Part 1: The lever saga (stock lever)
- Thread starter Goatkart
- Start date
Better is debatable, stronger less so...
Hardness is a direct correlation to resistance to plastic deformation..
Harder materials will almost always have higher tensile and yield strengths lower ductilities, higher modulus of elasticities, etc.
In fact, Iron for instance has a direct formula approximation between its hardness and tensile/yield strengths....
The brinell hardness scale actually has an associated tensile strength scale as well....
So by way of saying lever A is harder than lever B, lever A is almost guaranteed to have a larger tensile strength, etc. with few exceptions (though they do exist however, aluminum is not generally one of them)...
In regards to cycling failure....
Aluminum actually totally sucks when it comes to fatigue from cyclic loading.... This is why older planes have to be constantly checked for crack formations... The wings, fuselage, etc. are constantly stressed and relaxed over and over flight after flight...
Composites have in some respects gotten rid of many of these problems as many of them actually experience fatigue limits... (a point of stress where no matter how much you cycle it at the stress rate, the part will (in theory) never fail)
So yes, by looking at the material hardness, you can in effect decide which lever is "better"....
Functionally better, NO... material strength better... YES (with in certain reasonable limits)
Now, back to crunching data...
Grrrrr.
Ludicrous Speed
Registered
Chinese New Year was in February. The whole country pretty much shuts down for the celebration. For a good 2 or 3 weeks, nothing gets done.
moloko
Banned
That's ridiculous!
So, the BIG SURPRISE...
Sorry to say people, the chazzo's were a big FAIL....
The average hardness vickers value was only 95.19... with a standard deviation of 2.91.. (if this was a 6061 t6 i was testing for real, it would get a big ol NO PASS stamp, and further evaluation to see what the hell went wrong, as this is a SIGNIFICANT WTF as far as i am concerned)
WORSE THAN THE STOCK LEVER!!!!
This is why i retested all of the samples, because i couldnt believe my eyes!!
NOW BEFORE THE PAZZO BANDWAGON GETS GOING...
this actually has a few qualifiers...
First: while the average hardness value was lower than stock, the standard deviation actually keeps it in a range over all slightly better than stock... There were a signficant number of "outliers" in the stock lever both high and low, where as the chinese sample was fairly well uniform...
Second:
I have yet to establish WHY it was so low... If this is in fact a 6061 aluminum alloy, an obvious problem might be the heat treatment... a likely scenerio is that the foundry that did the treatment didnt do the hardening process correctly or completly, which would leave a similar alloy, significantly softer... A rush job if you will, or a poorly controlled furnace... maybe they left it in too long, or not long enough trying to produce large quantities...
THIS COULD BE FIXED.... depending on if the alloy was over or under aged, if under aged, it could be tossed into a 350 degree oven, left for 40 minutes, and you would have a part that was great... However, if it was overaged, then it would need to be normalised, and re-treated, which would require temperatures of over 800F... An oven most couldnt get ahold of...
It could also just be a total lie and not a 6061 alloy what so ever... SEM/EDS can discover this later on...
THIRD... ANY of these levers will actually work just fine... the stress being put on any lever is minor compared to their fracture or yield strengths... its more likely to have a failure from something else first... while the chinese lever is not as good of a material quality, it is certainly a superior design to that of the stock lever, and generally as good as the pazzo... so its actual strength is somewhere between the pazzo and stocker best guess...
An important thing to remember is, STRESS IS A FUNCTION OFTHE APPLIED FORCE DIVIDED BY CROSS SECTIONAL AREA...
that is, for an applied force, the larger its cross sectional area, the less stress it feels....
this is why if i gave you 1/2 inch steel rod, you would likely never bend it(by hand of course)... if i give you a 1/32 inch rod, you would likely make a curly cue....
then again, if i made it into a tempered martensite, you might not be able to bend either of them
However, thats because martensite has a hardness value MAGNITUDES higher than standard iron carbon steel...
Anyhow, the testing is moving on to phase two now if i get the chance, as i am horribly curious now whats going on with those chinese levers....
PERSONALLY....
I think its a personal choice as the chance of a chinese lever failing is similar to that of the stock lever if not likely less than that.. recalling again the chinese levers actually have a superior design in regards to strength reinforcement... they are copies of pazzos in most ways after all... (except apparently in strength!!) Do i think that pazzo justifies their expense.... MMMM no... the over all appearance, and functional quality compared to a pazzo was nearly identical... the difference in material qualities, will likely never come into play for anyone my guess... The force being applied to a lever to compress the hydraulics is quite small, and as some of you recall, RusselJ and Blanca both gave them a physical once over hahaha...
So, last bit, i think ill try and get to heat treatments next week if i can get time with a furnace, as it will take a few hours worth of time....
Precipitation hardening will take about 2-3 hours depending, and normalising it an hour or two ISH....
ALSO, sem testing to come yet as well...
LET THE CONTROVERSY BEGIN!
ALSO, for those interested, i took some shots with the black chrome upper fairing pieces test fit.... reviewing those next LOL
Sorry to say people, the chazzo's were a big FAIL....
The average hardness vickers value was only 95.19... with a standard deviation of 2.91.. (if this was a 6061 t6 i was testing for real, it would get a big ol NO PASS stamp, and further evaluation to see what the hell went wrong, as this is a SIGNIFICANT WTF as far as i am concerned)
WORSE THAN THE STOCK LEVER!!!!
This is why i retested all of the samples, because i couldnt believe my eyes!!
NOW BEFORE THE PAZZO BANDWAGON GETS GOING...
this actually has a few qualifiers...
First: while the average hardness value was lower than stock, the standard deviation actually keeps it in a range over all slightly better than stock... There were a signficant number of "outliers" in the stock lever both high and low, where as the chinese sample was fairly well uniform...
Second:
I have yet to establish WHY it was so low... If this is in fact a 6061 aluminum alloy, an obvious problem might be the heat treatment... a likely scenerio is that the foundry that did the treatment didnt do the hardening process correctly or completly, which would leave a similar alloy, significantly softer... A rush job if you will, or a poorly controlled furnace... maybe they left it in too long, or not long enough trying to produce large quantities...
THIS COULD BE FIXED.... depending on if the alloy was over or under aged, if under aged, it could be tossed into a 350 degree oven, left for 40 minutes, and you would have a part that was great... However, if it was overaged, then it would need to be normalised, and re-treated, which would require temperatures of over 800F... An oven most couldnt get ahold of...
It could also just be a total lie and not a 6061 alloy what so ever... SEM/EDS can discover this later on...
THIRD... ANY of these levers will actually work just fine... the stress being put on any lever is minor compared to their fracture or yield strengths... its more likely to have a failure from something else first... while the chinese lever is not as good of a material quality, it is certainly a superior design to that of the stock lever, and generally as good as the pazzo... so its actual strength is somewhere between the pazzo and stocker best guess...
An important thing to remember is, STRESS IS A FUNCTION OFTHE APPLIED FORCE DIVIDED BY CROSS SECTIONAL AREA...
that is, for an applied force, the larger its cross sectional area, the less stress it feels....
this is why if i gave you 1/2 inch steel rod, you would likely never bend it(by hand of course)... if i give you a 1/32 inch rod, you would likely make a curly cue....
then again, if i made it into a tempered martensite, you might not be able to bend either of them
However, thats because martensite has a hardness value MAGNITUDES higher than standard iron carbon steel...
Anyhow, the testing is moving on to phase two now if i get the chance, as i am horribly curious now whats going on with those chinese levers....
PERSONALLY....
I think its a personal choice as the chance of a chinese lever failing is similar to that of the stock lever if not likely less than that.. recalling again the chinese levers actually have a superior design in regards to strength reinforcement... they are copies of pazzos in most ways after all... (except apparently in strength!!) Do i think that pazzo justifies their expense.... MMMM no... the over all appearance, and functional quality compared to a pazzo was nearly identical... the difference in material qualities, will likely never come into play for anyone my guess... The force being applied to a lever to compress the hydraulics is quite small, and as some of you recall, RusselJ and Blanca both gave them a physical once over hahaha...
So, last bit, i think ill try and get to heat treatments next week if i can get time with a furnace, as it will take a few hours worth of time....
Precipitation hardening will take about 2-3 hours depending, and normalising it an hour or two ISH....
ALSO, sem testing to come yet as well...
LET THE CONTROVERSY BEGIN!
ALSO, for those interested, i took some shots with the black chrome upper fairing pieces test fit.... reviewing those next LOL
Well and Wow !
Does anyone elses head hurt from reading Goatkarts posts ?
Cool test and results, thanks.
Well and Wow !
Does anyone elses head hurt from reading Goatkarts posts ?
Cool test and results, thanks.
Yeah, i skipped the grammar and punctuation trying to get to the point quickly....
Looks like i failed on both
Yeah regardless i still like it over the stock and it was cheap and is not going to break unless i crash which i dont expect anything to not break if i crash so therefore i still stick with the chazzos! 
If you do find its the heat treatment Ill throw my chazzos in the oven and cook em for a bit
If you do find its the heat treatment Ill throw my chazzos in the oven and cook em for a bit
If i can come up with a viable home remedy heat treatment, i will absolutly post step by step home instructions...
all you will need is a kitchen timer and good oven that can hold temp well...
Unfortunatly if it requires re-normalizing the aluminum, then heat treatment, home ovens LIKELY wont have enough ooomph to get it done, and a redneck torch job is just not accurate enough ....
Time (and experiments) will tell.. hopefull i dont run out of materials!
Cool. and thanks again for all of this!
My guess is they are a slight cheaper grade of aluminum but i may be wrong. I could see those chinese people whipping them in and out of the ovens too quick. Hell thats what they do to the nasty food they serve in the chow hall....
I've enjoyed the read, Goatkart. It brought back memories from when I used to do Brinell hardness testing at a grey iron foundry years ago. The machine wasn't nearly as nice, but it was effective...and pretty cool when an odd-shaped part would shoot out of it with several thousand p.s.i. of pressure motivating it.
Unless, of course, it was headed my direction.
LOL! thats why i prefere the microhardness testing... smaller scales, smaller loads...
only projectiles that fly at my head are when im polishing metalographic samples, and loose my grip on the sample, they go shooting out of my hand and bounce around for a bit... always a bit exciting, well, compared to polishing metal... hahaha..
cool, even though none of the levers will ever have any physical fault, maybe pazzo could lower their cost if they didnt use material that followed cert. prob not, but i know out here there was a run of indian pipe that swole a foot in diameter under hydro, causing alot of problems to say the least. this pipe cost half as much as the german and canadian pipe, and was 50% to 100% thicker than the german and canadian we had. maybe if the knockoffs and the originals used the same material the prices would be somewhat closer.
did you find any inclusions in any of the levers?
did you find any inclusions in any of the levers?
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