Titanium, can it be improved?

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Poulidor
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by Poulidor

j_gantzer wrote:As far as custom goes, we stock over 30 different tubes between different diameters and wall thickness. All US made seamless aerospace grade. Plus our RSL tubing that is butted by Reynolds. We do a lot of chain/seat stay swagging and shaping in house. We even have a tube set just for NBA player size bikes.

We make over 36 stock sizes of road bikes including 1cm taller headtubes.

The tubing selection is much more about the style of riding than the rider themselves. IE You can get away with a lighter tubeset on a road bike then you could on a MTB. We make about 1400 bike per year, about 15% of them are custom. Generally with custom we start with a stock model, so we can guarantee its still going to be a good bike. If you are doing 100% custom you are going to get a bad bike every now and then. Our bikes are purpose built to be the best for that kind of riding (gravel, CX racing, road riding, road racing) We use size specific tubing on ever model we make.

Thanks -JG


Keep up the honest and superior work you do. Indeed, your custom work is top notch and free of all too common hype (BS).

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fromtrektocolnago
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by fromtrektocolnago

j_gantzer wrote:As far as custom goes, we stock over 30 different tubes between different diameters and wall thickness. All US made seamless aerospace grade. Plus our RSL tubing that is butted by Reynolds. We do a lot of chain/seat stay swagging and shaping in house. We even have a tube set just for NBA player size bikes.

We make over 36 stock sizes of road bikes including 1cm taller headtubes.

The tubing selection is much more about the style of riding than the rider themselves. IE You can get away with a lighter tubeset on a road bike then you could on a MTB. We make about 1400 bike per year, about 15% of them are custom. Generally with custom we start with a stock model, so we can guarantee its still going to be a good bike. If you are doing 100% custom you are going to get a bad bike every now and then. Our bikes are purpose built to be the best for that kind of riding (gravel, CX racing, road riding, road racing) We use size specific tubing on ever model we make.



Thanks -JG


This is very nice to hear and learn. Will definitely keep this info in the back-pocket for when its time to buy.
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FreaK
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by FreaK

As a dude who's spent more time breaking his head over optimizing steel frames, and effing around with geometry and carbon and things, than he's willing to admit, I have kind of decided that Ti kinda is a 'bike for life' material, for me, anyway.
There are a couple of things in its favour that haven't changed with the march of progress. The first is that in weldable alloys, it trumps aluminum every day of the week as far as surface hardness which means (as long as nothing gets seized) that the bike will take more headset and BB changes over lifetime without developing play. If you ride in shit weather, that matters.
The other thing I like is the rawness of the material, with no worries about water causing rust or sweat lifting paint. Sure there are plenty of chances for other kinds of oxidation but that's the main one that most bikes see.
I agree wholeheartedly that ride quality and fabrication have come along incredibly well in the past couple years.. But here's the thing: just like your manhood, it's all about what you do with it.
For what it's worth, I think you can build a ti frame with today's Ti technology to match any other frame that's out there in terms of usable performance and comfort. It'll inevitably end up heavier than a carbon or alu bike of equivalent behaviour and that won't ever change so from a price:weight:performance ratio perspective, no, Ti lost the race long ago. But if you look at outright performance and longevity with comfort, then some real effort could pay dividends but it's close enough that the market just won't pay for it. 3D printed Ti is still effectively an outside technology, for example. I think there's only one commercially available printed Ti part and it's a chain catcher.

TL:DR
will it? no Can it? yes
If you like the look, it is close enough you should just come over to the darkside.
it's actually possible to come to the conclusion even before realising it makes no sense at all
-
tymon_tm

fromtrektocolnago
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by fromtrektocolnago

This thread can easily morph to defending Titanium, but it is interesting that while new steel tubing has come out such as Reynolds 931, Titanium tubing hasn't changed much. I'm not sure it needs to... but its an interesting observation.
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mattr
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by mattr

Poulidor wrote:Well, that's somewhat the intention of the original post. Maybe the new owner of Moots might invest in R&D in order to find ways of making better Ti tubes for bicycle frames.
The new owner will need very very very deep pockets.

Titanium tubing/alloys have come on in leaps and bounds over the last 20 years. 6/4 and 3/2.5 are essentially (but not quite) the 4130/531 of the Ti world.
But no one makes the tubes in the right sizes/thicknesses to use in the cycling industry, and the big players who could afford to have tubes custom drawn have invested all their time/money/advertising into carbon. Where profit margin is higher.

No one is going to leap across to really custom ti alloys unless they can buy tubes in the right size. 30 custom size tubes is all very admirable, and good for a niche/custom builder, but there are probably 10 times that number for most steels, same again for aluminium and who knows when it comes to carbon!

I mean, until very recently a very good number of cycling's standard sizes were simply the sizes of the tubing available as left overs from other industries........

highdraw

by highdraw

There is one immutable fact. Sorry to the Ti loyalists. To me having owned 5 Ti bikes...it is simply an OK material.
Almost a jump ball with steel...all said I probably prefer the ride of good steel bike to that of Ti. But from my experience I will take carbon for competitive riding and Al for an overall road bike all day long to either Ti or steel.

Al has come a tremendous distance in the last 5 years. If there was ever a reinvented material it is Al. Carbon bikes have continued to get better. So why not Ti or steel? Guys it isn't about the material. What has the improvement of Al bikes relative to carbon...like the Spesh Allez smart weld or CAAD 12 or Emonda Al taught us? That geometry trumps frame material. In engineering parlance this means mechanical properties through differential section stiffness matters more than material properties such as modulus of elasticity, yield strength, material hardness and density. How is this proven? Because with exception of a few grams of weight, the performance of an Al bike can almost rival that of carbon...carbon being almost the perfect bike material in terms of modulus of elasticity, yield strength relative to weight and of course material density. Achilles heel of carbon of course is abrasion resistance and more precipitous yield without deformation closer to its yield point but of course its yield point is higher than all the other materials...less propensity to dent...one trait offsets another say in a crash.

Fact is...material properties are vastly different between Al and carbon...carbon is much stronger with much higher modulus of elasticity than Al...and yet with the right shape and quantity of Al, performance can be closely matched.

In the final analysis Ti is a better candidate for frame material compared to Al but in the end the opposite is true for the simple reason of formability. Al can be formed to emulate its carbon brother. If you put a new Allez side by side with a Tarmac, its hard to tell them apart. An Allez is basically an Al Tarmac. Its the geometry that matters at the end of the day more than the material properties or otherwise Ti or even Steel would be preferred. But Ti and Steel for all intents are stuck in the stone age of straight sections. Yes, price no object both materials could perhaps be formed and welded to look like a carbon or new Al bike with their dramatically changing tube sections front to back of the bike which give both their superior performance after decades of refinement...but manufacturers haven't figured out how to do this with either Ti or Steel or at least the technology is not cost competitive. Ti and Steel are stronger materials and harder to form than Al and of course carbon is molded to whatever shape a designer believes is optimal.

For all the Ti lovers out there...go out an ride a new Al race bike. You will be blown away by the performance and ride quality. My 2014 Secteur I just built rides better than my carbon Roubaix and any Ti bike I have owned.
And of course virtually all modern bikes have a carbon fork...for a reason.

stanseven
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by stanseven

I haven't been impressed at all with the latest aluminum weights. The new CAAD 12 is 18 lbs. thsts pretty much the norm from what I see.

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vejnemojnen
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by vejnemojnen

stanseven wrote:I haven't been impressed at all with the latest aluminum weights. The new CAAD 12 is 18 lbs. thsts pretty much the norm from what I see.

Would you sacrifice longevity, handling and stiffness for a sake of 100 grams? :)

The weight is not in the frame primarily. You can easily build a sub 6.8 kg bike with a 2kg steel frame.

mattr
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by mattr

Which CAAD12? Sora, tiagra or 105?

Makes a big difference.

mariovalentim
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by mariovalentim

So, bikerumor got a oportunity to weight the Medium sized Litespeed T1SL:

Thanks to numerous weight saving techniques including thinner tube walls, a 6/4 top tube made from a single sheet of Ti, a lighter BB shell, and even an engraved head tube badge, the frame (without hardware) came in at 990g on our scale. For a medium titanium frame, that is impressive. However, the price is impressive too, at $4,000 for the frame.


Image

RyanH
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by RyanH

That's a pretty impressive weight. Looks like it includes barrel adjusters, bottom cable guide and bottle cage bolts but no rear hanger. My steel hanger weighs 17g, so it would probably be 1,000g on the dot if they put it on and removed the other items.

reippuert
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by reippuert

XCProMD wrote:Any idea of that T1SL reliability?

The limits with titanium and steel are fatigue and buckling. In the case of Ti add deflection.

At 2E6 cycles the fatigue resistance of a well executed fillet weld in Ti is around 60MPa. Mitering is crucial as root propagation is something you don't want. A good weld has to crack from fatigue from the toe.

The load spectrum on a bike depends a lot on the user. A pro can beat a thin Ti frame in very little time. The first crack is usually the toe of the weld of the bridge joining the chainstays or the toe of the weld between right chainstay and dropout. MTB's crack at the seat tube-top tube junction as well.

The thinner you go, the higher the stresses are in the material, and as I said, there is only a number of cycles a Ti weld can withstand above 60MPa


I can't see why the 1000g T1SL shouldn't be reliable.

I know the legandary sub 800g Ghiasello from the early 00's where neither reliable nor duarble - but in 2006/2007 Merlin/Spectrum was able to produce the Tom Kellog designed CR Works range weighing 1050-1300g (from small 6.4 to XL 3/2.5) that where very reliable and hyper durable.

I have a the 2006 Merlin CR 2.5/3.5 in size ML (equivilant of a size 55-56cm non-compact).
The frame weight is 1115g, the ti 6/4 version was only 1080g. Both framesets used non butted tubeing, both frames where 'mass produced'. You can hit it with a large hammer and it will survive; you can throw it directly into an airplaine without a soft or hardshell suitcase and it will survive, you can crash it and it will survive.
Its sufficiently stiff when ascending and decending the Ventoux with a 95kg rider and 10kg of luggage (credit card touring). It even fits 27mm Pave tyres.

Its been 10 years since Spectrum/Tom Keollog designed the Merlin Works CR range and today you should be able to save additional weight and increase stiffness even further by incorporating:

PF30 BB shell
A milled tapered headtube design
Different dropouts
A lighter aluminum deralliuer hanger compared to non-replaceable TI hanger.
Butted tubing instead of plain gauge (sensible for racing, not for a do-it-all & last-forever frameset)

- add to it that the CR Works range had relatively long chainstays, a beefy brake bridge and a brigde in the chianstays where additional weight can be saved.

The tapered plain gauge size specific top and down tubes Tom Kellog designed for Merlin in 2006 is still state of the art as of 2015 and the reason why he could design a durable high perfomance lightweight frame
Tom owns the intelectual property which is why neither Seven, ABG (Litespeed, ex Merlin) or Competitive Cyclist (todays Melin) can use those tubes - today only Specrum can use them.

But 10 years has passed and im sure it can be improved (especially for racing) if the same design resorces where allocated in 2015 - next obvious step would be to look into the remaining tubes.

A sub 1000g raceday TI frameset anno 2015 for a 60-80kg rider shouldnt be a problem - however most people buying a 3-5000$ custom TI frameset wants the frame to last for 10-15 years so they tend to want 'extras' for everyday usage and options for a heavyer build that will be indestructable.
--
mvh. Morten Reippuert Knudsen @Merlin Works CR, Chorus 15, Reynolds 46/66

reippuert
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by reippuert

mariovalentim wrote:
XCProMD wrote:Any idea of that T1SL reliability?

Since it's a new model, then no. But I can't see Litespeed building their flagship bike just for weight bragging rights.

Kent Eriksen builds 1000gr frames depending on rider weight and frame size so it's not unheard of...



Well Litespeed did build for bragging only in the early 0's - The Ghisallo at 7-800g, not very durable nor stiff... but just as light as todays lightest frameset in carbon and back then a hell of a lot ligther than any carbon frame (it took Carbon 10 years to catch up)
--
mvh. Morten Reippuert Knudsen @Merlin Works CR, Chorus 15, Reynolds 46/66

fromtrektocolnago
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by fromtrektocolnago

reynolds 853 was developed for car doors. unless the aerospace or military industry requires more advanced titanium formulations we won't see it. seems boeing is finding more uses for carbon fiber with their newest dream-liners.
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reippuert
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by reippuert

fromtrektocolnago wrote:This thread can easily morph to defending Titanium, but it is interesting that while new steel tubing has come out such as Reynolds 931, Titanium tubing hasn't changed much. I'm not sure it needs to... but its an interesting observation.


The progression of stainless steels are interesting - after 10 years i want to replace my race worthy 1100g Merlin CR with somthing that can take disc brakes, wider tyres, i'd like 2cm a taller stack, i'd like a 5mm deeper BB for stability, i'd like a better fork than the stock 10 years old Real Design. Basicly what i want from my bike has changed.

Disc brakes: I'd like less stressfull days when descding approx 3-4 times a day durring my annual Alpine 14 days credit card tour - discs would diminish worrying about rims overheating on 35-40 degree celsus decents, discs would diminish worrying of decenting durring a thunderstorm.
Wider tyres: i'd like ascenting/decenting non-paved passes - 27mm Pave tubulars are nice, but 30-35mm tubeless would be even nicer.
Taller Stack: I'm getting older and less flexibe.
Fork: It was always than plan to get a WoundUp for ultimate control and ride quality... Never got arround to buying it though, partially because of the weigt penalty - Enve 2.0 would solve the weight paradox and improve the ride, but it's not quite on par with WoundUp - dilemma.

Basicly i have found 5 options - two of them are stainless, one is TI - only one option is off-the-peg:
1) Inexpensive: Kona's new roadhouse in R853 and modern features like tapered hadtube, inline disc mount, axelthrough front and rear. Geometry is almost spot on, though i'd like to fit 2-4mm wider tyres and cut 5mm from the chainstays. Still have to worry about dent tubes and paintjob.
2) Expensive - an off the shelf bike like the Donhue Signature Steel DSS2. I'd still have to worry about dent tubes and paintjob.
3) Custom Stainless R931; XCR or KVA - Expensive but almost as dureable as Ti but not as leightweight. Reasonably priced and not a whole lot more than the Kona frameset.
4) Custom TI - expensive to super-expensive. Plenty of builders to chose from both in the US and continental Europe.
5) Custom R953 - super expensive and not a lot of builders to choose from.

btw anyone knows the german rehnstahl/falkenjagdt frames (stainless/ti) - they'd sure look nice and they even make stainless/ti forks + pricing is not scary like some UK builders (or US builders becaus of freight and import taxes)
http://rennstahl-bikes.de
http://www.falkenjagd-bikes.de

or the more inexpensive Dresen based Ti builder Dré San http://dresan.de
--
mvh. Morten Reippuert Knudsen @Merlin Works CR, Chorus 15, Reynolds 46/66

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