Planned obsolescence in cycling

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/aluminum-vs-carbon-separating-environmental-fact-from-fiction-in-the-frame-materials-debate.html

Carbon fibre can sort of be recycled.
I don’t think the cost of recycling it makes it viable, but I think some places chop up used carbon fibre and mix it with other plastic and resin to be made into other items (‘forged carbon’)

You would lose the weave though, which is most of the point.

Making plastic parts with recycled carbon fibre is better than going to landfill though.

There are some promising technologies now for recycling CF. See V-carbon and Lineat but they are still in the industrialisation phase and I don't think are accepting post-consumer waste yet.

Recycling in this case is basically grinding it up and using it like you would wood into chipboard. When I think of recycling I think, breaking into constituent components and using it again, ie. something make of alu can end up something made of alu again. I guess that's a limited way to think about it.

"Today, the cycling industry’s carbon frame and component makers do not generate enough waste to attract the attention of recyclers."

This comment really puts into perspective the difference me owning some carbon bikes will make...

"The carbon scrap just generated by Boeing and friends next door in Seattle could make 400,000 carbon trailbike frames a year."

"The carbon wing spar for Boeing’s 777x is over 213 feet long and uses almost 400 miles of carbon pre-preg tape."

Most of my bikes have been steel and most of them have been second hand, so I'm already "reusing" someone else's purchase/hole in the ground. Again, none of this is really planned obs chat

I'm convinced they are doing this to my washing up device.

A few years back, they used to last for ages. These days, give it a week or so and the sponge heads come loose from the glue.

I can just picture the execs sitting in their boardroom, cooking up ways to increase profits using less or crappier glue so that people will give up and buy more replacements.

Well not me! Gorilla glue to the rescue, I have reinforced my latest sponge - hoping to keep it washing for the forseeable. I even have plans to use OTHER sponges, cutting them up and attaching myself.

Pioneer.

Ok rant over.

(Sorry to derail from bike-related serious talk)

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I am old and will be dead soon.
So if the world turns into a gigantic garbage heap full of broken junk it won’t affect me.
Young people are the ones who should be most concerned.

'There's no better feeling than a refill change day!' That's worse than all the bike marketing BS in the world combined.

I dont notice any difference in torque delivery from 110bcd 5 bolt chainrings, which also look way better imo.

The difference is how much material is required to do the job. Ye olde five-arm spiders had a nice aesthetic, but they weren't optimised.

The 3D chainrings pioneered on the last 10s groups paved the way for ditching the 130BCD; unfortunately this is getting a bit fancy for a consumable part though. If you look at aftermarket four-arm rings, they use traditional construction with big shaped nuts both for styling and to reinforce the ring against shifting force; that seems like a good alternative to overly fancy 3D rings.

But when you look at the placement of the four arms in relation to where the rider's torque is delivered through the revolution, and then you notice that one pair of arms is wider than the other, corresponding to the top half of the power stroke, it's apparent there's no more improvement to be made - it's function over form.

And if you think about it, if you include a consideration of the torque profile coming through the cranks, this design has more symmetry than five arms.

On the other hand, the styling over the top of that form is certainly a bit wank, and arbitrary slight differences in the ring lands between tiers preventing mix and match is just bullshit... Hang on - the 9200 ring you posted - I just noticed they've gone to the same width for each arm!

Now that seems like change just for the sake of it.

News....

https://www.colnago.com/en-gb/products/c68-rim-brake-bike

(*edit only compatible with electronic groupsets)

https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/72423/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-the-different-chainset-designs

"The idea is that the arms are positioned from an engineering standpoint to transfer power as best they can – taking the positions in the pedal stroke where we tend to apply most power into account – while allowing Shimano to reduce their number of arms from five to four, and thereby save weight.

Shimano reckon this is as stiff as previously, but lighter (the 7900 version, including bottom bracket, was 725g; this version, including bottom bracket, is 683g). Did I notice any difference in the rigidity when riding? Nope, certainly not.

The bolt circle diameter is 110mm whether you go for a standard (something like a 53-39T combination) or a compact (50-34T) – which makes things easier. You could ride standard chainrings at home, for example, and swap to smaller chainrings for a week in The Alps, for example, using the same cranks."

You can get replacement (better!) batteries for almost any handheld gaming console that have been around for that length of time — I’m pretty sure with the volume of electronic groupsets being sold the same will ring true for di2 and axs.

Also, mechanical groupsets have plenty of waste in them. Yearly to biyearly cable and housing replacements add up for shifters. Probably less overall impact than lithium batteries but not nothing. So many things in our lives run on electronic motors, I dont get why cyclists fetishize cables and act like electronic groups are some high tech gizmo. The only negative is the cost, they shift so much nicer and require almost no adjustment.

‘The C68 Rim Brake is only compatible with electronic groupsets’

Looks like aftermarket Chinese batteries are available for eTap.

My 2 sets of eTap have been faultless so far, I’m hoping mechanically it will work as long as a traditional mechanical mechs.

Ultegra 12 or Campagnolo Super Sold out? Better get hoarding

I don't think this is fair.
When I see the likes of sram or the other brands churning out this unrepairable stuff, I don't see a meaningful difference between that and someone just dragging their garbage in to the back garden and burning it, or throwing rubbish out the window from a moving car. It's unfair to me that we are all made to pay up for recycling services for domestic waste while the big brands get to mass manufacture their electric gubbins and bits, make a fortune, and claim it's not their problem when it all ends up on a burning heap somewhere with a kid picking through it breathing in fumes to try and get the rare earth metals out, and they won't even make an effort to keep their stuff going and out of the landfill for as long as possible. Classic example of a negative externality where a company makes a fortune at the expense of our habitat and someone else's environmental health.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/electronic-waste-(e-waste)

Di2 at least puts a lot of smarts in the battery, so replacing the cells is a non-trivial dismantling and soldering exercise that not many people will bother with.

Put the smarts in the battery, or an inline module like the wireless bluetooth unit.
The shifters are simple switches.
The derailleur is a simple servo.
It would be easy to upgrade from 10 to 12.

Di2 isn't simple - there are only two wires joining everything in parallel, except for the sprint switches which are just dumb switches.

Everything else, except junction Bs, has firmware in it. Last night I stumbled across Recessim, which aims to be a central repository for reverse engineering info... Maybe I'll get around to joining up to see if there's anyone interested in jailbreaking Di2. It would be sweet if I could replace the battery with something I ripped out of an old phone and an Arduino, and folks could make whatever shifters and derailers work together on anything.

Come to think of it, it would be even better if there was a tweakable open-source firmware for my crap telly... Wonder if that could ever be a thing, like with phones?

Ride fixed - problem solved!

Yep^ Also

If you must have gears ... Friction yo. Works with everything up to at least 10sp.

It's the future.

Sifn't must.

As for friction... Bugger stupid old downtube or barend levers. It's occurred to me it should be possible to modify Ultrashift Ergos to work as friction levers; there's even the ability to engage both the flipper and the mouse ear at once through part of their travel, allowing for the necessary overshift and subsequent correction in one go; probably fairly easy after a bit of practice.

On that note, I've wanted to have a go on a CVT forever, since before it was a thing. Dunno if NuVinci have got around to doing a proper road shifter for its pull/pull two cable setup, but I thought the above Ergo hack would be the go; ditch the mouse ear as well, and each side can pull one cable.

Sram GXP bottom brackets also feel like planned obsolescence to me, although they're probably unintentionally badly designed.
The bearing on 1 side wears our after a few 100km and they still kept making gxp cranks for a long time.

Yeah, fuck I bought another one of these BBs so I could fit my partner's FSA cranks on the Tripster since she got my GRX cranks. I feel dirty thinking about it and should've just sold/donated them and bought Shimano cranks. Only issue is the fucking GRX ones need the GRX FD too.

You can use a Shimano ht2 BB with a '22 to 24mm' adapter and a wavey washer on the driveside

I already bought the BB and it'll get fitted and then run until the end of time (it's in Poland so won't get used much). I'm going to try hard not buy any more non-standard FSA bullshit (this came OEM on my partners bike2work bike so I had no say)