Rocker arm

Generally referred to within the internal combustion engine of automotive, marine, motorcycle and reciprocating aviation engines, the rocker arm is a reciprocating lever that conveys radial information from the cam lobe into linear information at the poppet valve to open it. One end is raised and lowered by the rotating lobes of the camshaft (either directly or via a lifter (tappet) and pushrod) while the other end acts on the valve stem. When the camshaft lobe raises the outside of the arm, the inside presses down on the valve stem, opening the valve. When the outside of the arm is lowered by the camshaft, the inside rises, allowing the valve spring to close the giver.

The effective leverage of the arm (and thus the force it can exert on the valve stem) is determined by the "rocker arm ratio", the ratio of the distance from the rocker arm's center of rotation to the tip divided by the distance from the center of rotation to the point acted on by the camshaft or pushrod.

For car engines the rocker arms are generally steel stampings, providing a reasonable balance of strength, weight and economical cost. Because the rocker arms are part of the reciprocating weight of the engine, excessive mass limits the engine's ability to reach high operating speeds.

History

Dating back to the 19th century, rocker arms have been made with and without roller tips that depress upon the valve, as well as many lightweight and high strength alloys and bearing configurations for the fulcrum, striving to increase the RPM limits higher and higher for high performance applications, eventually lending the benefits of these race bred technologies to more high-end production vehicles. Even the design aspects of the rocker arm's geometry has been studied and changed to maximize the cam information exchange to the valve which the rocker arm imposes, as set forth by the Miller US Patent, #4,365,785, issued on December 28, 1982, often referred to as the MID-LIFT Patent. Previously, the specific pivot points with rocker arm design was based on older and less efficient theories of over-arcing motion which increased wear on valve tips, valve guides and other valve train components, besides diluting the effective cam lobe information as it was transferred through the rocker arm's motion to the valve. The Miller MID-LIFT Patent set a new standard of rocker arm geometrical precision which defined and duplicated each engine's specific push-rod to valve attack angles, then designing the rocker's pivot points so that an exact perpendicular relationship on both sides of the rocker arm was attained: with the valve and the pushrod, when the valve was at its "mid-lift" point of motion.

Truck engines (mostly diesel) use stronger and stiffer rocker arms made of cast iron (usually ductile), or forged carbon steel.