Sunday, February 19, 2006

Carbon cantilever update #3

So, I again had problems with the carbon fiber cantilever brake project. I pulled the carbon out of the mold (material I put in there on Friday)
today in order to shape the other arm and it was just soft and flexy and crap. So I threw that away, and decided to try again. This time I went back to the old resin I was accustomed to, brought it into the back porch, with a heat lamp in the room and in the vacuum bag. I also brought a thermometer into the room so that I would know what temperature it was at. About 75 F is perfect, and I had the room at 78 F so thats close enough. I just pulled the carbon out of the mold, and its hard. So thats good. I'll be able to shape this whenever I get a chance to.

Yeah, so this is a lot of work. And it would be easier to buy the Spooky Carbon Canti's. However, this is relatively cheap (other than my time), and my pair should weigh in significantly lighter than the Spooky pair (around 30 grams saved per pair). Check back for updates.

I'm going to me fabricating my own titanium springs, and at this point it looks like I'll be making the small aluminum nuts for the end of the arms.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey,

is this what you are going to do?

http://nyx.at/bikeboard/Board/showthread.php?p=776358#post776358

Sounds very interesting, sometime I will build my own cx-brakes, too!

Rob

Jeremy Burlingame said...

yeahm I had the idea a couple of years ago, but didnt feel empowered until I saw that guy's brakes. An english version is here: http://www.weightweenies.starbike.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11359&highlight=kcnc+post