can we see more tech and less crap talk please like photos of ferraris so called all carbon gearbox and under the body work at the moment gurneyflap.com is kind of over taking this tech site. I joined this forum for a reason and im losing intrest.
yes I agree with you manchild, the homepage is very good but
the members don´t post such interesting topics anymore.
One very good thing I just remembered are the picture links.
Tomba why do you not provide some technical photos at this side?
Maybe you can get aces to the McLaren picture room.
I tried it some time ago but you must be from the press to get aces.
furnik28 wrote:can we see more tech and less crap talk please like photos of ferraris so called all carbon gearbox and under the body work at the moment gurneyflap.com is kind of over taking this tech site. I joined this forum for a reason and im losing intrest.
It's good engineering to attempt to integrate separate components into just one unit. It just appears the gearbox is a difficult piece of equipment to get right. If what the f1 site describes is correct, you have a very large component, built of multiple materials, dealing with tremendous mechanical loads and heat. The list is a very long one about potential issues. Since it's a large component, heat expansion has to be a factor. Not only between the titanium and carbon materials, but also in the gear clearances, they have to be just right when the car races. The heat, obviously is a huge problem. How much of the gearchange sensors and actuators live inside that gearbox?
As far as the choice of topics in this forum? Hey, ask away, swing the topics in the direction you desire.
You hit the nail on the head, with regards to composite (graphite-epoxy) gearbox housings. The internals of the gearbox (gears, shafts, dog rings, shift forks, bearings, etc.) are hardened alloy steel (4340 or carburized 9310). Maintaining accurate gear geometry (ie. pitch centers) is critical for high performance gear trains. Since there is a large mismatch between the CTE values for steel gears and graphite-epoxy housings, the gear train pitch centers get smaller as the transmission goes from ambient temperature to racing temperature.
Also, it is virtually impossible to produce accurately machined bearing bores in purely composite materials. So there must be at least some amount of metallic elements incorporated into the composite housing.
The benefit of a composite gearbox structure is that it's stiffness characteristics closely match that of the composite tub.
This year in particular it has been very hard to get technical pictures from the races, F1live has had some great pictures from WRI and DPPI, but the main photo libraries has done nothing. Plus wehave the copyright issues related to sharing these photos.
A forum needs to be about people asking questions as much as posting new stuff. If you wanted to know about carbon gearboxes then you should have posted the question (BTW Ferrari do not have an all carbon gearbox).
To help I'll post a gallery of my tech photos in the next few days..
Err No it isnt....! Thats a hybrid carbon Ti transverse casing from "Galleria Ferrari" Circa ~1998 at a guess.
Ferraris current casign used a Ti main case with carbon fibre bonded to the casign for reinforcement.
Just kidding.... no, I think that BAR was first to experiment during 2004 and Ferrari did it in 2005.