Anyone got a source of titanium?

[thinfourth]

I need a piece of titanium about 3mm thick and 50mm wide and 400mm long

Anyone got a source

[r10crw]

U my friend do have some very strange requests, can we ask what for?

[thinfourth]

Bottom of the sump on the caterham is the lowest point and it is alloy so it scrapes away easily

The original has CATERHAM in large letters in the casting along the bottom. It is said if it only sayes CAT with the rest of the letters missing then you might be running too low or taking too many yumps. Well mine only sayes ===== so i think a skid plate might be an idea.

The ideal material for this would be a very hard plastic such as used in knee sliders for bikes which will wear away slowly but i think titanium would be better as it would be harder wearing so you could have a thinner skid plate. Which would mean you could have more clearance under the car.

However while my idea may have technical merit in material selection the answer i say above is bollocks as the real reason i want titanium is you get HUGE sparks off it when it is scraping along the ground.

[kenny]

A quick google throws up a few suppliers, although they might be bulk only.

http://www.gmttitanium.com/en/products/plates.html

Alternatively try sending Stu Pollock a pm.

[BiggestNizzy]

Plywood ?

it's cheap,light and replacable.

[Sanjøy]

I would imagine Stu P is your man.

[Rich H]

Problem with tough skid pans is that they transmit all the force of the blow to the mounts. I would go with either Ali which you can knock the dents out of or ply and just reaplace it.

[thinfourth]

Its very hard to mount anything to the chassis due to the cars nature

My main concern is wearing through the sump as they are about £300 a pop

While plywood etc might work very well and be far cheaper and more sensible titanium has the ever so sparky attraction

[gdr]

Occasionally bits come up on e-bay. Folk nicking cut offs from the local spaceship factory presumably.

[fd]

My car is the same . . . There must be some kind of engineering grade plastic that could be bonded onto the sump . . . every single run at Doune my (dry) sump pan gets little thinner . . . it's quite gentle, but there's nothing you can do to stop it other than raising the ride height (ie. buggering up the setup which is not something I would do) or put a skid plate on the sump which is the lowest point under the car . . . concern I have is with securing the sacrificial part to the sump . . . you'd probably have to drill through the sump . . . which makes each securing bolt a huge risk . . .

Fd

[fd]

something like a kevlar laminate bonded onto the sump would probably be ideal . . .

Fd

[BiggestNizzy]

http://www.carbonology.com/

never used them, but I had them bookmarked for future idea's I did phone SP systems (now something else) but they have a minimum order of £5K

[Rob E]

I use this company to supply precious metal ribbon (rhenium, tantalum tungsten etc,) for my lab:

http://www.tempatron.co.uk

but I think titanium is also within their remit. At work I'm looking for super-purity, so it is mega-bucks but they will know the market, so maybe worth a call. They were very helpful when we needed clean platinum a few years ago.

Cheers, Rob

[tenkfeet]

There was some kicking about my work but I cannot find it . I have a mate making enquiries for a gash bit at the main base.

Will let you know .

[thinfourth]

My car is the same . . . There must be some kind of engineering grade plastic that could be bonded onto the sump . . . every single run at Doune my (dry) sump pan gets little thinner . . . it's quite gentle, but there's nothing you can do to stop it other than raising the ride height (ie. buggering up the setup which is not something I would do) or put a skid plate on the sump which is the lowest point under the car . . . concern I have is with securing the sacrificial part to the sump . . . you'd probably have to drill through the sump . . . which makes each securing bolt a huge risk . . .

Fd

Modern glues are pretty damn amazing in how much they can stick and the area of a caterham sump if you had that entirely covered in glue i think the sump would break before the bond failed.

Don't forget the elise is glued together and they can survive Tut