[quote="safeaschuck"]
...The temperature of the material is kept low enough so that the material does not become...whats the word, I can't remember and I'm not going to rely on good old wikipedia this time and make this post an entry form there, but basically it doesn't get close to a liquid state, is it plastic? errrr...
Maybe "fluid" is the word? "Ductile" and "malleable" is also the state between free flowing and hard solid.
What you might be afraid of could happen at elevated work-temperatures, is changes of the hardened material's microstructure, such as recrystallization.
But that is unlikely to happen to any greater extent over two hours, but for good measure, I guess you should throw them away after use anyway.
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"
Titanium is easily recycled. Heat treatable titanium alloys (like 6Al4V) sell for about $40/lb here in the U.S. A centerlock wheel nut would start with a chunk of bar weighing about 2 lbs, which would cost about $80(US). The problem with titanium screw threads is that titanium has a very nasty habit of galling and seizing. I'm sure that if a titanium wheel nut is threaded onto a titanium (or even steel) axel, it is likely coated very liberally with some sort of anti-seize like nickel grease paste or moly-disulfide DFL. Aerospace titanium fasteners also use cetyl-alchohol.
Back in the early '90s when I worked for an IMSA GTP race team, our centerlock wheel nuts were made by BBS and were anodized aluminum.
By happy co-incidence this months Top Gear magazine is an F1 special (I picked it up today) and in one feature it compares the cost of parts on a Toyota Aygo (as a baseline for mass produced parts on a low cost vehicle) with the equivalent part on The TF109 Toyota F1 car.
It states that the F1 wheelnut costs £300. The F1 nut looks surprisingly basic, I will try and figure out how to upload the image onto here but if anyone else has a copy of the mag and already knows how to do this I would be most grateful (it's on page 64).
Whilst these sorts of magazines tend to concentrate more on impact than accuracy it seems they have been given Toyota's permission to show the parts, some prices are listed only as 'classified'. I think this is probably closer to a average price than Max and his one-off £850 example.
It's still expensive, but from some of the work I have done in the past quoting small batch runs of complex engineering components, and requesting quotes of a number of top quality sub-contractors I would say that if the nuts were standardised across the grid and the production levels for the parts were to raise by a factor of 10 the price would be roughly half of that £300.
Now we are down to £150 which is still an expensive wheel nut, but much more reasnoble and a reduction of something like 82% on Mr Mosely's quoted price of £850. Which by the way I am all in favour of using as a benchmark when calculating cost reductions, nice one Max, you bufoon.
Another further, and much more difficult to quantify benefit of standardising the spec of the nut is that, (and the F.I.A. should bare this in mind on any and all standardised parts if they are serious about saving money) as well as being the same in pyhsical appearance they will require the same Q.A. procedures.
I'm sure Xpensive will know more about this but each team will have it's preferred sub-contractor or in-house equipment to make these parts, and each manufacturerer of the nut will need a battery of inspection equipment, quite often each team will have their prefered inspection equipment, as they will double check Q.A. of contract made parts and will want to test like for like using their own machines. This ccan create several duplications of expensive inspection labs which further inflates the price.
I have seen parts, not so much more complicated than a nut that require 3-4 pages of quality documentation, per part. riduculous.
Even deeper we go, during the course of a season, designs will evolve and a team, being a business will not want to overstock parts too heavily in case a design change is made and they are left with expensive, redundant stock. This will mean that parts are required on short lead times, and quite often in very small quantities for validation testing pushing prices even higher.
All of these will go out the window with a homologated nut, so yes, lets save money, but lets not throw the baby out with the bath water. We don't need to sacrifice High tech to achieve low cost and an F1 wheelnut will always be classified as 'Expensive' by the majority of the population.
riff_raff wrote:Titanium is easily recycled. Heat treatable titanium alloys (like 6Al4V) sell for about $40/lb here in the U.S. A centerlock wheel nut would start with a chunk of bar weighing about 2 lbs, which would cost about $80(US). The problem with titanium screw threads is that titanium has a very nasty habit of galling and seizing. I'm sure that if a titanium wheel nut is threaded onto a titanium (or even steel) axel, it is likely coated very liberally with some sort of anti-seize like nickel grease paste or moly-disulfide DFL. Aerospace titanium fasteners also use cetyl-alchohol.
Back in the early '90s when I worked for an IMSA GTP race team, our centerlock wheel nuts were made by BBS and were anodized aluminum.
Is there a reason that these $78 usd wheel nuts are unacceptable for F1?
What about the special wheel nuts that hold the front wheel fairings? I'm sure that they are more weighty than a standard nut due to their much taller nature, so apparently unsprung weight can't be THAT bad, or else they wouldn't be using them in the first place...
Conceptual wrote:
Is there a reason that these $78 usd wheel nuts are unacceptable for F1?
I remember on one of those inside f1 shows someone talking about the advantages of the current f1 wheel nuts, back of my head says it was Berger. I remember him saying they had quantified that timewise it was worth it as the wheelman didn't have to waste time making sure the nut was properly aligned, so the multiteeth type was better down the road. I'm sure he indicated the multiteeth type were already being used on another series so F1 just borrowed it. I can only imagine that once refueling gets banned this will gain even more relevance
Centerlock wheel nuts are single start threads. But the threads are opposite handed for each side of the car so that the rotational precession effect will always tend to tighten it.
The first thread leading edge is also carefully beveled so that it minimizes the chance for cross threading when being installed during a hectic pitstop.
The socket design used for some of the impact guns is also very clever. The socket has a set of "fingers" that engage special pockets in the wheel nut no matter how the nut is oriented when the car stops in the pits. This design was originally developed in Champ Car and later adopted by some F1 teams.
"Q: How do you make a small fortune in racing?
A: Start with a large one!"
Here's another. The centre pin is used to lock the nut to the hub. According to the FSAE forum (thanks!) the anodised pin is pushed in by the gun releasing the locking mechanism then pulled out by the mechanic after successfully fitting the wheel. This mechanism is/was mandated for safety reasons. A quicker version of putting a spring clip through then!
2006 BMW detail.
The pictures of this years Toyota nuts (which I can't figure out how to upload) don't feature this locking mechanism. Strange, a backward step for safety, or perhaps they have got around it some other way?
http://scarbsf1.com/testing_2003/pict0151.jpg
Nuts!, testing 1,2.
ScarbsF1 that can't be a coincidence? I pulled these off of a google image search Sir, if you are out there. I hope you don't mind. Many thanks.
Great picture Terry. That Williams nut is to the best of my understanding cast to begin with, most probably with lost-wax method including some centrifugal aid.
"I spent most of my money on wine and women...I wasted the rest"
