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[POC] Twin beam suspension with drive and steering
Zerobricks posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
After watching some youtube videos I noticed some trucks had some weird suspension on them... It looked something like this: So naturally I started investigating and found that this is a type of setup called a twin beam suspension. So I tried to replicate one in Lego. To explain the concept behind this hybrid, here's a series of stages leading from live axle suspension to the double beam setup: In order: Yellow setup is a live axle Red setup represent the change from dependent suspesnion to independent suspension By extending the half axle lengths (blue) we get a lower change in wheel angle relative to the drive surface (camber) And finally by extending the swing arms PASS the center point we get a double beam suspension And here's a version with drive and steering: So what are the advantages compared to the live axle? - Its independent, which as name suggest aloows the wheel to work independent from each other - Lower unsprung weight - Less moving parts - to keep a live axle in place you need several linkages. Here the axle pivots around one central point And disadvantages? - Complex design, the axles have to be made to travel pass each other without interfering. - A need for a CV joint which needs to allow the axle to slide in and out - Not as robust - Hard to implement portal gears without making the wheels slide sideways excessively - Camber changes are still present I also made a video explanation of the principe. You can skip to 4:30 to see the final version in action: So the final question. Is it useful? Fo me as far as the Lego version goes....no. The disadvantages outweigh any possible advantages. Also lately I have been working a lot on long travel double wishbone suspension which outperform any other previous suspension system in almost all categories. The only usefulness in this design I see is realism, if you are building a replica of a truck that has such suspnesion. Because I want to hear your opinion, here's the LDD link to the suspension, so you can try to make your version and improve upon my prototype: Download prototype here