Intamin Smooth?

Oh, that's right, Intamins and steel smoothness....have you SEEN that brochure for R:UE? ;)

Intamin branched from Schwarzkopf, which B&M worked for both Giovanola and Intamin... Intamins current track style was an improvement of their earlier design of the Schwarzkopf box track. B&M went from Giovanola to work with Intamin for a couple years, hence the B&M like track Intamin sometimes uses, because they have a license (along with B&M themselves) to the Giovanola track style. Niether company has designed a track design themself, Intamin is the closest, but niether have.

Intamin and B&M are both smooth because they feature a wheel asemble that hugs the track very well without the movement on most arrow coasters and Vekoma.

RCTYCOON2K: This is completely NOT TRUE!

Is that Stengel Book translation already for sale on amazon?

I will look for a similar post I did on a forum you all hate. I will copy and paste it and you will learn it and recite it before you go to bed every night (please!) :)

hang on a minute.
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So, here it is. This may be a little bit off topic. The thread was about "who did what on SFMMs FLASHBACK". So it covers a lot of unrelated stuff, but still explains something about the involvement of Stengel and the ramifications of Intamin and Giovanola.

I hope this is still an ineresting read for some of you.

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O.K., here is the story as far as it is covered in the Stengel Biography (and by my own research):

In 1984 Intamin/Giovanola came up with the idea of "Z-Force". A compact ride that would feature steep, twisting drops on the smallest possible radius.

Fact: Giovanola is a steel builder with a more than 100 year history. Intamin didn´t build anything back then. They comissioned and conceived rides, but it was all built by Gio. Some rides like the 1st gen. Freefall were actually 100% Gio!

Semi-Fact (very logical, but never officially confirmed): Walter and Claude used to be engineers for Giovanola. This would make sense if we regard the following FACTS:
The box track is patented by Giovanola in 1982.
B&M have their offices in the same town as Gio. Literally across the street in Monthey, Switzerland.
For the actual design (kinetics and physics) they contacted the Stengel office in Munich. One of Stengels young engineers, HARALD WANNER was a specialist in writing computer programs and he designed the complicated curves and drops using a mathematical principle called the SPLINE PRINCIPLE.

Werner Stengel came up with this idea along with the HEARTLINE in the seventies. Anton Schwarzkopf insisted that it was impossible to bend track according to the spline principle. (Compared to a simple curve, the spline requires a multitude of vectors and parameters which are "virtually" located in a 3-dimensional space. This was impossible to do with an "analogue" bending machine that Schwarzkopf used).
However, Schwarzkopf gave in to build according to the Heartline after FRED BIEGLER (Six Flags chief engineer) insisted on this innovation for the two new looping coasters they bought for SFOT and SFOG. So, MINDBENDER and SHOCKWAVE became the first coasters using the heartline as a groundbreaking new design feature.

Back to "Z-Force" and the "spline". Harald Wanner developed programs to calculate the tricky parameters in a reasonable time (computers back then used to fill whole rooms and needed 150 hours to calculate the data) and he came up with curving drops that had only 0,75 g (lateral) (curve radius 6 meter, speed 61 k/mh) . This was considered a revolution back then. (JetStar3 has a curve radius of 23 meters and reaches 0,9 lateral G with the same speed)

Intamin/Giovanola agreed to bend their box-track according to the detailed information given by the Stengel office and so "Z-Force" became the worlds first coaster to feature the spline-principle as a dominant design feature.

Fact: The ride was planned and build as a stationary coaster. It was not mobile and doesn´t have a frame. It was comissioned by SFGAM. When some representatives from Six Flags came to Switzerland to see the finished ride, they looked at the odd twisting curves and claimed that there must be a mistake in the design. The track was supposed to lead into a lefthand curve but instead it banked to the right. Stengel said that everything was O.K . and they took some testrides.
The SF people were satisfied with the ride, but still insisted that there must be something wrong because it looked so odd.

A few months after the ride opened in Gurnee, Stengel received a phone call from Six Flags. They were asking him to send the original plans to them ASAP.
It turned out that SF engineers tried to "better things out" on the coaster but every attempt to change things made it only worse. So they tried to get the coaster back to the form it was intended to be in the first place.

So it is absolutely possible that the ride was actually "doctored" to death.

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*** Edited 5/17/2004 8:07:29 PM UTC by tricktrack*** *** Edited 5/17/2004 8:08:46 PM UTC by tricktrack***

The problems with Arrow and Vekoma rides has a lot more to it than just wheel assemblies. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Yep....wheels, transitions, fixed radius curves, etc. All problems with most non-Swiss rides....

I mostly used Arrow and Vekoma as an example to using the inside rails instead of the outside the Intamin and B&M use.

Actually inside vs. outside was little to no effect on how smooth a coaster is. Just a coincedence that the Swiss use outside and their coasters are smooth.

That's very interesting tricktrack. The book should be very interesting when it becomes available in english.

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Peabody said:
Yep....wheels, transitions, fixed radius curves, etc. All problems with most non-Swiss rides....

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Any idea why that may be? I find it interesting that the smoothest coasters come from the Swiss companies, when they aren't much older than the others.

Well, generally the Swiss are exceptional engineers (ever heard of a Swiss watch? :) ) I suppose that has a great deal to do with it. Those Swiss guys and the great Anton Schwartzkopf (of Germany, who later teamed up with Intamin) figured out how to build a good steel coaster WAY before anyone else.

It's interesting comparing those firms with the Americans...it often makes people go "why?" For example, Arrow used the exact same size vertical loop and corkscrews for enarly 25 years, just placing them higher off the ground if needed, rather than engineer a larger loop...why? Who knows! The Swiss/germans were building gentle transitions and smooth radius elements since the 70s...why couldn't the American companies do it? (Not to mention other European companies.) Why didn't other companies see what Anton, Intamin, (and later B&M) were doing and say "Oooooh.....we should be bending steel like that too!"

That's not to say that it has to do where someone is born, it's just interesting how localized the quality builders were/are. *** Edited 5/18/2004 1:12:02 AM UTC by Peabody***

I think part of the reason that Arrow, etc. never reengineered new elements is simple: why change what you know works?

Back in the 70s/80s and part of the 90s, CAD and other computer design technologies were either unavailable or hella expensive. Imagine all the calculations that need to be done on paper if you change the configuration of a loop or something like that if you're not using computers. Why change the elements if all you really have to do is adjust the speed going into the elements to a pre-determined value? That way all you do is grab your equation for the loop forces and plug-n-chug your numbers.

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Peabody said:
Those Swiss guys and the great Anton Schwartzkopf (of Germany, who later teamed up with Intamin) figured out how to build a good steel coaster WAY before anyone else.

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Don't forget Werner Stengel, he designed/calculated the very first Schwarzkopf coaster, known as the Wildcat...based on an Italian design by Pinfari.
He basically designed every single other Schwarzkopf too...

Why am I now thinking of an "Intamin Smoothie?" And what flavors would be appropriate? Blueberry (MF) a strawberry/banana swirl? (Dragster) or cherry? (Xcel). :-P

-Tina

Simple enough...

The smoothest coasters come from the Swiss companies because they started using the technology available as soon as possible to their advantage. If you ever happen to hear anyone from their design teams talking, you'll understand how much goes into their designs.

The designs of Arrows coasters were the highest tech things available when they began, and because they were so good Arrow had no reason to redesign the trains or the track until someone made something better than them, which didn't really happen until the debut of Kumba (in all honesty, the ride that really put B&M on the map before the inverts arrived) and after Kumba, followed by Batman, Arrow had too much ground to cover to catch up.

As for Vekoma, they are budget builders. They sacrifice quality for quantity and price. Their coasters bang around because they are cheap enough for almost anyone to install.

Lastly, one argument for the wheels being on the inside hurting the ride is that the track simply bends outward as the trains pass. On an inside track, if the coaster is pushing to the outside (which is does any time that there are lateral G's felt, and with Arrow transitions this is pretty much constant on their old rides) the track is pushed to the outside, making it more uneven. The guide wheels therefore have more and more space to shift back and forth inside of the wheels. In the real world, the track probably shifts less than a half-inch, but that amount of shift is enough to completely change the dynamic of a ride and make it a headbanger. This is also why Arrow / Vekoma rides age horribly.

On rides where the track is on the inside, the coaster can only push the track back toward itself - it does not bend outwards, and therefore the track does not change in size and the ride continues to be very, very smooth year after year.

Let's not forget that Togo of Japan also used the tightly fitting outside rail wheel assembly on their stand ups & they were still rough as hell.

They even used box track for the loop but the remaining track was done using the conventional spine/ties/rails set up as on most other coasters today.