New category-"Let's Try This"

[oldpotatoe]

carbon tubes in titanium lugs...??Nope.....opposites attract opposites(?)

I donno..
Made from titanium tubes bonded to composite lugs, the AllRoad Titanium gravel bike was built up using a selection of parts from Hope.
This process is almost the opposite of the bikes made by Bastion Cycles, which use carbon tubes bonded to 3D printed titanium lugs.

:eek:

https://www.bikeradar.com/news/caminade-allroad-gravel-bike/

[GScot]

carbon tubes in titanium lugs...??Nope.....opposites attract opposites(?)

I donno..



:eek:

https://www.bikeradar.com/news/caminade-allroad-gravel-bike/


I donno.. is the perfect response for that. Seems gimmick oriented. Injection molded lugs is viable for strength but limits lug selection to molds available. So custom tube shape or size is out. With a brazed lug you could tweak the angles using a loose interface and filler material, not sure about the bonding agent here. More likely that it requires a tight fit and thin section for max strength.

The opposite approach with a printed lug seems better. Unlimited choice of angles and sizes that way.

[pdonk]

Feska, does this too

https://festka.com/doppler

Blacksmith has one in and it looks nice.

[cash05458]

yeah, but will it do gravel? how about discs? space for motors in there? can it fit 55mm tires? I want specialization...:)

[vincenz]

Always been skeptical of mixed material frames. They don’t do a single thing well.

If wanting to get one for uniqueness or aesthetics though, that’s cool.

[Vientomas]

"Caminade says the lugs enable it to offer custom geometry and compete on price with Asian based manufacturers, while still manufacturing as much of the bike as possible in Europe."

[chiasticon]

the lugs LOOK 3D printed, but they claim otherwise. seems they took the approach of "it's easier to have someone make the lugs for us, and just glue the thing together, than it is to learn to weld titanium"

[Mike Lopez]

Always been skeptical of mixed material frames. They don’t do a single thing well.

If wanting to get one for uniqueness or aesthetics though, that’s cool.

Not to be snarky or begin an OT debate but a lot of folks here sure like their Ottrotts, Sevens, and Fireflys made with mixed materials. Just sayin...

Regarding OPs post involving polyamid lugs I sure hope there have been HUGE improvements in bonding to that particular thermoplastic. Traditionally it’s been problematic to achieve good structural properties. Easy enough to “stick” together in low load application. Will be interesting to see how these work over time.

Titanium to Gr/E bonding is proven technology and been used in intense structural applications for decades. Particularly aerospace.

Someone pointed out that Festka uses this methodology but I believe they’re using thermoset resin, epoxy, rather than thermoplastics. Much more reliable.

Perhaps something has changed and there’s a new vunderglue that works but I haven’t heard about. Not that that means anything. I’m not in that loop...

[mhespenheide]

I don't know about the engineering, so I'll refrain from commenting about that.

But it looks like the first-year efforts of an undergraduate design student. :help:

[simonov]

Always been skeptical of mixed material frames. They don’t do a single thing well.

If wanting to get one for uniqueness or aesthetics though, that’s cool.

Huh? My Ti/Carbon Firefly is an exceptional bike. It is comfortable and responsive and crazy light. It does everything well.

[benb]

The lugs could be machined for customization if the initial design takes that into account.

You could have a few molds for stock sizes and one for lugs which are intended for machining.

I can't remember who I saw doing it that way in the past. Some bike company.. I think their name started with S and was named after the founder.

I am kind of all in on the whole "who cares about mixed material bikes" though. IME it has little point other than getting companies on the carbon train at a lower manufacturing cost and/or making it possible for them to build something custom to check off Carbon Fiber without going out of business.

I feel like it is a technology of 2000-2010, not something for the 2020s really.

[bigbill]

I raced on Raleigh Techniums for two seasons, went through six frames and I was way more reasonably-sized bill back then. I'd hear a creak or the frame would feel odd in a sprint, and I'd find a failed joint (steel tube bonded to an aluminum lug). I'm sure the technology is better now.

Oh, and you don't have to butt tubing that isn't welded. The technium frames used thin wall steel tubing throughout. Still sucked.

[Mike Lopez]

The lugs could be machined for customization if the initial design takes that into account.

You could have a few molds for stock sizes and one for lugs which are intended for machining.

I can't remember who I saw doing it that way in the past. Some bike company.. I think their name started with S and was named after the founder.

I am kind of all in on the whole "who cares about mixed material bikes" though. IME it has little point other than getting companies on the carbon train at a lower manufacturing cost and/or making it possible for them to build something custom to check off Carbon Fiber without going out of business.

I feel like it is a technology of 2000-2010, not something for the 2020s really.

Fair enough if you're not into "old" technology. Actually dates back to the early '70s when my mentor Dick Kantner was building under the name of Graphite USA and others like Graftek Exxon etc were dabbling as well. Maybe even earlier if the fact checkers dig deep enough.

How do you feel about steel fabrication as a technology? Folks have been beating and soldering/welding it into shapes for an awful long time. How is that different?

Also. Regarding carbon fiber and going out of business. Are you suggesting a correlation between the S company, carbon, and their demise?

I'm not trying to troll you, if that's the proper term, just trying to understand.

No...really!!

[robt57]

Always been skeptical of mixed material frames.

I never saw any point nor benefit to adding bonding point VS welding points, be it Ti, Steel, or Alloy.

Back at the turn of the century I had a choice between last years Fuji Team Issue Scandium all Alloy welded by Teschner down under or a bonded/bolted seat stay version not.

The carbon stay not only had alloy to bonding, but at the bottoms the bonded point was bolted to the dropout instead of being bonded. That to was a lot of mechanical points instead of welding. Plus I wanted the little Roo on the seat tube, down under the WB fixing bolts there. ;)

Where Serotta OttRott's sexy, yep. Did I want one, no. I did have an early Six13, but only because it was given to me. Not that these or any had bonding issues, I did not want to be the one to find out after MSRP first on line purchases...

[mcteague]

Always been skeptical of mixed material frames. They don’t do a single thing well.

If wanting to get one for uniqueness or aesthetics though, that’s cool.

Which ones have you ridden? My Seven 622 SLX is the nicest bike I have had. Better than my all Ti Axiom and my old Merckx. Both the Axiom and 622 SLX were custom built for me. I was doubtful about mixing materials as well but trusted Seven Cycles knew what they were doing and it really looked cool. The only bike that temps me at this point is a Crumpton.

Tim

[benb]

Fair enough if you're not into "old" technology. Actually dates back to the early '70s when my mentor Dick Kantner was building under the name of Graphite USA and others like Graftek Exxon etc were dabbling as well. Maybe even earlier if the fact checkers dig deep enough.

How do you feel about steel fabrication as a technology? Folks have been beating and soldering/welding it into shapes for an awful long time. How is that different?

Also. Regarding carbon fiber and going out of business. Are you suggesting a correlation between the S company, carbon, and their demise?

I'm not trying to troll you, if that's the proper term, just trying to understand.

No...really!!

I know you're not trolling.

The difference between Carbon & steel/Ti whatever when it comes to small bicycle operations just seems to be custom Carbon seems to be very expensive to produce. The custom Carbon Serottas were pretty insane when they came out, very expensive.

It seems like a lot of the smaller companies do/did better when they stuck to metal and trying to compete with big Asian CF didn't work out that well.

I'm not saying Carbon fiber did in Serotta but I bet it was a factor, and they didn't seem to be the only company in their size range that CF seemed to be dangerous for. I kind of got the impression Seven started going down the same path and backed off. The mixed materials frames let them work to their strengths in a better way.

Also I kind of feel like CF became a fascination and everyone had to have it and a lot of people have moved past that at this point.

Dislaimer I have a Carbon Trek. But I'm not super attached to Carbon. I have a really modest Steel All-City as well, if/when I need to replace the Trek there won't be any mandatory thing for me where the replacement has to be Carbon.

[prototoast]

Looking at this from a different perspective, why should a frame be all the same material? People already pick and choose different materials in different places to optimize certain features. While many different materials have their own use cases, steel is rarely used for seatposts these days, titanium is rarely used for forks, even on bikes that are otherwise made of those materials. Welding introduces some limitations to what can be stuck together, but if you can get around that, why stick with just one? Titanium and carbon bond together well, so have some fun with it.

*disclaimer, the latest frame I built features titanium chainstays bonded to a carbon front triangle

[Mike Lopez]

I know you're not trolling.

The difference between Carbon & steel/Ti whatever when it comes to small bicycle operations just seems to be custom Carbon seems to be very expensive to produce. The custom Carbon Serottas were pretty insane when they came out, very expensive.

It seems like a lot of the smaller companies do/did better when they stuck to metal and trying to compete with big Asian CF didn't work out that well.

I'm not saying Carbon fiber did in Serotta but I bet it was a factor, and they didn't seem to be the only company in their size range that CF seemed to be dangerous for. I kind of got the impression Seven started going down the same path and backed off. The mixed materials frames let them work to their strengths in a better way.

Also I kind of feel like CF became a fascination and everyone had to have it and a lot of people have moved past that at this point.

Dislaimer I have a Carbon Trek. But I'm not super attached to Carbon. I have a really modest Steel All-City as well, if/when I need to replace the Trek there won't be any mandatory thing for me where the replacement has to be Carbon.

Thank you for understanding my intentions and for your well thought out replies to my questions. All very true.

There is in fact a high ante to sit at the table in carbon manufacturing. The materials can be expensive but not so much compared to Ti. The real cost is in the molds, bladders, hand labor for lay-up and finishing, plus all of the processing equipment. All hard to amortize with small volumes and US labor rates. Trust me....I've been at it 40 years now!

The pricing on the Meivici's was pretty high. I was still with Reynolds when that program began and I'm very familiar with the development costs as well as what they paid for the parts. My guess is that the sale price was based on the desire to payback the tooling/development costs quickly, what the market might bear at the time, and perhaps a bit of greed. They had recently spent a lot of money on the new guicci building, paint system, machine shop, mansion, etc. I kinda thought he was grooming it for sale to ABG or one of the other groups that were snatching up small brands at the time. If so the timing was poor cause that ship had sailed. Still had all the bills though.

Another thing that probably hurt both companies were the custom aero bikes. Too complicated and the designs were compromised by budgetary constraints. Just couldn't afford to do it better/right and they had a lot of paint cracks at the numerous joints. They didn't break but nobody likes to look down and see what appears to be cracks in their frame. Kinda like Treks...but they're big enough to suck it up.

I can't argue that the expense of maintaining a separate facility on the left coast added to the mix of problems. The thing is though, there was little choice. One by one they'd been fired from their other suppliers for lack of payment. Including Reynolds. Their next option was to work with Enve but the same thing would likely have happened soon leaving them out in the cold. You gotta pay your bills! Once you're in debtors prison its hard to work your way out if you can't get the materials to build product. The last ones hosed in that debacle, that I'm aware of, were myself and my main prepreg supplier. Fortunately I was forgiven by Newport because I had done literally millions of dollars of business with them when I was in the golf biz. 10k shafts a day at roughly 4 shafts per pound times an average cost of $30/lb = $75k per day. Some materials cost more, some less, but that's a lot of money on a daily basis and Newport got a good share of that business and thankfully they remembered it.

As you speculated the mixed material bikes are a lot cheaper/safer for small companies to manufacture. If you can make a frame then you can make lugs and buy straight gauge carbon tubes that are a somewhat inexpensive commodity at this point. Cheaper than Ti in most cases.

Don't know that everybody is over the carbon thing though. Perhaps just real expensive carbon.

I'm not over riding carbon but I'm a lifer and I build them. As I may have mentioned previously I haven't ridden a steel frame in decades but will be soon. Retro Robbie Roberson built me a frame last year and it's currently in the queue at JB's. Ok...maybe it won't be soon ;) but I'm really looking forward to riding it and experiencing all of the sensations I read about here on the forum so often. Who knows? Maybe I'll be a convert.

Thanks again for politely explaining your views!

[vincenz]

Huh? My Ti/Carbon Firefly is an exceptional bike. It is comfortable and responsive and crazy light. It does everything well.


I’m not saying these bikes cannot be good rides. I’m saying they can’t fully take advantage of the best qualities of a single material given that they inherently have two.

For example, the carbon-ti bike will never be as light as a fully carbon bike nor as durable as a fully ti bike.

I’m a purist, so. I’d rather be fully committed to one material to fully bring out the most of that one material.

Which ones have you ridden? My Seven 622 SLX is the nicest bike I have had. Better than my all Ti Axiom and my old Merckx. Both the Axiom and 622 SLX were custom built for me. I was doubtful about mixing materials as well but trusted Seven Cycles knew what they were doing and it really looked cool. The only bike that temps me at this point is a Crumpton.



Tim


I’ve not given my viewpoints as above.. I see them like hybrid bikes. I’d rather have a road or mountain bike, not an in-between.

[buddybikes]

Yes, least ends my thoughts:

1697992228

[robt57]

I’m not saying these bikes cannot be good rides. I’m saying they can’t fully take advantage of the best qualities of a single material given that they inherently have two.


All due respect. Can't it be argued a crafty design/builder could certainly use the best qualities of each of the given mix in the places the other materials could be considered to have a short coming in an area?

[simonov]

All due respect. Can't it be argued a crafty design/builder could certainly use the best qualities of each of the given mix in the places the other materials could be considered to have a short coming in an area?

Yes. I also have an all Ti bike and a couple all carbon bikes. The Ti/Carbon Firefly gives up nothing to the others, but offers a bit of the responsiveness of the carbon race bikes while offering the comfort and smoothness of the all Ti bike. It's a great bike that capitalizes on the best of all the materials used in its construction. There's also a lot more to a great bike than the material chosen.

[benb]

There is in fact a high ante to sit at the table in carbon manufacturing. The materials can be expensive but not so much compared to Ti. The real cost is in the molds, bladders, hand labor for lay-up and finishing, plus all of the processing equipment. All hard to amortize with small volumes and US labor rates. Trust me....I've been at it 40 years now!

The pricing on the Meivici's was pretty high. I was still with Reynolds when that program began and I'm very familiar with the development costs as well as what they paid for the parts. My guess is that the sale price was based on the desire to payback the tooling/development costs quickly, what the market might bear at the time, and perhaps a bit of greed. They had recently spent a lot of money on the new guicci building, paint system, machine shop, mansion, etc. I kinda thought he was grooming it for sale to ABG or one of the other groups that were snatching up small brands at the time. If so the timing was poor cause that ship had sailed. Still had all the bills though.


I visited that "Gucci" Serotta Factory in the summer of 2007 as I bought a Concours (deleted the carbon seat stays actually). I was there at the right time of the year for other reasons and it worked out perfectly, my frame was in the polishing room when I visited.

But in any case what I saw matches up with what you were saying. They had a ton of CNC machinery sitting there idle the day I went. There were less than 5 employees working the floor and I visited in the 9AM-5PM window you'd think would be normal business hours. I didn't get it at the time but in retrospect it looked like a ghost shop waiting to be bought or go out of business.

Literally 95% plus of the factory was idle when I visited. No one was painting, no one was welding, no one was butting/swaging tubes that day, etc.. there was someone packaging finished frames and one guy operating one CNC machining station making a Meivici BB lug. There were a couple people working in the office as well.

[Black Dog]

I visited that "Gucci" Serotta Factory in the summer of 2007 as I bought a Concours (deleted the carbon seat stays actually). I was there at the right time of the year for other reasons and it worked out perfectly, my frame was in the polishing room when I visited.

But in any case what I saw matches up with what you were saying. They had a ton of CNC machinery sitting there idle the day I went. There were less than 5 employees working the floor and I visited in the 9AM-5PM window you'd think would be normal business hours. I didn't get it at the time but in retrospect it looked like a ghost shop waiting to be bought or go out of business.

Literally 95% plus of the factory was idle when I visited. No one was painting, no one was welding, no one was butting/swaging tubes that day, etc.. there was someone packaging finished frames and one guy operating one CNC machining station making a Meivici BB lug. There were a couple people working in the office as well.

What you saw that day could have been for a variety of reasons.

[Mike Lopez]

What you saw that day could have been for a variety of reasons.

...could be many explanations for the lack of staff on the floor. Kinda interesting cause that was well before the stuff really hit the fan. As far as I know that is. The information flow typically worked like a check valve.

I only visited the factory a handful of times over the years but one observation was that the ratio of direct to indirect labor seemed rather top heavy. More people in offices talking about bikes than there were on the floor making them. My guess is they made better money than the guys supporting them as well. I've worked in small businesses for decades and that seemed odd to me.

It's all very unfortunate. I liked the people, the products, and being part of a team delivering what we thought were very nice bikes.

It also didn't help much when the various forum fans turned on them and jumped on the bandwagon to flame them over "dentist bikes" and "faster backwards bikes". Hey...they were custom bikes built for OGs that didn't want slammed stems or couldn't handle them if they did. Perhaps they had their "roots" in racing at one time but they were trying to grow past that.

In the rapidly changing fashion show of the bike biz it's evolution or extinction. For most brands anyway...They/we tried to evolve but obviously it didn't work out so well in the end.

Nuff said..It's ancient history at this point AND off topic. Good guys and a combination of good/bad times. :(

[pdmtong]

The peak period for craft made mixed carbon/ti frames seemed to be around 2004-2008. IMHO it was the only way for flagship boutique ti houses (serotta, IF, seven) to hang before being swamped by the carbon tidal wave. Recall the ottrott, XS, and elium as the high dollar darlings. The local high end shops didnt sell many of these perhaps because of the design but probably more so due to the $8,000-10,000 price point.

I thought carbon/ti frames were dead until FireFly seemingly on their own resurrected them.

Builders will always try various combinations of materials and fabrication to achieve their holy grail. that's innovation! Might work, might not. Great we have so many choices...

[mcteague]

The peak period for craft made mixed carbon/ti frames seemed to be around 2004-2008. IMHO it was the only way for flagship boutique ti houses (serotta, IF, seven) to hang before being swamped by the carbon tidal wave. Recall the ottrott, XS, and elium as the high dollar darlings. The local high end shops didnt sell many of these perhaps because of the design but probably more so due to the $8,000-10,000 price point.

I thought carbon/ti frames were dead until FireFly seemingly on their own resurrected them.

Builders will always try various combinations of materials and fabrication to achieve their holy grail. that's innovation! Might work, might not. Great we have so many choices...
The Seven 622 SLX was out well before the Firefly version. I doubt either one sells in big numbers relative to the rest of the output of those companies. Still, as I mentioned, the 622 SLX ride is really great. The all carbon Parlee I tested felt light and stiff but had a numb road feel. From what I have read this is fairly common to the breed. The 622 is lighter and stiffer than my all Ti Axiom and, while the road feel if excellent, it still manages to dampen the buzz. However, big whacks, like potholes, hurt more than the all Ti frame.

Tim

[slowgoing]

Serotta Legend with carbon rear, and Colnago CT-1, both great rides.

[Ttx1]

"the lugs are made by French company Protolabs in England using materials from Switzerland, and the moulds are made in Germany"

<snark>This all sounds perfectly practical and reasonable<snark>

How do I invest in this highly efficient and innovative business?

C'mon, bicycles are not airplanes.

If someone wants to do this as a lifestyle business, have at it.

But let's not pretend that this is a scalable model with a measurable, viable performance benefit.

Oh, sure, the frames may ride well. Lots of frames ride well. Still hard to quantify the merit of this approach.

[oldpotatoe]

"the lugs are made by French company Protolabs in England using materials from Switzerland, and the moulds are made in Germany"

<snark>This all sounds perfectly practical and reasonable<snark>

How do I invest in this highly efficient and innovative business?

C'mon, bicycles are not airplanes.

If someone wants to do this as a lifestyle business, have at it.

But let's not pretend that this is a scalable model with a measurable, viable performance benefit.

Oh, sure, the frames may ride well. Lots of frames ride well. Still hard to quantify the merit of this approach.

Yup, in the 'the more things change, the more things stay the same', category. Why I labeled this thread, 'Let's try this'...

Carbon plugs in a ti frame? Sure, the high end bike frame biz is flat, let's show THIS at Interbike(Seven)...'Seems to work, let's do one(Serotta)'.
"Everything is carbon, carbon..let's do one(Serotta/Carl Strong/Landshark, etc)"....

But as mentioned, it's a BIKE FRAME, designed and built and then MARKETED as the 'game changer', 'next greatest thing'...

:)

[grateful]

The folks at Seven prioritize function over form. If the original mixed material frames did not differentiate the bike from the full ti offerings it would not have been built. There are a lot of very intelligent people working at Seven.

QUOTE=mcteague;2653719]The Seven 622 SLX was out well before the Firefly version. I doubt either one sells in big numbers relative to the rest of the output of those companies. Still, as I mentioned, the 622 SLX ride is really great. The all carbon Parlee I tested felt light and stiff but had a numb road feel. From what I have read this is fairly common to the breed. The 622 is lighter and stiffer than my all Ti Axiom and, while the road feel if excellent, it still manages to dampen the buzz. However, big whacks, like potholes, hurt more than the all Ti frame.

Tim[/QUOTE]

[Tickdoc]

carbon tubes in titanium lugs...??Nope.....opposites attract opposites(?)

I donno..



:eek:

https://www.bikeradar.com/news/caminade-allroad-gravel-bike/

Reverse engineering answers the questions bike builders never asked to begin with.....With enough strength in lugs I imagine it would work fine in reverse.

But, I'm with you....:eek:

I'd be more interested in a hydroformed aero all titanium bike, ala specialized alley sprint tech. I want to see an all Titanium aero formed road bike naked with welding rainbow colors on it like this beautiful Paganiexhaust:

https://rmsothebys-cache.azureedge.net/1/2/8/7/c/e/1287ce9f1159128280743045af0d4fb80e579855.jpg



BTW, I went on a ride last year with a guy who bent a seat stay on his shiny Spec alley sprint from a fall during a crit. Riding behind him or next to him my eyes could not divert from the sharply bent aluminum stay. I asked him when we stopped if he thought it safe, and he said shop checked it out and said go with it. It was under warranty and could be replaced but deemed unnecessary and safe to ride. I didn't even feel safe riding near him!