This is also from earlier in this same thread...

I'm no place near China bashing

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charles@pezcyclingnews.com

Again, I have no problem with Far eastern production in general. said it lots of places, including this thread.


And pay special attention to the fact that it's you who's creating all the fuss about my opinion despite me never saying you are not entitled to yours...



As to your specifying "North American" manufacturers.

You find me a North American Carbon bike manufacturer selling un branded/ un badged frames or wheels overseas for 75% less than market prices and I'll agree to hold them to the same standards and can tell you right now that I will avoid the risk of riding the products...


But only because you scared me...

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charles@pezcyclingnews.com

Buck up, John!
I have no idea who is right here, but I know that you need a VERY thick skin to get involved in internet forum posting. Just let it go.

BTW: I initiated the use of ANSYS at my company about 20 years ago. I would hit the "go" button, and then had to wait over the weekend to see if it ran successfully.

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-Deacon Doctor Colorado Slim

CHEAP carbon = CHEAP






(goodnight everyone leave your waitress a nice tip)



/thread finished.

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Mass Weenie

A loss for the forum. A loss for science.
One of a small minority of posters who consistently delivered us insight and wisdom, cutting through the noise.

Since this thread seems to be based 100% on the opinion of random strangers, I'll insert my own.

This kind of argument is identical to the argument used by Mac/Linux users as to why their computers are inherently more secure. If you have a tiny user base, then the overall number of viruses developed are going to be less. By the same token, if you only sell 100 carbon frames a year then you are not going to have widespread numbers of failures, simply because there aren't that many frames to begin with. Just because no one has heard of a failure does not mean that QA standards are identical.


This highlights the inherent risk in dealing with far east manufacturing from unknown companies. There is no engineering in place. Essentially, you have some companies that have copied the manufacturing techniques from other companies that have put the money into the engineering R&D to ensure a quality product. This is how they can sell for 1/3 the cost of other companies who are also doing their carbon manufacturing in China. That's not to say that they are not good copies. That is just to say that if there is an inherent defect in the manufacturing process, you may get a replacement frame sent to your home, but you will not get the piece of mind that an expert will be looking at your broken frame to determine what went wrong and ensure that it does not happen again.

Funny, that on previous page pics it was aluminium steerer that failed, not "cheap" carbon fibre.

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A light bike does replace good fitness.

(or waiter)

Yes, our brothers and sisters from the Glorious Nation of China deserve from us more understanding and respect.

Not necessarily so. One can easily find as much "engineering", and certainly as many qualified engineers, in a Chinese manufacturing plant as one would in such a plant in Italy, the USA, and even Germany or Russia.

Manufacturers outside of China don't copy the products and services of their competitors?
A major reason why these frames are a fairer price is because their buyers are not being exploited by paying to be brainwashed by marketing.

The Hasa failure is one I saw before I took the decision to buy a Chinese frame.

My thought is that this was a hire bike, and I suspect that people do not always
take good care of hire bikes, so it's quite possibly not a fair test.

Carbon monocoque frames are delicate things, and will break if abused.

That said, the Hasa frame and fork just look a bit dodgy to my untrained eye.

I agree 100% that the practice (product copy / counterfeiting) happens in other places too, but I in fairness, would guess that if you asked 1000 people from around the world, where more knock off products are produced, you might find the far east some place near the top of that list virtually 100% of the time. Stereotypes are frequently unfair, but more frequently developed for a reason...


And while marketing is part of the cost, I think kulivontot has a point, and to add to it, when companies nock a product off instead of developing it correctly... A lot of understanding about functio and structure can get lost in translation when that happens and that can be a pretty big deal.


There's also a "bit of" a cost savings in labor and material availability and logistics and environmental requirments (or lack of) in the far east for carbon bike production... That's something to do with why loads of very good product sold from brands world wide, not just the knock off stuff, is made there.

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charles@pezcyclingnews.com

Slightly off topic, but related to the gist...

I've been involved with producing carbon fiber sailplane parts (my father is a glider pilot and he and his buddies build parts and planes and I get wrangled into helping.) We've built control panels, fairings, dive brakes, wing sections and fuselage sections out of carbon fiber- both pre-reg and dry, UD, 3k, and 12k.

As these are large and custom- we don't use a cast mold but a series of different techniques depending on the size of the piece- ie: at work (unrelated to carbon fiber, bikes or planes) we have a 6'x9' vacuum table with heat and pressure control that we've used to cure carbon fiber...

Anyhow, in speaking with one of the fellas at the airport a while back the topic of mass production came up and as he's involved in plastics manufacturing for the auto industry he was able to tell us that the steel/aluminum mold for a telephone sized object runs roughly $400,000 start to finish. I was floored but then he explained all the steps and whatnot and it made sense... from designing to engineering to testing to final production is a huge investment!

It would seem to me that one of the reasons that many overseas manufacturers are able to cut costs is that the molds they are using have already been designed, fabricated and most importantly paid for by another company... So if X manufacturer in China buys a 5 year old mold from Y bike company in the US for a fraction of the cost they can start making money right away as they don't have to recoup the investment of engineering and production of the molds...

I've never been to these manufacturers and I haven't done a comprehensive survey of their wheel/component/frame shapes to see if they are from other products, I suspect some are. Perhaps someone with more direct experience could shed some light on that topic... Perhaps that would shed some light on why these products are inexpensive (I shy from the adjective "cheap" yet).

Further, it would seem to me that if X manufacturer was producing the bikes for Y company and then bought Z mold after a few years and once Z frame was out of style etc... X manufacturer would be ideally suited to producing Z frame as they had been doing so for a long time already...

Ultimately there are way too may variables and assumptions to properly determine many conclusions. I'd like to hear from some manufacturers where they got the molds and whom they've produced for... I'd also like to hear from companies in which factories and by which manufacturers their products are produced...

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Please do not PM me about Chinese carbon wheels. I will not respond.