Heatsink

Hi, I think that heatsinkbikes.com is essential on there, and the "www" part is maybe not essential. Optional whether you what to put HEATSINK and also seperate text for the URL, but the URL shouldn't be too small to be difficult to read! Designing with bike stickers and T-shirt designs in mind is the way to go. These may be two different things! For example, for bike stickers there's the profile of tubing to bare in mind, so long shaped stickers will maximise the visibility for seat stays or up/down tubes. On the other hand you have more freedom with Tee space <_< I'm hoping to wrap the comp up by the coming weekend, Sunday 18th of Sept. I've been getting some sticker quotes and it's now certain that 1 or more of the winners will see their designs immortalised on stickers and maybe Tees, and I'd like to feature them in a gallery section of my site, plugging the designers! Still plenty of time to get your entries in :unsure: Steve

Here you go... If the floating "Text box" toolbar doesn't appear when the box is selected, then right click on the blank grey top area, and turn it on. Then just highlight the text and clcik the icon on the far right with the A and the arrows until the correct orientation appears. This is in windows XP - it may be different for other versions of Word Steve

These two stand out :ermm: There are plenty more good ones too. I guess that if you can put your finger on why these work well, then making one to rival them won't be as hard :huh: Steve

Wow! Things are really hotting up now :ermm: It's good to see the amusing multi-colour ones too, even if I can't use them for Tees etc - it's all good! Just thought I'd post another font site that Mrs Heatsink found: http://simplythebest.net/fonts/ And there's also: dafont.com Keep up the great work and the tweaking :huh: Steve

The closing date won't be before the 16th of Sept (Next Friday)- Give you all some more time :(

Yep its Cal (Y)

Well its always nice to be first (Y)

I managed 40 in a test a gym were running in the local shopping centre. I'm very impressed if anyone can do another twenty on top of this without a single pause! Typically, when I was keeping fit for Judo, I'd do sets of 20 with a pause to recover, get the lactic acid out of the muscles. In this way with pauses it's possible to link together a few sets of 20 before fatigue kicks in, but doing them all in one is tough! As people have said, then you can vary hand position and also prop you feet on the bed etc to work out in different ways. I got a ring from the gym last night telling me I'd won temporary membership because I'd had the highest score in my age group (I'm 29) Just wondering whether to actually bother taking it up - I'm not really into gyms! Steve

Hi Mrs Heatsink here (Y) and I thought I would have a go at the logo so here goes..... :"> Sorry if the image does not show (Y)

How many full pull ups are we talking? 20+?

I was waffling on about this in the happy thread and it got me thinking. We're mostly fit chap & chapesses, with trials developing upper body strength in particular: How many press-ups can you do? They have to be proper ones! Steve

There's still plenty of mileage in the PC Heatsink themes - Nice one :P My first logo was based on the gold Heatsink I had as an avatar for about 2 years. The key thing is to find a way for it to work in minimal amounts of colours (e.g. 1 if possible!) For reference, here's the original logo by Ally Sopp: I had the heatsink simplified down to two colours with Tee shirt printing in mind, leaving the logo as black/white/orange/yellow. By having it printed on yellow Tees, it meant I only needed to have 3 print colours (3 screens made at £20 each) The £60 for screens plus the 3 prints required for each Tee meant that the logo still wasn't print friendly since they turned out too expensive to make. Hence, it has to be 1 colour really :huh: Keep up the good work ! Steve

Hi Tom! Unfortunately the replacement Vee pads seem to be lost in the post (I should have notified you they were sent so that the alarm bells could have started ringing a couple of weeks earlier) but replacements are on their way to you now as discussed via PM :) Thanks for your paitience with this! At the moment I'm making some improvements specifically to the Vees. All those who have experienced the same issue have been compensated by a straight swap for new pads with some free refills thrown in for the inconvenience :) There have been no instances that I know of the white Vee pads (5mm thick and harder material) coming loose. By trying to explore improving these further (giving better value, going for theoretically better grip) this has put some more challenges down to the glueing, and if they can't be resolved then we can simply revert to the previous set-up. The very generous pad thickness (8mm) has a couple of downsides for the Vee pads: 1. Slightly increased softness at the lever 2. Increased leverage trying to tear the pad from the backing Also the red pads are slightly softer than the hand made white pads - softer means grippier, but also allows local deformation and so increased tearing, which glue isn't strong rather than shearing where it works well. I've recently tried an array of improvements to the glueing, involving an number of glues, also high temperature curing in conjuction with various priming methods for the surfaces. I've been hoping that I can create a resilient enough bond so that a 8mm pad of the red pad softness can be run should required. I've still got some in testing at the moment to see whether these glueing improvements are doing the job, and the back up is I'am presently working on a new mould tool dedicated to Vee pads so that a tailored slimmer geometry can be produced rather than having to grind back the 8mm maggie pads. Having lost half the skin on my hand last night on the belt sander, it will indeed be great to have pads ready to go at a height where the tearing forces are of a sufficiently lower magnitude. For the magura versions, glueing is a much easier proposition. The materials involved, plastic backing to pad, are much friendly to getting a great bond. Presently the glueing of these is the best it's ever been. The most recent pads have the voids either side of the pad filled (to prevent moisture ingress), plus both the pad and backing have been painstakingly degreased, primed and then glued with the best performing glue. If anyone else has experienced issues with their Vees coming loose, as always, you know that my renowned support is there to more than put it right :) Don't hesitate to get in contact. Steve

I find biking is a great way to bring otherwise boring* engineering stuff to life. I've certainly grasped in a more thorough way, fundamental concepts and engineering practises since spending more time cogitating on them in a Trials setting. I guess it's only natural that since Trials bikes tend to be custom built bikes, there is also need to learn workshop skills such as use of tools etc, and as the bike components break (!) a greater understanding of how to set it up also develops. Certain questions are posed about the advantages of certain components over others, and with a bit of research some proper engineering understanding develops. If I'd have got into Trials more during my years studying for my degree in Mechanical Engineering + French (completed in 2000) then it would have been even more useful! Steve * in other applications

Hi Mark, At the moment Mat Hudson (who I think rides with you) is testing a variety of pad compounds for me in Vee backings, in conjunction with alternative glueing processes. Please don't read too much into some of these unsuccessful explorations - it's all part of the process of striving to test as thoroughly as humanely possible :) Steve

To clear up confusion: When printing you have the colour given by the media you print on (background) and then the logo should be in one colour on this. The logo should be in one colour so it's affordable to print because for example, when screen printing, for each colour a screen has to be made up at £20. Then there's the additional cost of performing each print as well. This all adds up so before you know it the price of your Tees/bike stickers has doubled! KISS is indeed the key :) You'll notice that most logos are very printing friendly by only being in the one colour and working on whatever background colour required. Think of Selectbikes, Tartybikes, Fluid23 etc. In this way for, you can produce black text on clear background stickers for all bike frame colours except black, and say, a version which is white logo on clear or white background for black bikes. Keep up the good work! Steve

Please post submissions on here >_< If a couple of peeps work together on a logo, and it turns out that I'd like to use it, I'm sure we can wrangle pairs of pads to go around. Steve

Hi, I thought this might be the best place on the forum, logos being pics, or rather graphics >_< Task I was thinking it would be cool to look for some fresh alternative Heatsink Bikes logos. Being rubbish in the Art department, I definately need some help! I like my current one, as shown on my site, but it could be cool to have a few others too. These could make it onto futher stickers or even clothing, which would be rather cool for the designer (Y) Ideally they should be one colour (on a second background colour if need be) This will make it actuallly affordable to get printed - A lesson I learnt the hard way with the really nice logo eleophee (sp!) did for me, as featured on my Tees, Cracking logo, but expensive to have printed because of the 4 colours. Prizes By way of a prize, any that I choose to use (could be more than one) will win some of the Red pads for smooth rims that I've just made available at £10 a pair. These pads are great on the rear if you don't grind your rim, or on the front if like me you have a ground rear rim but smooth front one. As an additional prize, for one preferred logo I will let them have a voucher for one of my new 4 bolt boosters at 1/2 price (RRP is £25, so only £12.50!) when these boosters are available around the 9th of Sept. I might be even more generous and add to this prize fund as the comp pads out... we'll see! ^ Prize for Logos used - Pads for smooth rims ^ Overall winner, Pads + 1/2 off this booster I might run the comp for around a week, or maybe more depending on the entries! More info as and when. Looking forward to seeing your submissions ;) Steve

I'll measure my Ard guard tonight ;) Got hold of a Middleburn bash and was thinking of taking the spider & Ard guard set-up off to exchange it for the thicker bash (something different!). Then I realised how much heavier the Middleburn set-up is and couldn't justify fitting it when my Ard guard is quite happy with the abuse it gets. There aren't many places you can still buy them are there? I should get some photos up when I get some new bike photos taken! Steve

Hi there! Great Clips there Luke! It's great to see the pads being put through their paces so well :P I've got a quite a few pairs of blue pads out there being tested - I'd love to hear more back from the other riders on their wear life and grip. It would be great to build up a clearer picture as I consider which pads to finally release. So blue pad riders (I've losts tabs on everyone who has them now!) - Please email me with your feedback (grip, life etc, giving rim used, whether ground): steve@heatsinkbikes.com Cheers, Steve

www.heatsinkbikes.com I could do with some more links to put up on my site too!

So you're thinking of putting an RB lever into a maggie body? It's pretty straight forward to work out what's going on, and you'll understand it all better if you manage it yourself. The basic principle is that you move the lever say 30mm with you finger, and the brake pad only needs to move by a couple of mm so the braking system does an exchange of reduced movement for increased force What you need to know: 1. Lever geometry Distance from finger position to pivot of lever, X Distance from cylinder pushing boss to pivot of lever, x Moment created = F x perpendicular distance = constant in lever fX = Fx (Small force from finger, usually 15N or so, large movement at extremity of lever GIVES Large force closer to pivot and smaller movement that pushes the master cylinder) Force multiplication that Master cylinder sees, F/f=X/x 2. Hydraulic System Diameter of master cylinder, D Diameter of slave cylinder, d Pressure is preserved in the system: Pin (master) = Pout (slave) Fin/Ain = Fout/ total Aout <-(both cylinder areas) (F, Force, A, Piston Area) So Force magnification (in exhange for reduced motion) is from the above equation rearranged. That's all you're getting from me, and that should keep you out for mischief for a while :( Steve P.S. The RB lever does give a bigger force to the master cylinder if you put one in a magura body. If you just want to know the compariso of a maggie lever/RB lever in a maggie body, just look at the lever ratio. Of course you can't just try and increase power by making increasingly longer levers without any downsides. It's always a game of compromises! The downside is that any squish in the pads will be magnified by the same force increase, so a squishier feeling at the lever. Also there's a point where your finger is having to pull too far - and there's only so far your finger can physically reach from the bar! These theoretical super long levers may feel uncomfortable, that's if you can actually reach them. Plus the feel will be less snappy because if you pull at the same speed, it'll take fractinally longer to pull the lever the extra distance to bring the brake on.

Here's how the scam works: Nigerian 419 Scam Remember if it looks too good to be true - it probabily is You don't get anything for free! Steve

If you've still discovering for the first time the variety of dodgy email scams and aren't sure, copy some of the text into GOOGLE. A sentence or so, and you'll soon have your answers and some pointers too how they work and on spotting them in the future :P Steve

Tescos and Elephant have been my choice for best value insurer in the last couple of years. I'm paying around £400 for a 1.3L '96 Fiesta, and I now have full no claims, wrangled because we transferred both cars to Elephant and they let me share Tracy's no claims status as a lure. Just working out what car to get next because the Fiesta's failed the MOT, has done over 100k, and has a catalog of bits on the way out once the corroded fuel pipes have been replaced to get through the test! Steve