MCN 15 page adventure Special

[Godspeed]

I used to have a constant supply of titanium pacemakers (used - don't ask) and always thought it would be great to melt down to make a bike.... :dry:

[AndyB]

I used to have a constant supply of titanium pacemakers (used - don't ask) and always thought it would be great to melt down to make a bike.... :dry:

I used to work in a titanium manufacturing facility 3 or 4 times every year re-facing the bottoms of the electric arc furnaces where they melted the stuff and the blokes there used to take the lowest grade materials home to make greenhouse frames out of. Once it's been melted a couple of times it reaches the point where it's not economical to do it again so if it fails to meet the specifications they just bin it.

Prior to that I had a little break from site work and worked as a model maker in a wind tunnel facility and we sometimes had to machine wing sections out of titanium billets but that was top grade stuff and they used to make us collect the swarf because it was worth quite a chunk of money. The figure quoted to me as being the end cost of the wing section just before it went into the wind tunnel was in excess of £1m and that was about 25 years ago so scrapping the job wasn't considered a good career move :pinch:

[bond_yzf]

It's not just to do with the frame material type it's all the way the material is bonded,mild steel frames that are brazed allow for more flex in the frame but it's a dying art due manufacturing speed

titanium frames are a black art, problem with ti is if excessive heat is passed through it it becomes brittle, these days most ti frame aren't pure they are mixed with a chromium

Ally is still the best material to build frames from it offers strength and lightness

there's a reason why bonded plastic frames haven't taken off

[bowber]

BSA did a works scrambler in the 60's with a titanium frame

http://www.motorsportretro.com/2010/10/ ... anium-bsa/

I think it would have been a lot different now there's a lot more general knowledge about it.

Steve

[Richard Simpson]

Link to a really poorly written story about a titanium motorcycle here...1966 BSA MX bike!

ttp://www.motorsportretro.com/2010/10/english ... anium-bsa/

[picos mestizo]

My understanding of frame technology is that it's easier to tailor the amount of flex you build in and where exactly it happens with an aluminium frame than it is with steel.

What I'd love to see is a fabricated titanium frame but the cost would be astronomical. From what I can remember about titanium production it goes down a grade every time they pour it with the top grade stuff being used for aeronautical work and then it goes down hill through automotive products and the worst of the worst ends up as jewellery. It's also an absolute swine to machine and to weld but the end results are always impressive if they're done right.

I believe the arse end of Sammy Millers 500 Ariel HT5 Trials bike was Titanium, & they got it down to 240lbs.

GOV132.png (65.19 KiB) Viewed 1158 times

HT5.png (96.35 KiB) Viewed 1158 times

[Richard Simpson]

Better story about the BSA here: the one I was looking for originally.


It worked as a 250 if it stayed close to home!

[johnnyboxer]

Is Austin, pictured in the article, I'm told he wasn't.............but everyone else was hmy:

[nathanthepostman]

Sadly Austin, Lois, Sjaak and Walter couldn't make it on the day, leaving space for only the most desperate of media hungry whores.

[Tim Cullis]

Not aware the frame has been changed. Technology backgrounder: http://www.sandsmuseum.com/cars/elise/i ... sauto.html