B&M Flyer Technology

(it's been a while since i've posted anywhere... bear with me)

ok... so i looked through all the threads here i think, and i looked all over the internet, and at the nifty blueprints and animations, and i still can't come up with a 100% "how it works" of the flyer coasters. Here are my questions:

1) Is the cylinder on each car there to put the seats into postion or to hold them in position or to just "help" the positioning mechanism?

2) How exactly do they get into position, and what holds them in position and how?

3) It would make sense to have the energy source and mechanism for positioning the seats in the station (above the track maybe?) rather than on the trains... is it set up this way or what?

4) There has to be some kind of hardware latch or something... something pretty darn fool proof... a magnet, or a pin or something... what is it?

Also... unrelated to that, what would one have to do to get those neat blueprints? From any design company... not the layouts... the engineering diagrams... OH... and another question... do B&M use feature based parametric solid modeling CAD or what? it certainly looks that way from those engineering drawings...

Thanks...

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Steve Guilmette
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Here We Go!

Here's my own analysis based on photographs of drawings (probably the same stuff you've seen)...which means I could well be wrong, but here goes...

1. That looks like a passive cylinder to me. It appears that the car is built on a big lever-arm. The long side of the lever is the passenger carrying means; the short end is the control means. When the control arm is pushed down, the seat hanger pivots upward. Then SOMETHING is used to latch it in place. My guess...and this is where I could easily be completely wrong...is that the latch mechanism is something like an automotive trunk latch so that as the seats come up, they are firmly clamped in place, then when the train returns to the station a trip mechanism can unclamp the latch. Gravity would pull the seats back down, and the cylinder would serve to dampen that motion so that the seats come down smoothly and not too fast.

2. Shots of the stations indicate a rail outboard of the track mounted on pneumatic cylinders. Clearly that rail is intended to push down on the roller at the forward top of the car, which would force the seat back and up. Simple and effective.

3. I agree with you, and I think that's exactly what they are doing. It's worth noting that this differs from the Vekoma approach with the hydraulic system on-board the train.

4. I've been wondering the same thing, but see my response to (1) above for a possible (but by no means verified!) explanation.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

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RideMan said:

It's worth noting that this differs from the Vekoma approach with the hydraulic system on-board the train.

GOOD. Those things break down WAY too much. If I bought one, I would be disappointed. I hope this new system has much less downtime.

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- Peabody

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At least by the end of the season, the problems with the Vekoma trains seemed to be mostly limit switches and controls rather thn hydraulics. The Vekomas use dead bolts for latching. This includes the restraints. Unlike most coasters, once they are latched they can't get any tighter due to the dead bolt. The dead bolts have to travel far enough to activate a limit switch to verify that they are engaged.

It's also possible that the cylinder IS the locking device, as well as a damper when the trains are rotating. It's not like B&M has no precedent of such a system.