Thanks for your help, pretty much put aluminium out of the question. Might start with a steel lug build and then go from there. The issue with Ti is that with the welding process it doesn't react well to oxygen so you usually have to create a atmosphere around it with neon gas to get a good quality weld. That's why it's more suited to smaller production and not so viable for mass production cycles and Ti isn't the cheapest.

I'm drawing it up on solidworks, I'll do a full assembly with FEA to optimise it. Try and get some weight down and see how we go. At least I can't braise and MIG weld at home and would have to outsource it.

I'm doing mechanical engineering at uni, 4th year but I don't want to be just a desk jockey and I believe if I'm asking a trades person to make something I should have some understand and knowledge of how to manufacture it myself so I try and increase my skills that way too (lathe, welding, braise, milling machine ect)