Timloto-OS Project Day 12 september 2008 First project day - course year 2008 - 2009 ZF Nederland Hosts: Sander Peeters, Managing Director; Hans Oudshoorn, Technical Support Manager; Marco Kwaakernaat and Danny Kerkvliet, shop floor. (click here for photos) Participants - see attendance list - also present: Nico denk Dulk and Rob Kruif

The arrangements for a Timloto-OS in-service training day at ZF were made nearly a year ago.
As ZF organizes these training days only once a year, Timloto-OS was honored to receive the invitation. A special note is that the fee requested for these training days is doubled by ZF and donated to a good cause. ZF suggested the fee be donated to 'Go for Africa'. 'Go for Africa' now plans to use the money to start up courses in electronics and air conditioning in Senegal and Gambia.

Mr. Peeters, the Managing Director of ZF Nederland, extended us a warm welcome and opened the course day with a comprehensive presentation on ZF activities world-wide. We were amazed to see just how extensive the ZF organization actually is.

The presentation of the technical part of the course day was given by Mr. Oudshoorn. The focus was on the Ecomat transmission in its many versions. Especially interesting was the research philosophy behind the ever increasing number of gears and also in developments in the field of electronic controls.

In a separate training room, Marco and Danny gave a detailed presentation on the gear box. They showed us how we can demonstrate different gear ratios in a simple manner in the classroom. They provided comprehensive answers to our questions which lead to a highly interesting discussion.

The technical highlight of the day was, without a doubt, the ZF-diagnosis program. At ZF Nederland's request, HTM (Public Transport System – The Hague) had provided a city bus for demonstration purposes. A laptop computer with the diagnostic software program was installed and Mr. Oudshoorn served as our very competent bus driver. With the aid of the diagnostic tools we could observe the Ecomat transmission behavior while we were riding along in the bus. Marco and Danny could not resist programming in a malfunction so that we came to an old-fashioned standstill – on purpose – along the way.

The 'working' cross-section of the gearbox on the screen was highly impressive. This allowed the transmission behavior during the driving demonstration to be viewed 'real time' from the screen. This is an example of education in its best form.

Upon our return from the driving demonstration, we were presented with the check for 'Go for Africa'. We expressed our gratitude to ZF for an extremely educational training day. The Timloto-OS participants were given the PowerPoint presentation on a CD to take along with them. Let's make sure that this information is also passed on to our own students!


Report by: Ep Gernaat
Photos by: Willem Tulp