Welded Spheres

[addo]

A handful of pictures. I paid about £100 to my local bike engineer, to sate my curiosity about the insides of these things.







What you see firstly, is the base of the spheres. They have a lip which locates against the lower shell half inside the sphere; the outer perimeter is then automatically welded by two TIG tips at once - they rotate 180° opposed.

Note the different through holes - the small holes are XM Hydractive, the larger ones Xantia non-Hydractive.

On the "face" side we turned off the swaging to release the damping blocks. As per adjustable damper spheres, there are a variety of washer configurations. Without pulling one right apart, it appears the fluid passages may also vary in diameter.

[addo]

To further address the question of "Why spend a hundred squid on dead spheres?" I intend to tap a couple for pressure gauges; one way of assessing system pressure leakages, and also to ultimately make a suite of adjustable stops for Dees and rear struts generally with hardwearing polymer snubbers backed by adjustable length 12mm threaded bar via a tapped thread and external locknuts.

[CitroJim]

Did you see any way in which new diaphragms might be installed in these Adam?

[addo]

I didn't specifically go looking for that. The sphere tops went to the pikeys.

Judging by the weld penetration, it would be 50/50 whether you could get the hemispheres separated without excessively weakening the join area. That is possibly a question for Mackie or JPAT as converter sectioning/rewelding isn't a million years away from sphere work. Ben did say upon machining these pieces, that the bead was noticeably harder than the two parts.

[CitroJim]

That is possibly a question for Mackie or JPAT as converter sectioning/rewelding isn't a million years away from sphere work.

That's exactly what I was thinking