Custom lower control arms official EOI. Do it!!

[BI6TIM]

What wheel alignment machine do you have at work? Also what ball joints do they take? Std AU type?

[Rollin]

Yep, the arms are designed to take stock ED bushes with stock AU ball joints for ease of replacement.

Not sure what the name of the machine is at work but I think it's this one:

[Bipolar]

The ones in Todds car are that stuffed the car is actually dangerous to drive in my opinion, and I think they're only a few years old, maybe 3? Not sure.

Pedders polyurethane for 4½ years. Dodgy for over 6 months due to lack of funds lol. I won't let anyone else drive it 'til it's sorted.

[BBQBurner]

Here are the photo's of the EL with what looks like an early e-series bush with a spacer.

[Rollin]

Ah cool, thanks for that. Unfortunately that isn't going to help at all

[sdoylie]

have you put a patent on your arms yet Rollin? or waiting untill you see if they work?

[donno]

http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Just do it anyway.

I don't think you even need bulk technical specs, just a concept and a few pictures/sketches. IIRC it's like $80 for a provisional patent which lasts a year, and it can be submitted online.

[Ef_frmnt]

good job dan.. id be tempted to throw my UPC kit and put these on after the dramas ive had with it.

i have a spare set of ba xr17s same as the other ones i gave you but these are straight haha they are on my car at the moment due to horrible wheel alignment/shudder/braking issues i would like to solve before putting $1500 worth of rubber back at risk. but if need be i can throw you a pair

[LUXO_8]

http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/

Just do it anyway.

I don't think you even need bulk technical specs, just a concept and a few pictures/sketches. IIRC it's like $80 for a provisional patent which lasts a year, and it can be submitted online.

do this!!!! before some kunt copies your idea

[Nikk O'lass]

Im keen still


Stupid car, costing me money. lol

[Parfrey]

Good to see your giving this a shot Rollin! its a big effort..

at first i thought what a waste of $$$ but as someone mentioned, even stock BA brakes will fit so no need for brembos etc. i have BF Turbo brakes on my BA (322mm) and they are ok (heaps better than ba ones) and only cost me $200 for the whole setup... would be pretty sweet on an eseries and cheap too.

[falcon4life]

updates!??

[ruleford]

yeah how did u go rollin? all good with the fitment and the alignment

[Rollin]

Haven't had two seconds to rub together for the last 3 weeks, and it's pissing down rain constantly as well.

I have tues through to friday off next week so hopefully some progress then...

[knowsfords]

I have been waiting so long for someone to develop these arms, I take my hat off to you.

[ruleford]

i take more then my hat off to him he is a brilliant man

[CMYWPN]

$1300? Damn, thats steep. Im in the process of making something similar out of aircraft grade 7079-T6 alloy. Maybe its cos i have access to the CNC's, or cos i can draw the CAD file myslef, but my cost is only half that....

wierd.

[wicksy]

I would rather buy off Rollin than you though

[EFFalcon]

funny that... once someone goes to the effort and proves it viable, others move in to capitalise.

[xrghiawagon]

Rollin, patent them asap!

[CMYWPN]

I would rather buy off Rollin than you though

and exactly where did i show the slightest chance that i would sell them to you?

RELAX, No need to feel threatened to patent them, im not going to try profit from these.


I WILL however give brief summary of my progress if the OP lets me

[Rollin]

CMYWPN can do whatever he likes, I'll probably buy a set just to see how they compare

[LUXO_8]

$1300? Damn, thats steep. Im in the process of making something similar out of aircraft grade 7079-T6 alloy. Maybe its cos i have access to the CNC's, or cos i can draw the CAD file myslef, but my cost is only half that....

wierd.

Sounds like a whole lot of spin to me. At least Dan has done it an actually has a set of arms in his possession

[CMYWPN]

$1300? Damn, thats steep. Im in the process of making something similar out of aircraft grade 7079-T6 alloy. Maybe its cos i have access to the CNC's, or cos i can draw the CAD file myslef, but my cost is only half that....

wierd.

Sounds like a whole lot of spin to me. At least Dan has done it an actually has a set of arms in his possession

yes im sure it does. And i didnt mean to take this thread off topic. Just find it hard to believe 5k went in to a set of 6061 arms. Why 6061??? Sounds dangerous to me.

[Rollin]

Why not 6061? Please tell us why 6061-T6 is sooo inferior to 7079-T6? Please provide links to back up your claims.

Obviously I can have these made in whatever material I choose, so if you can give reasons why I should change then I'm sure the forum would be the better for it.

[CMYWPN]

i can provide evidence, but in the form of about 20 million turning points.... Know what a spectrum is?

[Rollin]

Not a fucking clue, that's why I've got other people to decide what material they are made out of and do the CAD drawings and stress simulations etc.

Please enlighten us.

[CMYWPN]

Links? You cant just google "best material".

Sure ill show you how i came to that conclusion. Dont see why the **** i should. But sure ill show you what the **** i mean.

Im not here to be a ****. Which is exactly how you did in my for sale thread. Making stupid offers in my for sale thread. Why? Did i some how offend you??

[Rollin]

You had a cooler for sale, I made an offer. Don't see what the big deal is.

Now, I am well aware you can't just google 'best material', otherwise I would have. I've had people who do this stuff for a living suggest 6061-T6, you think otherwise.

You can't just make sweeping statements like "Why 6061??? Sounds dangerous to me", you have to back that sort of stuff up.

Still waiting to hear what a 'spectrum' is and the reasons why you came to your conclusion - if only so that the people who are thinking about buying a set of these off me are 'armed' (hurhurhur) with all the information they need to make an informed decision.

[CMYWPN]

Once again, im NOT making these to profit from. Just for my self and a few close friends.

Ill give a BRIEF description of what ive done and then you can compare form that


To start off...where do i start...

Lower control arms are a structural component in the suspension. Any skimping in the making of these could be an embarrassing failure. To analyze this i used my car as a test mule. Fitted with strain gauges, i drove it over a mixture of rough roads. For those of you that dont know, a strain gauge does exactly what it sounds like. Strain is deformation of a solid due to stress. It measures this by using resistances to record any micro displacements BEFORE plastic deformation. These gauges are placed in the stress concentrated areas. Any stress before plastic deformation is acceptable as any further damage will be picked up in a basic x-ray . The readings from the strain gauges were taken into account and made into a SPECTRUM. For those that dont know, a SPECTRUM is a series of commands that are given to replicate the peak loads whilst the part is in service. These loads are given in dynamic form with variable ramp rates. Constant tension and compression of the coupon (sample).In a high stress exercise ie: hitting a pot hole, the arm may see a load of 6 kN, for example. So the spectrum would include random target points of say 8kN. 1000kg is 9.81kN. There is also a MOMENT around the inner bush area but i wont bore you with this. The car looked pretty scary with all the wires coming from underneath. I am currently trialing different materials for the control arm. 7079-T6, Ti-6Al-4V and D6AC and so on. The D6AC is an interesting one. Its known for its extreme toughness. Which was utilized most previously in combat aircraft from the US. 7079 is also common in aircraft and it is an evolution form 7075. My first set was made from the 7079. Until i found another. I didnt even consider 6061 as i have had some experience with this particular alloy before. I have taken small cross sectional specimens of each material and used them with the spectrum alongside an INSTRON (used to test materials in fatigue, tensile, compression, and impact). The results were quite surprising! I used a multiplied peak load as a saftey factor. Once i had my UTS reached, i removed my CPMD sensor and carried out a destructive test. This was important as it revealed the behavior of each after failure. Once i had my material chosen i took the control arms to be drafted. Being mostly familiar with autocad i simply drew a sketch of both arms. Loading BOTH drafts into Autodesk Inventor was where i merged the EF arm and the later model arm. Send this file to Edgecam R2, where you select your tooling and the sequences of the actions from roughing and turning to profile cutting and drilling. Select your billet size, set a datum point and create the CNC file. You can even watch a demo of how it will be machined. After creating the NC program, it is sent to the 5 axis CNC. This particular one was an older machine with the FADAL software but it got the job done. Here is a typical warm up procedure for a CNC mill:
%
N100 O9998 ( WARM UP )
N110)
N120
N150 G21
N160 G0 G17 G40 G80 G90
N190 A-0.
N200 G0 G90 S909 M3 X47.307 Y0.
N230 G1 F100.G4 P5000
N240 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N250 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N260 G1 F100.S2500G4 P50000
N270 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N280 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N290 G1 F100.S2600G4 P10000
N300 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N310 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N320 G1 F100.S2700G4 P50000
N330 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N340 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N350 G1 F100.S2800G4 P50000
N360 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N370 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N380 G1 F100.S2900G4 P50000
N390 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N400 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N410 G1 F100.S3000G4 P50000
N420 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N430 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N440 G1 F100.S3100G4 P50000
N450 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N460 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N470 G1 F100.S3200G4 P50000
N480 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N490 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N500 G1 F100.S3300G4 P50000
N510 G3 X-47.307 Y0. I-47.307 J0. F700.
N520 X47.307 Y0. I47.307 J0.
N530 G1 F50000.
N550 M5
N570 E0 X0 Y0
N580 M30
%
%

Anyone here who THINKS they know how to CNC will understand the above...

I guess my 3 years of Mech engineering, and position in a FFL (fatigue and fracture lab) has payed off?

Im not trying to say that im going to make these cheaper. by all means, go ahead and sell them. I WILL not be profiting from these. Or selling them. These will be for my own use on my car. These WILL be engineered to prevent any problems later down the track, which is why i went through all the testing.
These are not finished yet as im experimenting with other materials and Cryogenics. Wont go into that as MOST people here will be dumbfounded with the words austenite and martensite.

Rollin, hope i havent offended you. I just wanted to give an insight of my similar project.

[EFFalcon]

I think thats exactly the type of discussion he was after.

Rollin might be able to use it to ask the right questions of those he's been in contact with.

[sdoylie]

holy f'n crap CMYWPN. thats intense. why would you not share these crazy aricraft arms?
you two could work together on them. seem to be on the same wave length.

[nothin suss]

Why would we care about what axis and movements the machine does?
Just combine your findings and create something the boys can use!

[Rollin]

Did some gooooogling.

6061

Mass density: 2710 kg/m^3
Yield strength: 275 MPa
Ultimate tensile strength: 310MPa
Youngs Modulus: 7.310E+10 Pa
Poisson's Ratio: 0.33 ul
Shear Modulus: 25.9023 GPa
Expansion Coefficient: 24.30 microns/m C


7079

Mass density: 2740 kg/m^3 (1.1% denser than 6061)
Yield strength: ?
Ultimate tensile strengh: ?
Youngs Modulus: 7.172E+10 Pa (98.11% of the 'stiffness' of 6061)
Poisson's Ratio: 0.33 ul (Identical)
Shear Modulus: ?
Expansion Coefficient: 24.66 microns/m C (1.5% higher expansion than 6061, not desirable)

Not as much info available on 7079 unfortunately, maybe you can fill in the blanks. The missing numbers would want to be vastly different to justify the sooking you're going on about.

Furthermore, steel shits on alloy for these kinds of components anyway, it just takes an order of magnitude longer to machine, pushing the cost up, which is why I haven't gone that way.

Good to see you've measured stresses of 6kN and tested your arms to 8kN, makes me feel much better as the guys I've used to machine mine have done theoretical stress tests at 18, 20 and even 60kN in critical directions and the arms have come up shiny.

Dunno about being 'dumbfounded' by the words "Austenite" and "Martensite" either - I think you give the guys on here too little credit. A few minutes of reading on wikipedia gives a good idea of what you're talking about.

It must have saved you a lot of money to be able to do this stuff at work, I've had to pay people like yourself to do this kind of thing for me, which is why it has cost me so much to get done. As I've said many times in this thread, I won't be making any money out of these arms either, I'm not even going to get back my investment. I made these arms for my car because I wanted them, but will eventually be organising a group buy for other people that want them.

[CMYWPN]

I think thats exactly the type of discussion he was after.

Rollin might be able to use it to ask the right questions of those he's been in contact with.

quite possibly, but he goes the wrong way about doing so.

holy f'n crap CMYWPN. thats intense. why would you not share these crazy aricraft arms?
you two could work together on them. seem to be on the same wave length.

because of the tone of this quote

The missing numbers would want to be vastly different to justify the sooking you're going on about.

Did some gooooogling.

Once again, google is good, but doesnt hold the answer for everything.

Why would we care about what axis and movements the machine does?
Just combine your findings and create something the boys can use!

I had to explain what a spectrum was.

the arm may see a load of 6 kN, for example

Good to see you've measured stresses of 6kN and tested your arms to 8kN, makes me feel much better as the guys I've used to machine mine have done theoretical stress tests at 18, 20 and even 60kN in critical directions and the arms have come up shiny.

Got nothing to do with how shiny it comes up. Also notice the words i used...... "for example"???

Dunno about being 'dumbfounded' by the words "Austenite" and "Martensite" either - I think you give the guys on here too little credit. A few minutes of reading on wikipedia gives a good idea of what you're talking about.

Yes you had to google it. I see it everyday.

I think thats exactly the type of discussion he was after.

Im not looking for a friendly discussion. Was curious about these arms. Thats all. Its clear that im not welcomed here, so i just post up in for sale section every now and then. (until i get ridiculous offers).

Good luck with the arms.

[EFFalcon]

everyones welcome here, it just comes down to how they portray themselves whilst here.

coming in and saying 'i'm doing something better for half the cost because i'm incredibly awesome' will never go down nicely.

[CMYWPN]

everyones welcome here, it just comes down to how they portray themselves whilst here.

coming in and saying 'i'm doing something better for half the cost because i'm incredibly awesome' will never go down nicely.

Yes i agree. It was probably a foolish retaliation after being insulted with rollins offer in my for sale thread.
Hope the OP forgives me.

[MAD]

Here's some info on 6061 and 7075 that I found a while back.
http://buau.com.au/english/b_2646.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Back on topic... Have you fitted them and checked out steering and suspension angles and etc. yet?

[TUFED6]

Back on topic... Have you fitted them and checked out steering and suspension angles and etc. yet?

Thats the only interesting part I reckon. How and what they are made out of is insignificant, after all the standard factory part was probably cast out of recycled washing machines.

Being able to demonstrate favourable geometry thru the range of suspension travel is what I'd be more interested in.

[Rollin]

TUFED - Measurements are coming soon, and as you might imagine the actual suspension design is my strong point. Metallurgy I leave to the guys who do that stuff for a living.

What is slowing the process is the distance between myself and the people making the arms, postage is cheap but takes several days even when sent express, and it means if something isn't quite right first time they have to be sent back, adjusted, sent to me, tested, sent back etc.

The wheels are in motion, they're just shiny 20z so they take a while to turn