Building a CAM Phaser Engine Test System for a Rochester Automotive Supplier

The Challenge: Simulating an Engine on a Test Bench

A Tier 1 automotive supplier in the Rochester, NY area needed a test system that could do something deceptively difficult: take a cam phaser — a precision component that controls valve timing inside an engine — and subject it to the same extreme conditions it would experience in real-world driving, all without an actual engine. That meant precise hydraulic pressure control, coordinated motion profiles, thermal cycling, and high-speed data acquisition — all running with microsecond-level timing fidelity.

A Collaborative Build: Software Meets Machine

This project was a true partnership. A local Rochester-area machine integration company designed and built the physical test fixture — all the hydraulic plumbing, mechanical fixturing, and safety enclosures. A PLC handled valve sequencing and safety interlocks. And Korpra built the brain: the LabVIEW application running on an NI CompactRIO that tied everything together. (This kind of software-plus-machine partnership is the standard pattern across our LabVIEW consulting work — we own the software and DAQ, you own the iron.)

cRIO Architecture: Three Layers, One Platform

The CompactRIO divided responsibility cleanly across three execution layers — each doing exactly what it was best at:

The cRIO communicated with the PLC to coordinate valve states and safety conditions, controlled the motion control system to position and drive the phaser, managed external instrumentation including chillers and heaters, and on the FPGA generated driving condition datasets at microsecond resolution — simulating the precise timing profiles that a cam phaser would experience inside a running engine.

Recipe-Driven Testing: Walk Away and Let It Run

One of the most powerful features was the recipe editor. Rather than hard-coding test sequences, engineers could script their own tests by assembling library functions — drive at this speed, hold at this pressure, cycle to this temperature, acquire data for this duration — into complete test sequences.

The Trickiest Part: Orchestrating Everything in Real Time

Coordinating a motion control system, a PLC, external thermal equipment, and an FPGA running microsecond timing — all in a single application — is where projects live or die. The sequencing had to be airtight. You can't start a driving simulation before hydraulic pressure is stable. You can't acquire valid data while the chiller is still coming to temperature.

The Result: An Engine Without the Engine

The finished system gave this Rochester automotive supplier something they didn't have before: the ability to test cam phasers under extreme, precisely repeatable driving conditions — without mounting them in an engine. Engineers could simulate cold starts, aggressive highway driving, high-altitude operation, and everything in between — collecting high-fidelity data at every microsecond. (Multi-subsystem test stands like this are the core of our test automation services.)

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions we get from automotive test engineers and validation managers evaluating a system like this.

What is a cam phaser, and why does it need testing under extreme conditions?

A cam phaser is a hydraulically actuated component on a modern engine's camshaft that adjusts intake or exhaust valve timing on the fly to optimize fuel economy, emissions, and power. Because it operates inside a running engine, it sees high oil temperatures, rapid pressure swings, and millions of timing changes over its life. Suppliers have to validate that a phaser holds tolerances across the full driving envelope — cold start, high-RPM highway operation, hot soak, altitude, aggressive load changes — before shipping. A bench test system that can repeat those conditions deterministically, without consuming a real engine, is dramatically faster, cheaper, and more controlled than dyno testing every prototype.

Why NI CompactRIO + FPGA instead of a PC-based DAQ system for engine simulation?

Three reasons: determinism, single-platform coordination, and ruggedization. The FPGA inside the cRIO chassis runs at microsecond resolution and is immune to OS jitter — that's what makes a faithful driving-condition replay possible. The real-time processor on the same chassis handles sequencing and PLC communication without a separate controller. And cRIO is built for shop-floor environments — wide temperature range, vibration tolerance, no fan, no spinning disk. A PC-based DAQ rig with Windows in the loop simply can't deliver microsecond timing fidelity coordinated with a PLC, motion axis, and thermal subsystem in a single deterministic application.

Can LabVIEW really coordinate a PLC, motion control, and FPGA in one application?

Yes — and on cRIO it's the standard pattern. The FPGA layer owns the time-critical work (microsecond playback, high-speed acquisition). The real-time layer owns sequencing logic, PLC handshaking (over EtherCAT, Modbus TCP, or EtherNet/IP), motion-axis commands, and thermal-loop supervision. The host PC owns the operator interface and recipe management. Each layer talks to the next through well-defined APIs (FPGA references, network-published shared variables, RT FIFOs). Done well, the application is easier to reason about than the equivalent split across three separate controllers, because all the timing-critical handoffs live inside one deterministic system.

How do you simulate extreme driving conditions on a test bench?

Three coordinated subsystems: a hydraulic system that delivers controlled oil pressure and flow at the temperature the phaser would see in an engine; a motion axis that drives the phaser at the rotational speeds it experiences across the RPM range; and an FPGA-driven timing dataset that commands the phaser to advance and retard at the exact rate it would in a real engine cycle. The thermal subsystem (chiller and heater) conditions the oil to whatever cold-start, hot-soak, or steady-state condition the test calls for. A recipe defines the sequence — for example: cold-soak at –20 °C, ramp to operating temperature, replay an aggressive highway-driving timing dataset for 10 minutes, then cycle through 100 cold-start events. The cRIO orchestrates all of it deterministically.

What's the advantage of a recipe-driven test architecture?

Recipe-driven means engineers configure tests, not programmers. Instead of editing LabVIEW code every time the test plan changes, the engineer assembles a sequence in a UI from a library of validated step types — speed setpoints, pressure profiles, thermal targets, acquisition windows, pass/fail rules. The cRIO loads the recipe and runs headless. Recipes are version-controlled and shareable across the team. The biggest practical advantage: when validation engineering wants to try a new test condition at 10 PM on a Friday, they can — without scheduling a controls-engineer code release. Walk-away operation also means a single station runs overnight unattended, which dramatically increases throughput.

What other automotive test systems can you build for suppliers in the Rochester / Western NY area?

Anything that combines precision measurement with multi-subsystem coordination — production end-of-line testers, durability stands, environmental chambers integrated with DAQ, leak-test stations, transmission-component validation rigs, electric-motor and inverter test benches, sensor-validation fixtures. The same architectural pattern (cRIO + FPGA + PLC + recipe-driven LabVIEW or TestStand sequencer) covers most of these. We work alongside local machine builders and controls integrators across Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Western NY — software and DAQ are our lane, mechanical and electrical fixturing are theirs.

Do you only build test systems for Rochester-area customers?

No. We're headquartered in Victor, NY (~15 minutes from downtown Rochester) but deliver test systems across Western NY, Central NY, New England, Florida, and clients nationwide. Local proximity matters most during discovery, fixture integration, and on-site commissioning — that's where being a 90-minute drive from Buffalo and Syracuse, or a flight from Boston or Orlando, earns its keep. Once a system is deployed, ongoing support is mostly remote.