pushes down on the car with the parameters stored in the algorithm. If the data falls outside of the envelope required to produce an accurate result, the sample will be rejected and the operator asked to provide another input. It is thus impossible for the operator to influence the results produced by the device.
The humble shock absorber is one of the components most often taken for granted on the average vehicle, yet it is also one of the most important. The task of the shock absorbers is not only to provide a smooth, comfortable ride; they make a major contribution to the vehicle's handling characteristics by ensuring that the tyres maintain optimum contact with the road under all conditions.
Worn shock absorbers will have a seriously detrimental effect on a vehicle's ability to brake and manoeuvre effectively. In an emergency, that could mean the difference between avoiding an accident, and ending up as yet another statistic.
Shock absorbers are critical wear items, just like air filters or tyres, and they require replacement when they are no longer effective. But how does one determine the point at which they need replacing? Until now, effectively evaluating a shock absorber's performance has been impossible without bulky expensive test rigs, or specialised equipment requiring that the shock absorber be removed from the vehicle for testing. It is not possible, even for an expert engineer, to tell if a shock absorber is functioning optimally simply by a visual inspection.
Previous testers that claimed to test shock absorbers on the car earned a bad reputation with members of the public, as they were seen merely as a means for companies to try and sell shock absorbers. This reputation was certainly justified in as much as those testers were inaccurate and inconsistent in the results they produced.
Why Shock Doc is Different
Shock Doc delivers accurate, repeatable results because it was developed in conjunction with a company that manufactures and supplies shock absorbers to motor manufacturers as original equipment. In developing the device, engineers used sophisticated laboratory tests to generate data from a wide variety of shock absorbers that had been manufactured with precisely known damping characteristics. This data was then used to develop the mathematical algorithm used by the Shock Doc testing device's electronic "brain", or CPU.
The same shock absorbers were then tested on vehicles using the Shock Doc tester, the results compared with those from the laboratory tests, and the algorithm fine-tuned to achieve the maximum correlation between the two sets of data. This process took three years, but at the end of it all we are confident that the results produced by the Shock Doc tester are as accurate as it is possible to achieve with a handheld device of this nature.
The Shock Doc Handheld Device
The unit is a compact handheld device powered by a rechargeable internal battery. It has an LCD display panel and keypad. At its heart is microprocessor unit which holds the test algorithm, performs the data acquisition and generates the results. Operator instructions and results are displayed on the LCD screen, and the unit has a serial port allowing it to be connected to a PC. The necessary serial cable and software are supplied, allowing test results to be displayed on screen in graphic form or printed out. The data collected can be saved in .csv format and manipulated using spreadsheet software.
Sensor
The transducer used to generate the data signal for the Shock Doc device is a solid-state semiconductor device which attaches to the vehicle via a suction cup, and is connected to the tester via a curled cord.
Eliminating Operator Influence
The CPU in the Shock Doc testing device compares the input sample provided when the operator pushes down on the car with the parameters stored in the algorithm. If the data falls outside of the envelope required to produce an accurate result, the sample will be rejected and the operator asked to provide another input. It is thus impossible for the operator to influence the results produced by the device.
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