Carbon spokes - why?

[toxin]

A real "carbon spokes-why?" moment

Superteam has started selling their otherwise KOMCAS branded 1cm wide carbon spoke wheel outside of asia. https://www.superteamwheels.com/product ... ver-decals

This is just so profoundly stupid to me. They just slapped whatever the hell those are into one of their old wheelsets with the same old heavy, sloppy design hub you see on every generic carbon spoke wheel.

Just a waste making this instead of trying to shorten those absolute aero murdering cyllindrical sections at the edges like WheelLab are doing. The math works out to these spokes being roughly the same weight as the old ones so if nothing else the bladed part is probably pretty thin.

[pdlpsher1]

I want to try to build a wheelset myself (for the first time in my life) based on Lightbicycle AR25 rims. I started studying the carbon spokes market and came across the Nextie website.

Having built a number of wheels myself, I wouldn't recommend that you start with the AR25 rims as your first build. And most definitely NOT with carbon spokes. Building a wheel, one with a super lightweight rim and spokes is 10x harder than one with stiffer rim and spokes. I would say you need to build several sets of wheels first, ones with stiff rims and straight gauge spokes. Then move to several more sets, ones with butted spokes. The super-butted spokes like CX-Ray require much more skill to build, let alone carbon spokes. Anyone can lace up a wheel. But the most difficult part of wheelbuilding is achieving the best balance between radial trueness, lateral trueness, and equal spoke tension between all spokes. The holy grail in wheelbuilding is having a perfect mark on all three metrics. But achieving that on a light rim is almost impossible- getting one metric perfect will disallow perfection on the other metrics. The three metrics are all interelated. Getting the best balance on all three metrics requires 'master' level wheelbuilding skills, especially using lightweight rims and spokes. Sure, you can certainly build a wheel (with zero prior wheelbuilding experience) with perfect radial and lateral trueness, to the 0.1mm runout. But I guarantee you the spoke tensions will be all over the place, which will result in very poor durability. Although a rim might appear to you as a monolithic piece of material with identical elasticity across the entire structure, the truth is that each rim will have differences in elasticity all over the place due to manufacturing variances (aluminum rims are mostly 'pinned', making that pinned section extra stiff). Hence you will need different spoke tensions to make the wheel true radially and laterally, but not too different as that would sacrifice durability. Balancing all three metrics then becomes an 'art' as a wheelbuilder, after having built hundreds or thousands of wheels. A heavy (hence stiff) rim would be easy to hit all three metrics perfectly because the rim would resist movement radially and laterally (assuming the rim was made very true and round from the beginning, which is very rare), whereas a light rim (hence elastic) wouldn't. On one of my own personal builds, I actually took on an experiment where I made all spokes having perfectly equal spoke tension. The wheel was so radially and laterally out of true I don't think the wheel is even ridable. Take my advice and let LightBicycle build the AR25 for you.

[Hensem]

Having built a number of wheels myself, I wouldn't recommend that you start with the AR25 rims as your first build.

I really want to, it's been a long-standing dream, learn how to assemble wheels myself. But just assembling them is an expensive pleasure. If there is an opportunity to sell the wheel at cost price and start a new assembly to gain experience and then sell it again and so on - it would be great. Even 5 years ago, such a trick could have been done, but now the market is so full of cheap and high-quality wheels, for example Elite, then who would want to buy wheels from me? Ideally, do everything sequentially as you described, with different spokes, with different rims, with different hubs, but what to do with all this then? And a set of good spokes, hubs and rims costs a lot of money to just assemble and put in a dusty corner.
And I chose AR25 only because I myself want to have such a set of wheels.

[pdlpsher1]

If your dream is learn how to build a wheel, find the cheapest wheel you have and take it all apart, then build it back up. If your dream is to have the honor of building the wheels that your ride everyday, then practice on your cheap wheel, gradually move on to lighter and lighter spokes, before you take on the AR25. Practice on the craft of making it true radially and laterally, with equal spoke tension. If you want to take on the AR25 on your very first build, the wheel will be totally ridable. But I highly doubt it'll be very durable unless you hit all three metrics reasonably well. There are a ton of videos out there that will show you how to lace up and tension a wheel. But nobody can teach you on balancing the three metrics to create an optimal build, especially on a lighweight rim/spoke wheel. That can only come with experience.

My friend ordered a set of AR25s with 28H Alpina Hyperlight spokes. Having built a dozen wheels myself, I can't even imagine building a set like this myself. Sure, if I build it it'll be ridable. But I certainly wouldn't be proud of the end result.

[Hensem]

In general, what I have at the moment. I remembered that I have a good friend who works as a bicycle mechanic and also assembles wheels, has all the equipment. As he said, he has a light hand and some talent, he feels the wheels and he always does very well. I told him my idea to build a wheelset on AR25 with carbon spokes and he said that he would try to help. Today I talked with H-works about suitable hubs, and with Farsport about carbon spokes and with Lightbicycle about rims. The lightest hub option is SR270 (the same hub as RD270 from Wheelsafar/Farsports) and it goes on 20/20 spokes and weighs around 276 grams. Farsports has spokes in 3 sizes: 3.2mm and 3.8mm with 5mm as used by No6 in their assemblies, and I am sure that these are Farsports spokes. The 3.2mm size is definitely on sale, and 3.8 and 5mm were asked to specify the size to check, but I do not know the required size yet, so availability is not yet known. If in fact the only difference is in the spoke width, then for this assembly of climbing wheels 3.2mm will be enough (less weight 2.7g and aerodynamics are not so important). Regarding the AR25 rims, Lightbicycle heard my needs, asked a couple of questions and have not answered more yet, I think the working day is over. In theory, AR25 can be made with 20 spokes, they have an option for a custom number of holes and then these components can be assembled together into a good wheelset. What do you think about this?
Are there any other good manufacturers with a lighter hub that work with carbon spokes?

[toxin]

Can't say I've come across any. I'm a bit curious about those 5mm spoke. No6 site says they use them in 2 wheelsets that aren't even listed on their page. They can't be compatilble with the sr270 hub as they are too wide to pull through the spoke holes. I wouldn't have expected them to sell the hubs they use for the S series wheels to consumers but maybe they just might.

[OtterSpace]

If your dream is learn how to build a wheel, find the cheapest wheel you have and take it all apart, then build it back up. If your dream is to have the honor of building the wheels that your ride everyday, then practice on your cheap wheel, gradually move on to lighter and lighter spokes, before you take on the AR25. Practice on the craft of making it true radially and laterally, with equal spoke tension. If you want to take on the AR25 on your very first build, the wheel will be totally ridable. But I highly doubt it'll be very durable unless you hit all three metrics reasonably well. There are a ton of videos out there that will show you how to lace up and tension a wheel. But nobody can teach you on balancing the three metrics to create an optimal build, especially on a lighweight rim/spoke wheel. That can only come with experience.

My friend ordered a set of AR25s with 28H Alpina Hyperlight spokes. Having built a dozen wheels myself, I can't even imagine building a set like this myself. Sure, if I build it it'll be ridable. But I certainly wouldn't be proud of the end result.

Wise words.

Sometimes the smartest thing a home mechanic can do is know when to bring it to someone else.

I have a lot of the wheel building stuff but have built 0 wheels. I know enough to be able to fix small issues or see if a wheel needs servicing which the tools help me see. However wheelbuilding is as much an art as it is a science and personally I view it at something that you want someone who has built many wheelsets to do for you.

The more boutique the wheelset gets the more ticky it gets too a super light AR25 build likely falls into this category.

Thankfully Hensem has a bike mechanic buddy. I'd bring him a few beers and pay them for their time but also try to learn as much as you can during the build while overall relying on them to do it.

[Hensem]

My logic tells me so. Once upon a time, people whom you call professionals were also people who did not know how to assemble wheels and gradually they came to what they have. Someone has talent and someone else achieved it through painstaking work. If you need to assemble a wheel only once in 5 years, perhaps there is no point in buying all the equipment and doing it at all - it is easier and cheaper and most importantly more reliable to give it to a professional. But what should I do if I have long dreamed of this, to learn how to assemble wheels? So I decided to try it on myself. I will assemble wheels for myself under the supervision of my friend. Who knows, maybe something will come of me =))

[toxin]

idk where else to post things like this that don't warrant their own thread or have a direct connection with another, so I guess I'll just continue using this as a general carbon spoke and carbon spoke adjacent stuff thread.

Deerobust are now offering builds with 20 carbon spoke non-plus hubs, and new spoke model, so it seems non-plus are making carbon spoke hubs as well. This can shave 70-100 g from most carbon spoke builds, presumably without compromising the safety of the spoke design. Another big step for those with infinite money looking for the lightest everyday wheels.

[pdlpsher1]

PSA alert! Make sure the hub has a redundancy on spoke retention. You don't want a hub that looks like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQrkIL87g4

[toxin]

Yup, old news, these hubs are also all heavy af as the flanges require more material

[apr46]

@toxin this is interesting info. Deerobust also has t1000 layups which are 6-7% lighter than what they offer on their website, but they wont sell them outside of asia due to the cost of aftersales support for EU and NA. I dont know what that means between the lines other than it seems like there are some failures or QC issues with the t1000 rims that gave them issues.

I decided to pull the trigger on new wheels. Its been a couple of years and I thought it was time to explore something new for the road bike. I opted against carbon spokes because I felt like 21H steel spokes with internal nipples was a higher performance option than the 20H carbon spoked options and I didnt feel like ordering the Newman Vonoa, and dont love the CRW 5060 profiles. I expect the weight to be in line with options from S EVO from Farsports.

[toxin]

https://www.carbonbikekits.com/ have some of the same rims as deerobust in very light layups. 28 wide 50 deep rim at 360g.

I don't know who actaully manufactures deerobust rims, but there's a bunch of other sellers with the same profiles.

My hope is these new hubs are threaded or t-head with an insertion slot like farsports S so they can take some bigger spokes. Would've been nice to have 16H front, but alas, I won't be in the earnings bracket required to afford this anytime soon anyway

[Kubackjeee]

PSA alert! Make sure the hub has a redundancy on spoke retention. You don't want a hub that looks like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQrkIL87g4

This is a bro science. No one had a problem with this type

[pdlpsher1]

Those who had a problem are probably not with us anymore?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk