Cryogenic Treatment

[HDBD]

Is this used in cup engines? Aerospace?

[mag2555]

Aerospace you ask? Once your outside the Earths atmosphere and shaded from the Sun the temps are -250 below so anything put out there gets cryo treated. Lol!

[Schurkey]

An interesting story at the time involved 5 hp Briggs and Stratton engines fully assembled being cryoed and claims that when run and oil changed, little or no contamination in oil compared to non treated engines. As far as documenting improvements, I can only say that after 30+ years that block is still in one piece making 1000+ NA hp as of this spring.

Mother Of God! A 5-horse Briggs making 1000+ NA hp, and doing it for thirty-plus years?

[kirkwoodken]

Cryo is material specific. It doesn't work on all materials and, in steels, is alloy specific. Check out "Machinist's Handbook". It WILL make Vasco steels tougher, less likely to work harden or shatter.

[Olefud]

Cryo is basically a form of heat treating. Will relieve stresses in the material so dimensions may change just a bit. And the metal needs to be heat treatable which mild steel isn't.

[lefty o]

An interesting story at the time involved 5 hp Briggs and Stratton engines fully assembled being cryoed and claims that when run and oil changed, little or no contamination in oil compared to non treated engines. As far as documenting improvements, I can only say that after 30+ years that block is still in one piece making 1000+ NA hp as of this spring.

Mother Of God! A 5-horse Briggs making 1000+ NA hp, and doing it for thirty-plus years?

and the rest of us are still screwing around with V8's.

[fdicrasto]

Sorry about the confusion, probably should have rearranged the order of sentences. My english teacher would have put me in detention over this one.

[jcisworthy]

Is this used in cup engines? Aerospace?

The guy I talked to at 300 below said he has cup car customers. That's all he said about it.

[Newold1]

I am sorry, I was not being forthright in my post as I was asking the bow-tie block in iron as being cryo'd. I have never used cryo treatment on cast iron products so it was interesting to hear from someone who has. I am not being critical with this comment, but a 30 year old 1000HP+ block is something to crow about and I for one would be a for sure buyer of such a part. I have in the past used cryo on outdrive gear sets back in my marine racing days and the improvements in gear face wear and durability and protection from breakage was greatly improved.
Cryo as stated in this discussion depends almost totally on the metal being cryo'd and its usage and in many cases where it improves the strength and wear improvements has been documented and proved in may performance and racing applications. It does work, you just need to know how and where to use it in my opinion.

[Schurkey]

And the metal needs to be heat treatable which mild steel isn't.

I thought mild steel could be heat-treated, but typical stainless steel couldn't. Am I wrong?

[Dave Koehler]

I used to have a Meta-Lax outfit. Worked well on everything we tried.
Had a couple customers that would cryo everything then haul it back to me for the meta-lax treatment.
They felt they were getting good extended life out of everything.

Here is the deal as I see it. I buy into what the cryo does but don't buy into the stress relieve part of it that much.
I think they are guessing or assuming that cryo can stress relieve.
No one in that industry could show me proof of it how that was determined one way or the other.

Most everything I metal-laxed after cryo still had the same expected stress as we normally saw with uncryoed parts.
I think that is why those customers would do the metalax after cryo because it can track the stress or lack of it.

I have not seen cryo or metalax change dimensions as such. Things move around but a 2.1000 journal will still be 2.1000.
I have not seen a good crank or block "move" enough, if any to sweat over. If it did it was a really troubled piece to begin with.
A reverse example would be a bent crank that is cryoed and/or metalaxed. It is still bent but is now relaxed, so to speak in it's bent state.
Removing metal like boring or grinding a crank will most definitely make things move around.

I liked to do blocks before machine work and then after. That seemed to eliminate the old advice of "bring it back after so many laps for a rehone"

I would say the biggest life improvements were valve springs and aluminum parts, particularly rods.

Wish I still had one. It was the wrong period in time that I owned one.

[mag2555]

Mild steel can be heat treated, it's just that it does not get all that much harder, or am I wrong?
I also do not think that improvements by means of cryo or heat treating can be looked at the same , as with cryo treating stopping all molecular activity is far different to me then the changes that take place in something that can be heat treated!

I am still into tube audio , and I send out many of my tubes for cryo treatment and not only do they last longer, but they sound a tad better!

[Dave Koehler]

Cryo doesn't harden anything. It just makes the molecules more packed/dense.

[j-c-c]

I am still into tube audio , and I send out many of my tubes for cryo treatment and not only do they last longer, but they sound a tad better!

I'm an audio guy, not sure if this is a funny or sarcasm or real? Because cyroing different joined materials that includes glass, that needs to maintain a vacuum seal, would seem to be rather problematic, if nothing else.

[Frankshaft]

There used to be a guy close by me that had quite the cryo set up. 2 tanks. one was BIG. I had some stuff treated, a few cranks, a few blocks, boring bar and carbide cutters, pistons. The cutters absolutely worked better and lasted longer. The blocks "seemed" to hone harder, and "seemed" to be better. No real way to quantify it. The other problem, nothing looks any different. You send a piston out to be skirt coated, and you SEE what they did. With cryotreating, the part looks the same. Hard sell. His biggest market was gun barrels and parts. He eventually stopped doing it. Haven't had it done since