Quote:
Originally Posted by racerx1715
EarlQ if you want me to remove this post, please let me know. This thread has gone way off topic from Materials/Aero.
…..Where to begin, I do my best to stay out of threads that discuss issues toward vendors but feel inclined to as Racer X Fabrication has been referenced quite a bit. I will do my best to keep this short and eliminate speculation.
Personal background, I graduated with my Engineering degree in 2007 and have been an engineer since 2003. I have a good array of experience and have worked for some of the largest companies in the world. I started Racer X Fabrication when the economy lulled and this is our 5th year in business. It has grown quite a bit from where I started it and I have continually invested in it. We do our own design work using Solidworks, and we manufacture our own parts. This allows us to be extremely competitive and in many cases lets us be light on our feet and make design changes quickly. We do not have to go through a supply chain. I choose to not share our design work publicly as I consider this IP for Racer X Fabrication. We do document every change so we can capture what was altered and updated in each design.
We choose the materials we do for specific reasons; we are fully capable of CNC machining aluminum control arms but choose not to. We run FEA, but any engineer knows this only gets you in the ball park it is a predictive analysis tool. Testing is and will be the mainstay of functional design. Currently the majority of our suspension products are being used by Tony Angelo (Professional Drifter) with his Scion FR-S. Link here: http://www.motoiq.com/magazine_articles/id/3021/pageid/6063/the-assembly-tony-angelos-scion-fr-s.aspx
I understand why Hancha / EarlQ chooses to share there FEA and design, I respect that. The reason for this post is to let members of the forum know we are not backwood mechanics (rather inferred or directed). We do a lot of design work, and the BRZ we have has been under development since the day we purchased it.
Hopefully that puts any speculation to bed, and we can all rest assured that rather its Hancha or other vendors we do a lot of work to make parts that are functional. Hopefully sell a few in the process and of course enjoy the enthusiasts that want to push their vehicles to the limit.
Thanks,
Jeff
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Jeff, just to be clear, my post was in no way directed at you or Racer X fabrication. In fact, I think Gem is the only one in the thread talking about you. From what I've seen, you would be on the list of exceptions I mentioned. My post was mainly aimed towards the flood of parts being made for this car by an unheard of number of companies with no real background or proof of design, craftsmanship, or quality.
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EarlQHan pretty much has the fatigue stuff down. I'm not a metals expert at all (I deal almost exclusively with composites at work) but it's my understanding that steel, if kept under a certain stress/strain threshold, will have basically an indefinite fatigue life. Aluminum on the other hand, will fatigue at
any stress level. At a certain point, it will fail. If you design properly, this fatigue life will be in the millions and millions of cycles and in real life will never become an issue. I haven't studied Titanium at all so I won't speak to that.
An interesting tidbit I do know, is that the main frame that the engines mount to in an F-18 is normally made of of aluminum, and a huge part of the operating costs the US military incurs on them is replacing those when their service life is up. Switzerland didn't want to deal with this, as it required shipping or flying the craft back to the US, having considerable downtime, and then sending them back across the world. They ordered theirs with the rear main frame element made in titanium. According to the guy I spoke with at Northrop they expected them to last basically forever.
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meeks-the Koenigsegg is definitely made out of prepreg. A lot of the pictures and video I've seen of their manufacturing process reminded me very much of my internships with a major aerospace company. I would love to go work for them. Unfortunately I don't speak Swedish.
Cheers
Nathan