Weight Watchers - Composite plate

[Bitza]

Just thought this might be of interest to someone? Using carbon fiber plate instead of aluminum. I have just made an anchor bracket for my floating caliper rear brake, to replace the aluminium 6082 one I made a few weeks ago. In terms of tensile strength carbon fiber should be 2-5 times stronger, while being about 50% lighter. The bad news is that it won't take threading very well, and does tend to crush under concentrated loads ie where fasteners affix, and if it is overloaded it will snap like a carrot.
See the pics, I used a small Ali bush for the torque arm fixing point, counter bored 1mm in and glued in place. The two M10 securing bolts have large contact areas so are not reinforced with bushes. x6

 

[Bitza]

OK next item for the composite plate treatment is a adapter bracket I had previously made in Ali 7075 6mm plate, not the prettiest of brackets I've made. It enables me to use the original monster headlight brackets with SS yolks, while also mounting the instruments, plus the air sensor. As an aside I mount the instruments below the top yolk, and lowered the headlight to give a more compact hunchy look.
The new bracket has Ali threaded insert for the sensor, and CF spacer at the mounting points, counter bored and glued.

 

[Mr Gazza]

Once again you're inspiring me.
Sheet aluminium and Angle of all sorts of sizes are my favourite bracket making materials, but I have priced up the carbon plate and assume angle is available too.
How are you cutting the brackets to shape? Presumably ordinary twist drills at quite high speed are okay on carbon plate?
Do you use dust extraction?
Are you custom making the top hats and spacers, or sourcing them from somewhere like Accu? I've found that it can be much cheaper to find various alloy spacers and collars from China, but very slow!

 

[Bitza]

CF can be obtained in various forms, sheet, plate, round/square rod, round/square tube, angle and more. I used angle for the rear hugger see pic.
As far as working CF I use basic hand tools, including a hand cranked pillar drill, the resulting dust isn't blown into the air, but I do hoover as I go. Counter bore tools are very handy, wood working ones tend to give larger outside dia to inner dia and work fine on CF and Ali for that matter.
One tricky task is to drill central holes in round spacers, my handy tip is to counter bore a solid bit of timber, place the blank spacer into the recess then drill from the other side via the guide hole.
To date I have had the inserts made to measure, so if anybody finds a source of standard top hat inserts etc I would be interested to know.
One of the major benefits of working CF is that it glues up really well so get some decent adhesive as previously photoed.

 

[Mr Gazza]

I see, So woodworking tools are no problem for me , but not too keen on using my hand tools on carbon.
I also have a lot of woodwork machines with extraction, but I think it would be a hacksaw and file for carbon.
I do have a good collection of counterbore bits though, which have been known to drill aluminium!

Funnily enough I do cut aluminium on my circular saw with a negative rake blade and even used it to "mill" a large piece of billet to make a calliper adapter bracket to put a Brembo calliper on my Commando.
I was making a bracket for the Tiger this evening with some lovely alloy from a number plate that used to be on a previous Bonnie many years ago.. I thought that was appropriate.

Accu do a fair range of Nylon top hats, or shoulder washers. https://www.accu.co.uk/search?cms=0&cs_ids=979&query=top+hat+spacers&page=1
Not sure if they would be any use on carbon brackets?
Jaybee biker bits also list one or two alloy ones, but very expensive. They also offer bespoke.
I'm sure a couple of hours of searching would find that Chinese place that will machine up spacers and washers for next to nothing.
I got some spacers from them to use as collars to turn standard bolts into shoulder bolts for my Zero, which are really odd non preferred sizes.

Things like this have often tempted me to buy a mini lathe.

 

[Bitza]

Mini - lathe, what like an electric drill clamped in the vice?! *
I've also had thoughts about getting machines, the trouble is I would get more ambitious leading to wanting better machines. I also wonder if a mill might open more opportunities?

 

[Bitza]

Fitted it today happy with the job, pity you can't see it tucked away under the yolk.