As ever thank you for the kind comments.
So to answer a few questions, i was an apprentice tool maker for a small place ghat used to make moulds for toys, the bloke that introduced me to CNC turned Han Solo’s shoulder joints in the 70’s!
Any way i’ve always been in precision engineering untill moving to education 10 years ago. Always been making things in one form or another, never composite stuff though (Did a thread with a 28t chainring on standard crank)
The tube form will stay in the frame, semi structural and i’ll use four layers for the main tubes with local reinforcment as needed.
I’ve done this frame with pla printed parts. The next one will use abs and disolve it out using acetone.
The two tubes above weigh 600g the swing arm weighed 800g before i did some finish sanding last week.
I’m fed up with smashing the mandrel out of the head tubes and had a spare hour or so in between setting up and calibrating the 5 axis machine, lunch and meetings, manage to make some tools for removing the bottom cup thing and the sleeve.
Still some bashing but eventually freed the head tube.
Looks more wonky in the photo than it really is, the inside has a good’ish finish.
That’s it till the weekend then I can start tackling the main tubes.
Wow wow and wow not had much time working with carbon lay up but now starting to think. Please keep this thread updated dude it’s been a good read so far and loving your work.
Looking good, I presume the seat tube is an off the shelf job then?
I’ve just mocked up some frame parts on my 3D printer but its going to take 11 hours to print.
Yep not point making a mandrel to make the tube which would be a pig to remove.
I try to avoid anything over 6hrs as you only need a slight error to scrap the whole print. Same goes for multiple parts, i do one at a time then if anything happens only one has failed.
I really hope this frame comes off and rides well
Me two but it wont be light(am aiming for around 3KG the swing arm is 800g at the min)which the haters will love.
Really loving this thread. I know how tricky it is from my considerably easier work making RC glider parts. Can’t wait to see the finished item.
Next time (!) how about printing mould halves for the frame, finishing and polishing that and then laying up inside with a bladder to compress the laminate?
Machining and toolage.
So the pivot mount things are too big for the location recesses in the frame, this was intentional so i could get them round and to a size i wanted. I trial fitted the bearing only to realise that i couldn’t remove them without distorting them with usual screwdriver and hammer ignorance.
So a bit of measuring, scribbling a drawing (which forgot to take a picture of), machining and filing we have this handy little bugger.
This shows how it works, slide in just enough then is located on opposite bearing. tap with a mallet and out they come.
So after that distraction got to make a mandrel for the pivot thingies.
Made sure it was running true.
Before
After
The yellow is some kevlar chucked in for good measure.
So waiting for one set of resin to go off so i can do it all again tomorrow.
You know the saying measure twice… well faffed for two days checking the jig.
During which i re calibrated the 3d printer to about 0.1mm in x&y so i could print some jig parts as didn’t have time to machine them.
No pictures on the jig was a sticky mess stressing to pack any gaps with the resin/ fiber mush i mixed together.
After a day drying on the jig in front of a warm heater i managed to remove the front triangle.
First thing was to weigh it, now i was never going to be comparable to a carbon frame you can buy but the same as an ali one would be good.
The highly accurate kitchen scales show about 1.5 kg for front.
The rear with rockers and shock is about the same.
so looking at just over 3kg for the frame including shock, bit disappointed wanted it to be under 3kg.
Anyway dispite not being finish i couldn’t resist this.
To give you some scale that’s a 23″ seat tube! i need to take a bit off.
I recon you could build it up and ride around on it just glued together, not going to happen mind.
Rear triangle is a it close so new rockers to be made, checking the CAD sketch slackens everything about 0.5 degrees and makes a 445 rear triangle, plus the chain only grows 10mm in the first 40mm of travel so that should be ok.
I was bored at work and did some quick and dirty FEA on solidworks just to see if they would bend, i’ll post some pics soon. Plus i might make them pretty..
So to the rear brake, the rear swing arm may have clearance issues so no need to be pretty.
A superstar brake adapter bolted to the caliper, the caliper was lined up on the rotor.
A high tech solution to fixing the caliper in place.
The wheel was then rotated till the adapter was touching the swing arm.
Then using a cable tie and some epoxy & chopped carbon “tacked” in place.
After this set the cable tie was cut off and the other hole cleared, then strands of carbon were threaded through the hole and around the adapter with more epoxy chopped carbon to keep it secure.