TECHNOLOGY TRANSITIONS

Written by Clifton Beck

As a teenager, did you work on your own vehicles? I grew up pretty poor, like many of us HVACR technicians did. Like most, I wanted to go on dates and look cool but you needed to have more than a bicycle to do that. My first vehicles were beat up, carbureted sleds that I learned how to tune, rebuilt and eventually make road worthy. I learned how to rebuild carburetors, time distributors, set plug gaps and adjust belt tensions. As I got better I also learned how to increase airflow and exhaust to get better performance and sometimes better efficiency.

Along the way towards adulthood, I was introduced to throttle-body fuel injection and eventually sequential multi-port fuel injection with variable valve timing and energy management controls. The interesting part is that the internal combustion engine never really changed it's basic design, it evolved into a more efficient version. The carburetor float and needle were replaced with fuel injectors that metered fuel electronically via the use of temperature thermistors, pressure transducers and an electronic control board. The distributor was replaced by electronic spark timing via the use of crankshaft position sensors that fed signals into the same electronic control board. Even the single ignition coil with condenser was replaced with individual coil packs to provide accurate ignition sequencing and reduced mechanical wear. I soon discovered that all of these inputs were operating on a common signal voltage, typically 5VDC, that I could read with a basic volt meter to monitor performance and component accuracy. Later a common communicating platform was adopted by the industry that made diagnostics, performance and system analysis so simple that any curious mechanic could understand the functions of an advanced control network. Today there are no carburetors or distributors on new vehicles and the world keeps turning.

As HVACR professionals, we are currently going through a similar transition with the internal compression engine (i.e. compressor). Are you ready for the HVACR Technology Evolution? You better be willing to, otherwise you may run out of work in a very short period of time. The days of single stage, contactor driven, capacitor operated HVACR equipment IS OVER. It is time to adapt and the ESCO team is here to escort you along the way. Wherever you are in the world of HVACR and Building Sciences, the ESCO Group has the resources for YOU. Enjoy this PODCAST recorded with Johnson Controls, Daikin and Fujitsu at the 2024 AHR Expo where we discuss the technology transitions we are all facing. JOIN US at the National HVACR Education Conference to learn about these new technologies, how to teach about them, and how to work on them.