out of interest - mille swingarms

Message

Aladinsaneuk · #1 Post by **Aladinsaneuk** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 8:18 pm

friend of mine reckons he can make an exact copy of a mille swing arm, brand new, no bearings/cushes for at or under 200 quid

he asked me to find out if there would be interest in such a thing

(he will make one to see if it works out, and i will let folks know what it is like)

he does have interest from a local spanner chap who wants mille swing arms each week.... seems the owners keep dropping them lol

Pierre · #2 Post by **Pierre** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:15 pm

Sounds too good to be true. I mean aprilia want £1200 for a new one

Or do you mean the 70's design of the old shape mille swinger? Used mainly as paperweights last time i checked.

Aladinsaneuk · #3 Post by **Aladinsaneuk** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:35 pm

nope

I mean an exact copy of the current 2000 - 2003 model swing arm

Falcoholic · #4 Post by **Falcoholic** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:19 am

Oh yes there definitely would be an interest. Depends on the standard of workmanship and results of rigorous testing.

Gio · #5 Post by **Gio** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 10:39 am

That sounds cheap as chips. plus at that price if they are the same quality, its worth having a spare.

Futurastic · #6 Post by **Futurastic** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 10:48 am

All sounds far too good to be true, so before you all go wetting yer pants, listen here.

I deal with alloys all the time, I wont bore you with the technical specification off the alloy you would need, but I DO KNOW that a 2500mm x 1250mm sheet is going to COST me around £104.00 per sheet, thats based on 1000kg direct from a spanish mill.

Then you have at least 8 laser cut parts to produce. Unless you are looking at real volume I wouldnt like to give you a price.

Further to this, you will then take around 4 hrs just to weld this together, and thats providing you already have a properly tooled jig.
Based on a silly rate of £20.00 p/h thats another £80.00

Ref. the alloy, I could buy from China at around 60% off the above price.
The acceptence rate from this source is around 55%, however you will have to pay for return shipping,which you wont do, so you now have around 4000kg of scrap alloy worth around £320 per tonne.

Is it really worth taking the chance ?

Aladinsaneuk · #7 Post by **Aladinsaneuk** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:19 am

I will give a little more info... and as all such things do, this started in the local pub

Got chatting to a mate of mine, who is a machinist etc - and he was telling me about his new piece of kit - a 3 d modeller that takes a piece, scans it over a few hours to make all the parts up as templates.

The next piece of kits looks at that model and then produces the guidelines for the jig.

Jig then cuts/ assembles parts as necessary

You are right on the costs etc, but there is a fair bit of stuff around that is going spare so to speak - bits left over from other jobs

(Those other jobs are for a couple of F1/racing companies... )

I have decided to give one a go - I currently have a mille arm here in good condition, that is going to a new owner soon - it was going to be dirty, but I will clean it, and strip all extraneous parts off then see how it goes and see what is made - once the initial templates have been measured they can sit on the hard drive

Chaps reason for doing this work - very simple, at certain times of the year the work shop gets quiet, and this kind of thing would keep it ticking over nicely

Futurastic · #8 Post by **Futurastic** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 2:57 pm

Aladinsaneuk wrote: The next piece of kits looks at that model and then produces the guidelines for the jig.
Jig then cuts/ assembles parts as necessary

Just like that eh

Sorry Aladinsaneuk, dont mean to put a damper on this but hear things like that every week, funnily enough never seem to see them happen though.

The next piece of kits looks at that model and then produces the guidelines for the jig.

Which could take hundreds of hours to get just right.

Good luck to him anyway, I wish him all the best and look forward to maybe seeing one.

#9 Post by **Kwackerz** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 3:02 pm

But saying that, not many firms that work alongside/for F1 level racing teams actually chore extra work out for bikers..

Sounds great. Hope it comes to fruition!

Falcopops · #10 Post by **Falcopops** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 3:42 pm

Be good to see just how it pans out.

If it is all good then I'd say there would be a pretty good market for them.

D-Rider · #11 Post by **D-Rider** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 3:49 pm

Would there be any interest from them in refurbishing dinked ones?

It's almost always the same bit that takes the dink (from the can) - so to replace that part properly would be a great help - and, hopefully, not so difficult for them to do.

.... just a thought .....

Aladinsaneuk · #12 Post by **Aladinsaneuk** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 9:39 pm

i did ask about the dinks being removed - and he said simply no - something to do with the internal stresses caused by the original damage and what could then go wrong...

I will be dropping the swing arm off to him next week and we see what he does with it - we have negotiated a price for bits etc as an experiment and then will see what happens

all being well photos in a couple of weeks

(Interestingly enough he did do another swing arm for a chopper recently - and he reckoned that was a pain in the arse - took a fair while to get the job to work right, but once done, he said he could do the same one very quickly - but each arm is different of course!)

Aladinsaneuk · #13 Post by **Aladinsaneuk** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 7:24 am

just an update

a copy has been knocked up, for engineering purposes only

HOWEVER as intimated above, the alloy used is not that common, and am sad to say that it is going to not be possible to make any for folks

the cost of the alloy is THAT prohibitive - I did not understand the whole thing but it is down to what the requirements are

sorry folks

Falcopops · #14 Post by **Falcopops** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 8:38 pm

Worth a try though. Nothing ventured and all that, pity though.