1 and the market development status of four-wheel aligner products
At present, there are many kinds of four-wheel aligners on the market, such as imported ones, domestically assembled ones and branded ones, which make users confused and confused, and many people fish in troubled waters. So far, because the industry standards have not been fully implemented. In addition, most users are not clear about the concept of four-wheel positioning, which leads many unscrupulous operators to take advantage of the loopholes and cheat users.
So what exactly is a four-wheel alignment instrument?
This needs to start with four-wheel alignment. Four-wheel positioning is a more practical and scientific positioning method based on two-wheel positioning. With the development of automobile chassis technology and higher comfort to meet people's requirements, the rear wheel is upgraded from non-independent suspension to independent suspension, and the rear wheel is equipped with camber, toe-in structure and adjustment points, which completely solves the problems of deviation, straightness of the body and steering wheel deviation caused by the inconsistency between the driving direction and the geometric center line of the body.
Four-wheel alignment simulation measures the influence of abnormal angle change of four wheels or angle change of a single wheel on the other three wheels, and makes comprehensive analysis, so as to judge the real fault between the four wheels and the suspension structure. Compared with the two-wheel positioning technology, it is a big step forward and can eliminate many driving faults caused by the change of four-wheel angle, such as deviation, tire biting and steering wheel.
Two-wheel positioning is also called front wheel positioning. It is an ideal positioning method to measure the basic angle of the front wheel based on the geometric center line of the car body, but ignore the influence of the rear wheel or think that the rear wheel is not deformed. There is a so-called four-wheel aligner in the market, which combines two front wheel aligners. The two front wheel sensors are not connected with the two rear wheel sensors through any electronic sensors. The position relationship between the front and rear wheels is completely completed by visual inspection, and there is no connection between the changes of the front and rear sensors, which is not a height calculation model based on four-wheel interaction. The measured results are completely an ideal positioning method, which is quite different from the actual results.
To sum up, the four-wheel alignment instrument is a detection instrument that reflects the mutual angle change of four wheels, and the influence of the angle change of the rear wheel on the front wheel and even the whole vehicle cannot be ignored.
From the composition, the four-wheel alignment instrument on the market consists of upper computer and lower computer. The upper computer includes a case, a computer host, a display, a printer, main program software and a communication system. The lower computer consists of sensor, fixture and angle plate. The importance of each part is different.
First, the host
Box: a "dress" belonging to a four-wheel positioning instrument, which impacts people's vision and affects their first impression.
Computer hardware: It is the carrier for running the main program. At present, there are various configurations, assembly machines, home PCs, commercial machines and so on.
Main program software: it is the "brain" part of the upper computer. Visibility, operability, function, stability, version age and measurement speed of the operating system are all important factors. At present, there are products in the 70s, 80s and 90s on the market. Distinguish the most direct operating systems dos, windows95, windows98 and windows2000.
Communication system: divided into wired and wireless ways. The communication mode of four-wheel locator has gone through several development processes. Wired in the 1980s, infrared in the 1990s, and Bluetooth in 2 1 century. The way is constantly changing, which brings the continuous upgrading and innovation of technology and brings more convenience and speed to users.
Second, the lower computer
Sensor: Like human eyes, like soldiers in charge. It determines the hard index of the whole machine and the final victory result. It also reflects the technical attributes and value grades of the four-wheel alignment instrument from the side. At present, there are many kinds of equipment on the market, so it is difficult to distinguish them with different words. Generally speaking, the sensor is divided into five parts: shell, single motherboard, sensing element (liquid, optical or pure optical), communication system and battery.
Third, the fixture
Divided into three-claw and four-claw modes. It is the key component to ensure the accuracy of the sensor. Most of the materials are light aluminum alloy. The three-jaw fixture adopts self-centering mode, which is simple to operate and reasonable in structure. Four-jaw fixture adopts four-point positioning mode, which has more error points, better neutrality and higher accuracy.
Nowadays, the development of four-wheel alignment instrument is still in the product growth stage. There are no more than 10 foreign four-wheel alignment manufacturers, and there are nearly 50 domestic four-wheel alignment manufacturers. After OEM, only about 20 companies can actually produce their own products. They either cooperate with foreign manufacturers to authorize the production of foreign low-end products, or simply steal other people's technology to produce their own, and no more than five companies have real research and development capabilities and are used for production.
In addition, some manufacturers do not pay attention to the cultivation of internal strength, and for their own interests, regardless of the actual lie that their products are ccd or Bluetooth transmission or other advanced technologies, resulting in confusion in the four-wheel positioning market, leading to a sharp increase in the complaint rate for a period of time. Therefore, the Testing Center of the Ministry of Communications conducted a thorough investigation on the four-wheel positioning products on the market, and tested 16 products submitted for inspection. As a result, only four or five products passed the test, which highlighted the confusion in the market.
From a technical point of view, with the continuous development of four-wheel alignment technology, various high-tech four-wheel alignment instruments emerge one after another. In order to catch up with the market trend, many manufacturers regard many low-end products as high-tech products to deceive customers.
Then let's get familiar with the development of four-wheel positioning technology. At first, the original measurement methods were ruler measurement, cable measurement, four-quadrant element measurement and photodiode array measurement, and then gradually developed to psd measurement and ccd measurement. The latter four measurement methods can be divided into laser measurement and infrared measurement according to the nature of the measuring light source. In recent years, a new dynamic measurement method based on three-dimensional images has been developed abroad.
Because the original measurement method has many shortcomings and poor accuracy, this paper mainly introduces the common detection methods of four-wheel alignment instrument in the market at present: laser, psd, ccd and 3d. Its characteristics are as follows:
First, the laser:
Laser is a new type of light source, which is used as the light source of measuring system in four-wheel alignment instrument. Because the laser is output in a vertical straight line, the measurement range of laser product beam is narrow, there is no compensation, and the thrust line needs to be calculated manually, so the measurement accuracy is low and the detection speed is slow. Because of the relationship between light spot and scale, there is human error, and laser is easily disturbed by the outside world, so it is not ideal to use laser as light source in four-wheel aligner.
As we all know, laser is harmful to people's eyesight, so it is difficult to pass the safety certification such as ul and ce. Europe, America and Japan have long been eliminated, but they still exist locally in China and some Southeast Asian countries.
Second, psd:
Psd is also called photoelectric position sensor.
As we know, foreign four-wheel alignment machines are hardly used, and only Korean machines are widely used. Its working principle is that when there is illumination at a certain position on the light receiving surface of psd, its output current will change accordingly, so that the illumination position can be obtained. It is an analog (DC/AC conversion with data loss) device. Although these problems can be avoided to some extent by using some special techniques, in principle, the limitation that it can only measure a single light spot cannot be changed. Psd can only be used in industrial environment, which means that the temperature drift of psd is serious and affected by ambient light. The temperature change can make its output zero position change by tens of millivolts, and the influence of light makes the system unstable. When these two items are superimposed, psd loses its measurement accuracy and equipment stability, which is the killer of psd (inaccurate measurement and poor repeatability).
Third, ccd:
Ccd is a kind of semiconductor digital element (also called photoelectric coupling device), which is divided into linear ccd and area ccd. It is a new semiconductor integrated photoelectric device developed in the early 1970s. It integrates thousands of independent photosensitive elements on a silicon surface. When the light shines on the photosensitive surface, the photosensitive element will gather photoelectrons and shift the output light quantity, thus generating the information of the light position and intensity. Therefore, ccd has the characteristics of high measurement accuracy (within 0.05 degrees), no temperature coefficient and long service life.
Using ccd has good adaptability to the environment. All other technologies have various restrictions in use, such as not being used in places with complicated light, weak electromagnetic field, little temperature change and so on, which are typical environments of ordinary garages. If you can't open the door and open the window, the data measured in the morning is different from that measured at noon, so there can't be a big motor nearby. It's a little too much for four-wheel alignment. Therefore, the four-wheel aligners produced in Europe and America all adopt ccd technology, such as chariots, Pepsi, God of War and so on. This is enough to illustrate the advantages of ccd products.
Fourth, 3d:
Three-dimensional measurement method is to use image recognition technology, use ccd digital camera to collect the image information installed on the wheel mirror to measure the relative accuracy of the wheel, manually push the wheel to move back and forth, and use ccd camera to collect information to find out its coordinates and angles. This is a quite advanced measurement method, which is widely used in Europe and America at present. However, he has strict mechanical accuracy requirements for elevators and corner plates. At present, domestic elevators and angle plates are not matched, which affects the detection effect. Moreover, the calibration method is cumbersome, expensive, the detection speed is not fast, and the after-sales maintenance is slow, which is not the mainstream in China.
Obviously, the four-wheel alignment instrument involves knowledge in many fields, such as machinery, optics, electronics, computer software, mathematical models, etc. They are interrelated and indispensable. With the progress of science, the products of four-wheel alignment instrument will be further improved and perfected.
According to the website of the Ministry of Public Security, as of June 2007, the number of cars in China has exceeded 53.55 million, including nearly 32.4 million private cars. In the longer term, there are about 40 cars per thousand people in China, while the global average is 0/20 cars per thousand people/kloc. It is estimated that around 20 12, the national new car sales will exceed100000; It may exceed 20 million vehicles in 2020 and become the largest automobile consumption market in the world.
The rapid development of automobile market paints a bright future for automobile aftermarket service, and the application of four-wheel alignment instrument as one of them will also be welcomed. After the vehicle is sold and driven for a period of time, due to traffic accidents and other reasons, there may be uncomfortable symptoms such as abnormal tire wear, vehicle deviation, reduced safety, increased fuel consumption, accelerated wear of parts, heavy steering wheel and vehicle drift. Some symptoms make vehicles very dangerous when driving at high speed. Moreover, according to the formal requirements, the car should be repositioned after driving about 5,000 kilometers or half a year. Therefore, the market potential of the four-wheel alignment instrument, which aims to measure and diagnose the above-mentioned discomfort causes of the automobile from the positioning angle and deal with them to meet the technical requirements when leaving the factory, has increased sharply, and it will be more and more widely used in the automobile maintenance industry.
2. Type and manufacturer of four-wheel aligner
According to the technical characteristics, the commonly used four-wheel aligners can be subdivided into toe-in, optical leveling locator, cable locator, ccd locator, static laser locator, static laser cart locator, dynamic laser locator, dynamic laser locator, 3d image locator and 3d laser locator. The corresponding manufacturers are:
Typical manufacturers of stay wire locators are Shanghai Jaguar and Italy Keji.
At present, ccd locators account for the largest proportion of locators, and the typical foreign manufacturers are: German Baishiba, American Hunter, American Chariot, American Bear, American God of War, American Sun, American Hannibal, Italian Coco, Korean ospeed, Korean Escort, and Korean Sanhong. Typical domestic manufacturers are: Beijing Nationality, Beijing Yingjie, Beijing Chean, Beijing Lulu, Tianjin Aoli, Shanghai Yicheng, Guangzhou Panther, Yingkou Xuanbao, Yingkou Dali, Yingkou Yingli, Yingkou Meida, Yingkou Xianda, Xiamen Aopu, Qingdao Jinhua, Yantai Pentium and so on.
At present, static laser locators account for a small proportion in locators. Typical manufacturers include British Smart Dog, Beijing Nationality, Yantai Sanxiong and American Bixian.
Manufacturer of dynamic laser locator: Beijing Ma Wanli.
There are two kinds of 3d image locators: American chariot and American hunter.
The manufacturers of 3D laser locator are: Beijing Ma Wanli.
Why is it worth buying the Ares four-wheel locator?
10 years, China's automobile maintenance industry has experienced initial learning and reference, and now it has reached a mature market. With the development of automobile maintenance industry, automobile four-wheel alignment instrument has become the fastest-growing market situation in automobile maintenance equipment industry, and it is also the fiercest competition among brands.
China's four-wheel positioning has grown from nothing to almost nothing. This process is really developing too fast. Many foreign manufacturers were surprised when they exhibited in Beijing. China's imitation and replication technology is really amazing. The locator has developed from several domestic manufacturers before 2000 to nearly 60 manufacturers on the market now, all of which are OEM or agent or assembly. With so many devices on the market, customers are dazzled. Who should choose which manufacturer and which model?
The equipment on the market can be roughly divided into several categories, and the receiving methods are wired, laser, Bluetooth, radio frequency and infrared. The connection modes between sensors are drawstring, laser, PSD, CCD, 3D and COMS from a few manufacturers. Under these dazzling product technologies, advertisements between manufacturers and strong sales of personnel, how can the Ares four-wheel locator win the praise of customers in the market and finally be accepted by users? It mainly relies on the good accuracy and repeatability of Ares, the simple four-key completion of all operations, and the keen market strategy choice of the company's decision makers.
At present, almost all the shops with slight grades in the automobile service industry are equipped with four-wheel positioning instruments, that is, four-wheel positioning is accepted by more and more automobile service shops. What makes customers hesitate is that there are too many brands in the market. For example, if a customer needs four-wheel positioning, then more than 10 positioning instrument salesmen from different manufacturers are guiding the customer by explaining positioning technology, industry development history, service and low price. So in such a cruel competition scenario, how can the God of War be accepted by customers? After the customer finally chooses God of War, how can he feel that his choice is worthwhile? Perhaps it should be explained and analyzed from the following aspects to guide customers to make the final purchase.
The biggest objection in sales volume is that the price of Ares is too high, so why is the price of our four-wheel positioning higher than others?
Because the sensors are all imported, there is simple operating software, that is, the Ares bought by customers are all imported machines, but the price is lower than other imported equipment, because the chassis of Ares is made in China, which reduces the tariff and is much cheaper than imported ones. Of course, because of imported sensors and main components, the measurement accuracy, repeatability and stability are unmatched by domestic machines. 10- 15 used four-wheel positioning, so customers should pay more attention to the future service of equipment when purchasing equipment. Ares can provide free technical services during its service life, that is, customers choose Ares not only for the equipment, but also for the future 10 year. You can also analyze it like this. If one customer bought a God of War for 70,000 yuan, and another customer bought a domestic equipment for 40,000 yuan, but it has been used for two or three years, and the equipment is broken or needs to be upgraded. The technology and upgrade of Ares are free, and the manufacturers of domestic brands bought them at a low price from the beginning. Such manufacturers earn high service fees after users buy them, so users who buy domestic machines have to pay high technical and upgrade maintenance fees. If you choose a low price, the following will happen, or if there are any problems after the one-year warranty period, you can't find the manufacturer, because there are too many small factories that assemble small parts by contract, and they may still be doing it this year, and they may not close down or change their names or move in a few years next year. What should the customer do in this case? The former can be repaired because of high maintenance cost, while the latter can only be repaired by changing the brand with good service. We all used computing devices conservatively for 65,438+00 years. During the service life of the equipment 10 year, as long as the sensor is not damaged due to the customer's reasons, all the required services are free, that is to say, the customer can use the equipment 10 year for 70,000 yuan. However, the users who buy domestic machines not only have maintenance service fees far exceeding the original purchase price, mainly because after the warranty period expires, the customers of the latter have to buy the equipment, and in the case of the closure of the manufacturer, they finally have to.
At present, in the actual measurement and debugging of domestic four-wheel alignment machine users, there are often serious irregular wear of tires after one or two months of four-wheel alignment. After detecting the chassis through positioning, the result is that the data is within the standard range. In this case, the shop repairman doesn't know what to do. Divert the car, the computer shows that the data is correct, but the owner's tires are seriously worn. Such cases include the design technology of one-wheel positioning machine and four-wheel positioning machine. Second, the manufacturer's service is not in place. However, no matter whose fault the owner is, as long as the car is repaired, it will be compensated. Now the price of tires, especially flat tires, is getting more and more expensive. After losing the owner's tires, users will not do four-wheel alignment projects in the future; Either buy high-precision equipment or leave the existing equipment idle, which will reduce the service items of the service shop itself, thus gradually reducing the customer base and eventually quitting the industry. If you want to be bigger and stronger in the industry, you have to buy high-end equipment twice. In this way, the customer base will increase again.
Therefore, the purchase of four-wheel alignment instrument is not only used as a measuring tool, but also can accurately measure problems. Only in this way can we solve the problem of car owners' use in a faster time and get the satisfaction and praise of car owners better. Only with good service and maintenance quality will the customer base increase to more; Only when the customer base increases, the service shop owner will become stronger and bigger in the industry, and the road of automobile service will go more smoothly and further! ! !