This post seems to me the design of a working prototype made.
kayaker43:
I can’t find, but have heard of another Amp fork and a cannondale headshock adaptation. The Amp fork was and probably still is the lightest mountain bike suspension fork. I still have a longer travel Amp F4 BLT with 4 inches of travel, but that may be too much?
I think the big area of potential benefit would be downhill Muni, like what KH and the Santa Barbara guys do.
These drawbacks are what I think stoped any real development. and to have the nessesary strength it’d weigh like 25 lbs, even if you figured out the drive problems. The big challenge is the thousands of dollars and time it would take to develop a prototype.
These are the designs w/ what I think have the most potential.
Hey everyone! I found out how it would be possible make a shocked wheel unicycle that would never have ANY play when you pedal it! I don’t think I can make cool renders to show it off, but here is a blue print type thingy:
[info.jpg]
here is my leafspring uni design, seems good to me, but i am no engineer. have 4 semi-circle metal “spokes” which would move and each be independently attached to the hub and rim, do you think it could work? excuse my sh*t design work.
uniwheel leafspring.bmp (563 KB)
(if the wind up problem can be fixed/made negligible as John Childs said in post 151)
I apologize for bringing this long thread up again, but I missed it last time and want to make a few points.
A quick summary of what has been said: people want to make unis with the suspension built into the wheel.
the basic Idea is clearly shown in the first diagram, and just looking at the other pics pretty much tells the whole story as to what’s been said so far.
As far as the whole parralellogram idea goes, I think the first idea without the parralellogram would work just fine, depending …
Here are a few of the key ideas:
The sub-rim/spokes/conventional rim structure is light, stiff and allows a wheel to be built with any rim/tire combination.
The shock/spring mechanisms are as tangential as possible so that they resist rotational motions well and radial motions poorly.
The pivots and shock/spring mechanisms would be designed to resist lateral motions as much as possible to keep the wheel rotating in a plane centered on and perpendicular to the hub axis.
Thoughts?
[…
I already had an idea of doing what Cyberbellum did. Good idea putting the spokes on the outside of the suspension. But I still like my parallelogram design which would eliminate windup, while his would only minimize it. Putting them at a tanget to the hub is a good idea though, if that design were to be used.
John, I will think about putting the wheel on a seperate suspension from the pedals.
[prototype3.jpg]
Here is what i mean. It would work like an A-arm. The parallelogram is hinged at all 4 corners. And would of course still telescope, i just didn’t model that.
[prototype1parallelogram.jpg]
About a minute www.worley.com for rendering.
Technically I think it still needs a few struts or something to help distribute the pressure that would be going straight into those rim hinges, definitely a few more spokes too (see latest render). I kinda think it’d work. I look at it as if the gazza is for absorbing the tree roots etc. and the suspension for absorbing drops, so the whole rotation thing wouldn’t be a prob, simply adjust the suspension to be t…
Maybee one of the major uni manufacturers can team up w/ a MTB maker who has the testing equipment, experience and resources to develop one.