milling slots in cranks to lighten them

BITD I remember milling some slots on the insides of my XT cranks to lighten them, but I haven't seen any in ages. I wasn't the only one who had done it, many in the local MTB club had done the same. None of us broke them, but I was about 3 stone lighter then.

Is anyone riding milled out cranks still?

I just brought another cannondale and the XT brake levers have a slot milled in the handle bar clamp which was another weight weenie trick.
 
I personally milled 12mm slots along my 93 xt crank arms and they were lighter,looked cooler and never failed.Only reason it wasnt done commercially was time and tooling costs.I also skimmed a carbide cutter(took 5 minutes setting up and 20 minutes machining) over a set of 95 LX cranks and they looked super trick,identical to big buck cnc exotica.People paid well for an hours work on a mill/lathe I was a busy boy back then :)
 
Most cranks are forged and it wouldn't be difficult at all to design the tooling to stamp hollows, recesses etc to save weight. I would suspect fears over litigation are the motivation for not doing so - better to have an ounce too much metal than an ounce too little if you don't want the families of the dead suing you.
 
littleblackflash":2hfc1tcr said:
I just brought another cannondale and the XT brake levers have a slot milled in the handle bar clamp which was another weight weenie trick.

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WD :D
 
Yes, I rember lots of the then 'new' low pro LX cranks being polished and drilled to within an inch of their lives. Big in the 1970's too with road parts

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You mean like these ?
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The cranks on this were milled away quite a bit
P1020518.jpg


As we're most other bits

P1020520.jpg
 
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