First build - floating along in the deep end

[crowe-molybdenum]

Nice to see another kiwi here mate!

“I could put a shaft in it” cracked me up.

Ive had eyes on a not hugely dissimilar design for a while, but im no suspension designer and despite some playing about in linkage, im scared of the rear brake. How are your rear braking forces looking? Are you Worried?

[Kale_shenanigans]

There’s a few of us around….. turns out there’s a few bikes that look the same (most are NZ too), look up Caeli in Linkage for some fun file names. I’m focusing on the drive side for now, I’ll tell ya in a few months lol

[Kale_shenanigans]

I haven’t made it yet, I’m thinking elastic style……………

[Luniz82]

Never seen that done with a belt, but hey, there’s a first for everything Jut be aware that, contrary to a chain, a belt needs quite a lot of preload in order to not skip teeth! And in the case of a full sus frame, that preload exclusively comes from the tensioning device…

[Kale_shenanigans]

Perfect, I’ll add some more beef and fun stuff, yep tensioner will be fun, the G3 uses something similar doesn’t it?

[Constellation]

Imo gearboxes with chains just make so much more sense to me. Easier to tension, more aftermarket support and when you remove it, you only need to break the chain, not the frame.

[Kale_shenanigans]

Yeah I’ll be honest I can endlessly battle with myself on chain vs belt, which is why I’ve gone into my own butt about it

[Lester]

Also without the cassette in the back you don’t have the cross chaining and they should last for a very long time.

[Kale_shenanigans]

[Kale_shenanigans]

I’ve got time for shenanigans once more…… now which one do I pick

[Constellation]

Chain IMO

[Kale_shenanigans]

Back on it

[Kale_shenanigans]

some more bits

[Kale_shenanigans]

oh also,

[Batcountry]

Beautiful!

[Kale_shenanigans]

Getting there

[Kale_shenanigans]

It grew

[Kale_shenanigans]

I’m after some thoughts and criticisms…. I’m thinking about doing some janky rtm ………………. heres a summary of my ramblings

RTM Moulding Process — Resin Injection via Syringe

• Resin injection point — marked in white on the mould

• Silicone tube channel — the red bead running around both sides, mainly there to help seal the mould

• Resin vents/air outlets — the blue points, letting air escape as resin flows through

The Process

1. Lay the plugs into the mould

2. Do a dry layup first

3. Quick calc on resin-to-fibre ratio

4. Spray tack to hold everything in place

5. Close mould and inject resin via syringe

[Lester]

I have some thoughts on this, which may or may not be valid.

1. I am very doubtful this will lead to satisfactory results without pulling a (good) vacuum before injecting the resin. You do not have any way to control the flow of resin within the cavity and when I tried this in the past this lead to a lot of porosity/trapped air.
2. I assume the mould halves are printed? Be aware that FDM prints are anything but air tight. Resin print might work here.
3. The groove for the silicone seal should be rectangular to allow some compression of the silicon cord. I’d use an online o-ring calculator to get the dimensions somewhat right. The circular cross-section of the groove does not allow for any seal deformation/preload.
4. Consider adding an internal thread to the inlays to screw in a handle or a slide hammer to get them out.
5. I would design the tool halves with one side having a deep cavity and the other half being a sort of plunger (much more like a compression moulding tool). With two shallow halves as you have it will be very hard to load the cavity with an adequate volume of fibre to get a decent fibre volume fraction (I assume you will use a mix of fabric and chopped strand fibre?). To be able to demould that probably means more than 2 mould halves.
6. If you go for a tool like you show I’d add some features to align the halves to each other.

In the end I’d say if you are curious about it give it a go. It’s not a lot of invested money and you can learn a lot from it.