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Erickson Bottom Bracket
This B/B is now subject to recall


ERICKSON TITANIUM BOTTOM BRACKET

The Erickson Ti B/B is what we refer to as a "fixed length spindle with Dual adjustable cups" design. Erickson has tried another approach to stiffening the Titanium spindle against its intrinsic flexing characteristic. The method is similar to the Boone and Sampson design which use an over sized center or core.

Both the Boone and Sampson designs start with an oversized billet in rod form and cut flutes accross it to reduce weight. The Erickson approach differs by bulging the core area. The Ti is drilled through to reduce weight with an outer diameter of 17mm. Equidistant from each end the the diameter increaces sharply to 28.6mm. The angle at its base of the rise is 90 degrees making a shoulder for the sealed bearing cartridge to butt against.

The "core" area of increased diameter has a somewhat thinner wall that "rings" when tapped. The core piece is said to be made of Ti 3Al 2.5V tubing that is "sonic" welded to the spindle ends which are machined from Ti 6AL 4V rod stock. The cups are machined from aluminum rod with a channel cut at the spindle exiit point that seats an O-ring to prevent contamination of the interior.

Each of the Japanese IJK 6902RS sealed bearing cartridges are machine pressed into their Black anodized cup. Once the drive side cup is installed, an included tight fitting water sleeve is pushed from the left side into the bearing cup. Next the spindle is sidled into place and the left cup is installed. Erickson has drilled the outer face of each cup so the Park BBT-2 tool can be used to tighten the cup in place.

Lockrings machined from 3.6mm thick aluminum plate are used to cinch the cup in place. Each of the lockrings has six equi-distant square notches for a lockring spanner to grip and tighten. A tube of Finish Line Ti Prep is included to be used as thread compound. Unlike other makers, the cups on the B/B are not marked left and right. The Erickson B/B comes with very detailed instructions that tell you half way through to notice which cup came off what side out of the box relative to a marking on the spindle which is covered by the water sleeve. Most people will already have taken the parts off the spindle long before they read the directions.

The Erickson comes with spindle lengths of 103mm, 107mm, 113mm, 116mm, 122mm, or 127mm. The B/B can come for 68mm shell in English threads or a 70mm shell width for Italian threads. It does not come with crank bolts. The 133 x 68mm version weighs 139 grams

Spindle Length-03-07-13-16-22-27/Thread -E -I $Price in Catalog





In-depth Information About Metals

Aluminum
Aluminum is extracted electrolytically from bauxite ore. It is made by the electrolysis of aluminum oxide which is found in larger concentrations within bauxite ore. Bauxite is a mixture of the hydroxides of aluminum, together with other impurities such as oxides of iron, titanium, and silicon. Bauxite is produced by the weathering and change of aluminum silicate rocks usually found in tropical and semitropical regions where climate has produced an accelerated weathering process. Bauxite is not a rare ore and is widely available in the US, the Caribbean, and Europe. Approximately 4 pounds of read the full article...

Beryllium
Beryllium is a specialty metal that is steel-grey metal in color, with an extremely low density, making it very light weight. At 1.85 grams to the cubic centimeter, its density compares to that of magnesium. It is also a high strength metal, making it possible to design light weight, thin membered parts with ahigh stiffness. A column made of beryllium to support a load placed directly downward on top of it, will have a greater load carrying capacity, and be lower in weight than any other metal of equal size.

Until the 1950's beryllium was used read the full article...

Titanium
The element titanium was discovered in 1763 by an English cleric, William Gregor who was an amateur chemist with an inquiring mind. It was in the black sands of Cornwall that he discovered the new element that had up to that time, attracted little scientific interest. A few years later, an Austrian, Klaproth, extracted the same element from an ore widely known as "rutile", which is a mineral consisting of titanium dioxide (one titanium atom, two oxygen atoms), that is a reddish-brown substance with a slight metallic luster. While rutile is the highest grade read the full article...

Metallurgic Hardness Testing
There are three types of tests used with accuracy by the metals industry,they are the Brinell hardness test, the Rockwell hardness test, and the Vickers hardness test. Hardness is the property of a metal which gives it the ability to resist being permanently deformed (bent, broken, or have its shape changed), when a load is applied. The greater the hardness of the metal, the greater resistance it has to deformation. Since the definitions of metallurgic ultimate strength and hardness are rather similar, it can generally be assumed read the full article...


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