Anyone on alto wheels?

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F45
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Joined: Wed Jun 08, 2011 6:08 am

by F45

Haha, how did I miss this? Much hilarity.

I stand by my assessment that they screwed up the power readings on the rim brake test. It may be that they outright fudged them since they're too dumb to read a pair of calipers.

BobbySweeting
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by BobbySweeting

I can use a different tool to corroborate rim depth if you guys would prefer, but I think a video of our manufacturing process would be more powerful. We're toying with the idea of a CCX86 hookless rim and may begin tooling soon, so I can take a few images and videos of the process for you. And anyone is welcome to visit our Sarasota factory to check out how we produce all of our hubs and rim molds.

by Weenie


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BobbySweeting
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by BobbySweeting

@F45 - Please send us an email and we can send you the complete results (all data points) of our rim brake test, including the torque measurements and gear train ratio so that you can see the constant power throughout each test.

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F45
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by F45

I'd like to see them for sure, but why don't you put them on something like Google Drive with a link so we can all look at it?

I'm also interested in the experimental setup, what sensors were used, and how they were calibrated.

BobbySweeting
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by BobbySweeting

F45: Sure thing! It's not ideal because it likely won't be on my google drive for eternity, so the link eventually wont work, but for now you can download the file here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XNRpV ... u6tjL0onSD

As far as the setup goes:
- The temp was recorded with a standard IR sensor. The polynomial temp curves displayed in the video is accurate, but the scatter plot is pretty chaotic. In the future we may invest in a laser just to quiet that noise down a bit.
- The torque meter was connected to the output shaft of the motor and the drum is driven through a gear train. The torque in the spreadsheet is that of the wheel that was output by our matlab control program. The torque at the motor is different, and the wheel torque is calculated in the program through the gear train ratio of the motor to the pulley/drum to the wheel. This ratio ends up being 6.06 and the torque output at the motor runs around 7.5 Nm and 1515rpm, depending on the rim's coeff of friction and the amount of glazing that develops on the pads.
- The wheel speed was measured with a good ole' magnet on the spoke, and this is the same as the drum's linear velocity.

I hope that answers all of your questions! We always do our due diligence in design, manufacturing and testing, and I'm happy to share any other details you'd be interested in.

Cheers,
Bobby

Flrider
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Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2017 12:09 am

by Flrider

Amazing to think you can measure all that

But are having a hard time measuring the difference between 28mm and 30mm on a mold that you supposedly made yourself in Florida

That happens to have the exact same dimensions as companies that have sold their models well before you released yours.

BobbySweeting
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by BobbySweeting

Flrider (Daniel Davis) - Nobody does what we do, and your incessant trolling is beginning to border on slander at this point, haha. As I've mentioned before, and as you can see in our testing videos, we hold multiple design and utility patents that separate us dramatically from our competitors. Why would two engineers raise five hundred thousand dollars from angel investors in order to buy wheels from Asia? You can reach out to Tom Frost directly on Facebook and ask him if we spent his money on open mold products, haha. I think he'd be pretty upset if we did. I left my rigid frame position at CSG in order to create something special, not to apply stickers. I wouldn't have left CSG if we didn't have the capital to make proprietary products.

We've been prototyping some track products recently and are cleaning up a disc wheel mold for a product that we may launch at Interbike this year, depending on how it goes in testing. You can check out the mold images here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vIqKl ... TO1xYMkNPr. I'll take a video if we begin the cutting process for the CCX86 rims.

I'm not sure where you're located but if it is indeed in Florida then I am begging you to please visit our machine shop so that we can show you our manufacturing in person!

NovemberDave
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by NovemberDave

BobbySweeting wrote:
Fri Feb 09, 2018 12:25 am
Flrider (Daniel Davis) - Nobody does what we do, and your incessant trolling is beginning to border on slander at this point, haha.
Bobby - An easy mnemonic: slander is spoken. Borderline libel is what you're thinking. - Dave

glepore
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Location: Virginia USA

by glepore

I do wonder why someone with 11 posts here has 5 of them in this thread.

I agree the similarity in the drawings used by Pacenti and Alto raises an eyebrow. But who knows? Maybe Alto has licensed their molds, or had them stolen or copied or or or. I dunno. But I'm not going to flat out accuse them of anything in public without a little more proof.

Bobby, do you have any idea why the drawings look so similar?
Cysco Ti custom Campy SR mechanical (6.9);Berk custom (5.6); Serotta Ottrott(6.8) ; Anvil Custom steel Etap;1996 Colnago Technos Record

BobbySweeting
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Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 5:37 am

by BobbySweeting

Dave: Haha, you're absolutely right, and I'll remember that! Legality is not my strong suit. I leave that to the business men and lawyers. By the way, we'd love to send you one of our new carbon clincher models for testing! I know you guys have gone anti-carbon recently, but we would love the chance to show you that carbon can be as durable as alloy!

Glepore: Daniel Davis trolls us on every media platform in existence, even with fake social media accounts. It's frustrating, but it also gives us the opportunity to showcase more details of our product line. So we put up with it for the time being, haha. To answer your question: Enve and Hunt had their hookless designs first. We always bring in products similar to our concepts and reverse engineer them to find what we like and don't like about what has already been done. You'll notice that our profile is very similar to both, simply with different internal/external widths and rim depths that are based on our specific CFD models and performance testing. Also, we've recently uploaded the actual 3D model of each rim to our website in order to give a more accurate representation of the shape that the mold is cut to, as opposed to the 2D sketch. Pacenti released their hookless rim this year, so I honestly don't know much about it and haven't seen it in person. I can tell you that we do not license our molds, nor do I believe that Topkey would release proprietary laminate schedule information. But everything is fair game when it comes to purchasing a rim and reverse engineering what others have done, as long as it isn't patentable technology. We did it at Cannondale, we do it at Alto, and other brands buy our products to learn from what we've done. Good designs tend to converge on similar points!

glepore
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Location: Virginia USA

by glepore

Fair enough.
Cysco Ti custom Campy SR mechanical (6.9);Berk custom (5.6); Serotta Ottrott(6.8) ; Anvil Custom steel Etap;1996 Colnago Technos Record

TobinHatesYou
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Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2017 12:02 pm

by TobinHatesYou

glepore wrote:
Fri Feb 09, 2018 2:06 am
Fair enough.
Basically it comes down to this...

Why do the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 XWB look so similar?
Why are the profiles of the Chevy Volt and Toyota Prius nearly identical?

Turns out math dictates the look of an aerodynamic apparatus. :p

RyanH
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by RyanH

Just a bit of professional advice: punctuating sentences with "haha" is probably not the best way to win confidence of potential buyers. I didn't really want to say anything as I wouldn't want to artificially increase the credibility of a manufacture beyond what they're capable of doing themselves but I feel that at this point, there's enough damage done that it doesn't make a difference other than make it less aggravating to read the thread.

Flrider
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Joined: Tue Dec 05, 2017 12:09 am

by Flrider

TobinHatesYou wrote:
Tue Feb 06, 2018 12:48 pm

In usage, I had one incident with Mavic Yksion Pro UST tires and the Alto CCX40s. I inflated them on the rim to 110psi to seat, perform the initial seal. About 5 minutes after while the wheel was leaned against the wall, the tire blew off the rim. Since then I have been afraid to inflate the tires past about 85psi...in all practicality this is not a big deal since I ride at pressures closer to 60-70psi, but it does leave me wondering. Pacenti’s hookless rims also claim to hold at 110psi...I’d be interested in hearing if others have inflated tubeless tires to that pressure on either Alto or Pacenti hookless rims.
Not to sound like a broken record, but if you look at the thread about Hunt rims in here people are also having trouble with the tires blowing off the rim and coming in over weight.

:| :|

by Weenie


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BobbySweeting
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by BobbySweeting

Flrider: The issue that Tobinhatesyou had was with the tire, not our rim. The Mavic Yksion Pro UST is rated to 101psi maximum due to it's thin sidewall and the shape of the bead, which is what caused it to blow off at 110psi. You can see the tire specs here: https://shop.mavic.com/en-us/yksion-pro ... &1035=3501.

We have not had any issues with standard 25mm tires (or any larger size, for that matter) coming off of our CCX rims, not even one. We have internally tested over 18 tire brands now, and you can see that Spark Wheel Works has recently gone up to 110psi for their customer who is running Conti GP4000's (as you can see in the comments): https://www.instagram.com/p/Be9Vkudnsb5 ... wheelworks

Like with anything in this industry, it is possible that some obscure tire brand could present itself to be an issue with our rim designs (hooked or hookless). But we test our products to incredibly high standards to ensure that our customers can trust everything that we manufacture without any hesitation at all, and to be sure that any compatibility issues would be a rarity.

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