SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Two-stroke engines offer twice as many power strokes for a given number of rotations and pistons by doing the exhaust and intake simultaneously. This normally happens spanning the end of the power stroke and the beginning of the compression stroke, though ideally it would only steal time from the beginning of the compression stroke. By tradition, nearly all two-stroke engines use a carburetor and are lubricated by oil being mixed into the fuel. The problem is pollution: unburned fuel passes right through the cylinder because the intake and exhaust valves open together, and this is made much worse by having the fuel be about 2% to 3% lubricating oil.
KTM fixes this for their two-stroke motorcycles by adding fuel injection. KTM injects into the transfer port, which isn't as good as injecting directly into the compression chamber but should still be a huge improvement. Honda has also filed a patent for a general purpose two-stroke with fuel injection. If one of them simply adds a normal oil pump, many of the problems of two-stroke pollution and annoyance should be gone. Next up, we need this small enough for chainsaws and weed cutters.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:34PM (1 child)
Sounds like you never cut down a tree. Not only do you cut the trunk to fell it, but you have to chop through god knows how many branches both before and after felling. I had to cut down two trees, one large tree that partly fell during a storm and medium tree who lost a significant branch during a storm as well. The larger tree had to have multiple large branches cut that were firmly planted into a shed. Once the trunk was nearly bare, I felled it. The trunk needed to be cut into 24" (~500mm) sections to be manageable as did the branches for fire wood. That required a more than a few refills of my little 24" Poulan. The medium tree had a rotted vee and after the large branch fell the other was weak and the whole thing needed to come down. Again, lots of branch cutting. However, we also used a corded sawsall with a live tree blade to chop up the smaller branches. Battery would have never been practical in either situation and not for the sawsall either.
Battery would be good for pruning, felling small trees, and making fire wood. And as someone who has done a lot of work with power tools in many different scenarios, cordless tools suck in some cases. And the spare battery scam they have going is sick. How can a complete cordless drill set with two batteries, charger, and carry case cost as much or sometimes less than a single replacement battery? I had to fix my fence the other week after a very strong wind blew an older weak section down. I had two batteries go dead on me during the repair causing me to wait until they were charged. There is a plug in power supply that replaces the battery but the price is more than the entire drill kit cost. Absurd.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:43PM
You also can't do a 1000 miles desert trip with an electric car, we get it.
The question is how often you have to cut down trees, versus do small maintenance which electrical version can handle.
For special cases (like my dead tree, because I don't have 10 acres of forest), there are neighbors and rentals.
Personally, my power tools are all corded. Turns out my extension cord is always charged, compatible with all the manufacturers, and doesn't give up halfway through (though my weed whacker did try to cut through it).