RTW wrote: ↑Fri Sep 20, 2019 8:55 am
Lewn777 what extra steps do you take to mitigate against the types of horrors you describe?
The problem is like the internet, the carbon fiber industry is new. Carbon fiber can and does fail all the time, the more hours, the more abuse, the heavier the rider and the worse the construction, the more likely it is to fail. That might not matter in some applications, but for handlebars or forks - that can kill you. If carbon fiber were an older material at some time in the past some governments would have probably demanded that every handlebar and fork were tested on import or at some point before sale. However we live in days where industries are self-policing.
Now self policing might work if you are Giant or Quest where you have your own factory in China and German and Taiwanese managers where things are probably done right and the bike can be traced back to point of manufacture and it might be more easy for them to be sued. The failure rates are going to be low, enough that extra time in QC might be a waste of time, but a quick scan and some occassional destructive testing might be worth putting your customer's mind at ease.
The problem comes with holding comapnies that are trying to make excessive profits and hold multiple brands manufactured in cheap factories or just poor quality generally, scamming the consumer twice, once by price, once by quality.
I'm not an expert but I would have thought some ways to mitigate for this could be:
-To have national or regional standards like CE on carbon fiber bicycles, forks and some other parts like handlebars (obviously not bottle cages etc) with random destructive testing.
-To have some kind of guidance for consumers as regards to the total lifespan of a carbon fiber frame and fork and to have some kind of replacement system for forks when their lifespan is over.