Integral Caliper

[rjwoods77]

Still working on my sourcing. When it works out I will let you know.

[Z]

Rob,

Only disadvantage of a one piece caliper/upright that I can think of is speed of disc change. Depending on the design you may have to split the caliper to change the disc, then bleed the system, clean up the mess, etc... If you mount your inboard-of-upright disc on a flange using bolts rather than studs, then this shouldn't be a problem.

Disadvantages of steel calipers? After about 10-20 years, if you don't regularly change the brake fluid, then you will get a rusted bore and leaking seals. Ie. not a problem. Absolutely no problem if you use stainless steel. SS has a thermal expansion coefficient half way between steel and aluminium, least thermal conductivity of most metals, and better strength/fatigue properties than it is usually given credit for.

Z

[Dominic Venieri]

Our team began using integrated upright/calipers in 1999 (for the 2000 comp) in the front, and continued that through the 2004 comp year car. For 2005 this was changed to a bolt on caliper design.

Pros - tight packaging, less hardware, possibly lighter weight, and in our case, lower CoG by positioning the caliper at 6:00.

Cons - difficult to machine, less interchangeability of parts, expensive, expensive, and oh yeah, expensive.

[DY]

There was a team at 2005 who did their front uprights with titanium deposition, wasn't there?<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Rob Woods:
powder metal deposition. A laser fuses metal powder into shapes. Very star trek. Basically saves on material costs because you arent cutting from a billet. Also there are savings since the powder isnt made into billets so the material costs are down form not making net shapes. Laser is expensive but the costs are going down. Basically allows you to have total design freedom. Can als switch metal types during manufacture as well. Pretty neat process. Just gotta see what the total cost is involved. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

[CMURacing - Prometheus]

yes. and they were pretty cool.

[adrial]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by CMURacing - Prometheus:
yes. and they were pretty cool. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I assume that was Carnegie Mellon? May I inquire about the cost/who performed the service for you?

thanks,
Adrial

[Jarrod]

SAE paper #2004-01-3546
Design and Manufacture of Titanium Formula
SAE Uprights using Laser-Powder-Deposition
Graham Erickson, Matt Heath, Bryan Woods,
Daniel Dolan, Eric Henderson and James Sears
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

[James Waltman]

Yeah, it was SDSM&T