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Probably all true, people love to special. (Ti jewellery bikes etc.)
Although when I mentioned stamped out box sections I probably should have elaborated. In my head I was thinking of fancy hydro-formed shapes with engineered flex/stiffness etc and different wall thickness at any given point. I'd assumed that's where the ductility comes into it?
TRA-
I was thinking of fancy hydro-formed shapes with engineered flex/stiffness etc and different wall thickness at any given point. I'd assumed that's where the ductility comes into it?
Those things are possible now with aluminium. Kinesis even do superplastic forming on some frames. The advantage of that Flash steel would be that there is no heat treatment needed after forming, but I don't think that's a huge part of the cost on aluminium frames anyway.
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Although when I mentioned stamped out box sections I probably should have elaborated. In my head I was thinking of fancy hydro-formed shapes with engineered flex/stiffness etc and different wall thickness at any given point. I'd assumed that's where the ductility comes into it?
Trek (I think) made a DH frame out of two halves welded together, a few years ago now. It was aluminium though.
How oversized do you want to go? you get something which has to be handled with care to avoid dents.
Well that's the beauty of greater specific strength. You can have an oversized tube with greater wall thickness for the same weight. Or the same tube geometry for less weight. Or any compromise thereof.
I'm not sure that yield strength is the limiting factor for chains... At some point, elastic extension
Uh huh, fair enough, maybe elastic deformation is a limiting factor in power transmission for sprinters, maybe yield strength and therefore weight is a limiting factor for climbers. My point was that saying 'strength is never a limiting factor' was rather glib of you, without having defined 'strength' or 'limiting factor'.
I rode one of these last season, it was great fun. Only goes downhill though.
gbj_tester
lae
No real need for that, it can be made in conventional tubes and is obviously easy to weld if car companies are interested. If it allowed mild steel to replace low alloy steels like 4130 in low cost fixie bieks and MTBs, I could see it being useful as a way to further cut costs, but in the high-end steel and Ti markets, people are buying jewellery, not performance, so I can't see Pegoretti or Moots taking it up even if it objectively outperforms what they are currently using on every measure.