Carbon fiber tubing landing gear?

[Scott Richlen]

Has anyone tried to replace music wire with carbon fiber tubing in their landing gear?  What if you used music wire for the bent portions at both ends (for mounting the wheels and for where it goes into the gear blocks) and epoxied the music wire into a long piece of 1/8th i.d. carbon fiber tubing for the "leg" of the gear?

[Scott Richlen]

Ty:

Most aluminum and molded carbon fiber gear for fuselage mounting are too narrow to my liking so I'd like to design my own (plus, a lot of them look like Ugly Stik RC gear: tall, clunky, and narrow.)  I don't want to go to the extent of molding my own and when I make one of music wire it is pretty heavy, so yes, weight saving too.

I'm thinking JB Weld the music wire into the carbon fiber tube and wrap ends with kevlar so it won't split.

[Air Ministry .]

Dia. Vs Drag ? .

Dunno if you have the chinese ? stuff there like in Aus . Dull matt black - even texture . ( probly dye ) Definately not resin rich .
I had some 1/8 & 5/32 for Combat Wing trailing edges . . .

Fortunately I cut a bit for something else , or bent one . Or something .

Youd be better to use bamboo . This stuff spilts up like that but worse .
If your in a bad mood just squeeze it between finger & thumb .
Think I was trying to wrap a bit of sandpaper around it. Or something . 

ANYWAY , it splits , delaminates , and is cored severly off center . On the small stuff .

So youd be wise to ' handle ' it beforeehand to see if its trash .

However , Carbon fishing rod stuff , from ' the Factory ' Is REAL Carbon & resin rich . But tapered . So you can select a size along it .
You may need two rods , and dunno if tapered pushrods will catch on . Likely fairly usefull on something skinny aft .

[Brad LaPointe]

The trash can at the local combat field will yield a surprising amount of carbon fibre rod . Watch out for the splinters . Most combat models use carbon rods for trailing edges these days.

Brad

[Dennis Toth]

Has anyone tried to heat bend the carbon fiber rod to the LG shape and then just mounted it like you would a wire gear? You likely need a very high industrial heat gun that has a focus nozzle to heat only the area you want to bend and not the whole length. I tried with a MonoKote heat gun and could not get enough heat.

Best,     DennisT

[Curare]

I've done it on park flyers, and it worked OK, but realistically, it didn't save weight. I use 3mm pulltruded tube, and 1.6mm wire, and bound the ends to stop it fraying.

I don't know how pulltruded tube would go on largder aircraft, but I do recall the 150cc IMAC yaks using a woven roving tube with a CNC alloy end for their landing gear, so it works at the upper and lower echelons, it surely would work in the midranges, it will just need some engineering applied to it.

[John Lindberg]

Did you try glue dots? 

[bob whitney]

Has anyone tried to replace music wire with carbon fiber tubing in their landing gear?  What if you used music wire for the bent portions at both ends (for mounting the wheels and for where it goes into the gear blocks) and epoxied the music wire into a long piece of 1/8th i.d. carbon fiber tubing for the "leg" of the gear?

send me an email (f2cracer@aol.com ) and I will send u a couple of pictures of the carbon gear I make.

it got tested last month with a belly flop out of the clover leaf  ( 70 oz plane ) and it didn't break.

[Steve Helmick]

Howard Rush and Bruce Perry have made their own CF LG. Howard spent $$$$$ for a CNC'd aluminum mold, while Bruce devised a clever (IMO) mold fabricated up out of plywood pieces. Bravo, Bruce! Both put a hump for the pipe. Howard used CF tube for the axles, but found he had to sleeve the CF tubing. A washer and small homemade hitch pin retains the wheel. Bruce flies on a public schoolyard, so I'm not sure the CF tube axles would work, or what he uses. My "OPP" SV-11 has a Randy Aero CF LG (Mejzlick?) and uses DuBro (or similar) 1/8" dia. bolt-on axles. I think they are a pretty heavy solution, but they did survive an experiment much like Rad Racer's...a very hard smack on concrete at the bottom of the 2nd triangle on a windy day.    Steve