TITANIUM  ATTEMPT

 The Rear Brake Bridge

By James Morikawa

PROBLEMS MACHINING THE BRAKE BRDIGE
 8 March 2008

Mitering the brake bridge turned out to be a diffcult task.  I made two attempts to fabricate/miter a bridge on my milling machine.  Both attempts were failures.
Some of the things which made it "impossible" at this time were:

1.  The thin Ti tubing used (leftover seatstay tubing)
2.  The low spindle cutting RPM of the milling machine
3.  The flexiness of the Ti
4.  The use of a 4 fluke end mill bit as the cutting tool
5.  I was running out of Ti material to work out the problems being
     encountered.
6.  Lack of working knowledge/experience in machining Titanium

Anyways, I ended up hand filing the miters.

The next Ti-frame I  build,  I may option to use a pre-fabricated brake bridge.  Such as the ones made by Paragon Machine Works,  or like the ones sold by Nova Cycles.

Pictured above is my hand filed brake bridge.    The miter joints were sloppy (not precision),  with gaps that which led to unwanted "challenges" in welding.

WELDING THE BRAKE BRIDGE
13 March 2008

Well,  the brake bridge has been welded on.  Due to gaps in the miter joints, I could not weld it using the single pass method.   I did use the double pass method.  On the first pass (fusion pass),  I used filler rod to fill the gaps,  then I did the second  pass to clean up the weld appearance.

I'm glad this step is over.  I'm a bit bummed  I welded the bridge on a bit crooked — just a tiny bit.

 I don't plan to hand file another Ti brake bridge — never again.   On my next Ti build, I'm going to get the mill to work,  or get the belt miter to work.
I'll have something worked out by then.

Goodnight,  and have a better tomorrow.

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