Royce would like feedback

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Late to the party after being on holiday :-)

First reaction... No.

£300!!
Proprietary BB? (for no apparent gain reasons)

Inside spider chain ring!?! Have these people ever change there chain ring 3 times in a track session?

It seems to offer nothing over proven and cheaper 75s.
And they are fugly!

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Polybikeuser:
Designers are not marketeers, designers like people, engineers like maths. I don't think you know what designers actually do.

'designers like people' ?

HA

I don't think designers know what designers actually do.

FTFY

Cuts be a comin, all those rich kids sitting at Macs in London's trendy "London" thinking they are the dogs crackers because they drew a picture of a chair with a hole in it will be having the solid wood flooring pulled from under them soon.

laminate flooring, Rob.

Laminate.

Thin end of the wedge eh?

what about engineered flooring?

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Polybikeuser:
Designers are not marketeers, designers like people, engineers like maths. I don't think you know what designers actually do.

"Designer" seems to cover a multitude of activities/disciplines these days, from the aesthetics of clothes and interior design, through to the (semi)science of ergonomics and interface design, with all sorts in between, for example typography.

I know enough to know that over the years a number of product design courses have repositioned themselves as product engineering courses to distinguish themselves as being concerned with producing things that functioned better, rather than just looked nice.

I'm not anti-design, far from it, but there are too many designers who play around with objects and make them pretty, claim they've improved them but have too little understanding of the underlying function/physical properties of the object they claim to be improving. For example what proportion of designers use Finite Element Analysis?

The Royce chainset may well be no better than a Sugino 75, it may be a mistake to have the ring on the inside of the spider rather than the outside if you want to make regular ring changes, in which case it won't establish itself in the market. On the other hand it may prove to be engineered to be stiffer than the competition and with a narrower Q factor, which may appeal to some, in which case it may find itself a niche. I happen to like the way it looks, but at the end of the day, that's not really the greatest priority is it? My concern is that some, and I emphasise SOME designers would think it was.

True, designers can be involved with an extremely diverse range of things and services. But each designer has their own domain in which they specialise, whether it be typography, lighting, furniture, web, or in my case sports equipment.

What you say about design schools repositioning themselves is true. But there are still fairly conceptual schools such as CSM and sadly they are actually responding to the current London market which is highly creative and not so technical. I left CSM for that reason and went to Brighton for a more fulfilling and professional course although less prestigious.

They designers who play around with objects and make them pretty can be very useful, in certain industries. You say there are too many, there are too many designers in general, it's just the trend I guess. I use FEA mainly because I my creativity is in the shape and structure of things with a strong drive for optimisation, and I would say that 50% of product designers are taught to use it and 20% of those taught actually use it in their design process. But again, it depends in which industry they are working.

Does Royce use FEA?
It is fair enough that they wish to focus on the basic properties such as stiffness, material and Q factor. But there doesn't seem to have anything clever about it, exept maybe for the triangular BB (though I hate the non-standard aspect of it),

I'm sorry that I have to beat my own drum here, it's very sad. But I do think we are facing some kind of design backlash. I guess that's what happens when some "scene" designer decides to get involved in bike design, giving all the other competent designers that are a lot less vocal a bad name.

And Nimhbus: most designers I know hate humanity with passion. But their job is to care about people's needs (and desires sometimes ;)) and that's not a science that engineers will necessarily focus on, that's all I meant to say.

Seconded, most designers hate people, I know I do ;p

part of Royce's business has been producing high end bottom brackets with an absolute emphasis on weight and stiffness

Sorry for the delay, but just reviewing this and I cannot let it pass. Royce BBs have been made with many things in mind, but stiffness has never been at the top of their agenda. For a start, nobody concerned with maximal stiffness would ever use a titanium BB axle, nor would they persist for long with small ID bearings mounted a long way inboard inside the BB shell. To make the stiffest possible internal cup square taper BB (taking it as read that you are so constrained), you place the bearings as far apart as possible, use steel for the axle, and use the biggest bearing you can squeeze inside the standard shell. It is possible, and I know because I have one, to make a square taper BB which fits in a normal 68mm BSC shell with only the usual thickness of cup flange, with 20mm ID bearings spaced 68mm apart centre to centre. It's a bugger to assemble, because you have to carefully shim the axle between crank and bearing to control the end float, but you do end up with a BB axle at least twice as stiff in torsion as the 17mm diameter Royce Ti one, and also much stiffer in flexion due to both the larger diameter and the support being closer to the applied load.

mdcc, is there's a reason why you don't work in the cycling industries? were you caught doing something you shouldn't be doing?

Ed, he likes to keep it quiet.

mdcc, is there's a reason why you don't work in the cycling industries?

I don't know anything that anybody in the first year of a mechanical engineering degree course shouldn't know, and with more immediate knowledge of the underlying mathematics. It really isn't rocket science.

Sorry for the delay, but just reviewing this and I cannot let it pass. Royce BBs have been made with many things in mind, but stiffness has never been at the top of their agenda. For a start, nobody concerned with maximal stiffness would ever use a titanium BB axle, nor would they persist for long with small ID bearings mounted a long way inboard inside the BB shell. To make the stiffest possible internal cup square taper BB (taking it as read that you are so constrained), you place the bearings as far apart as possible, use steel for the axle, and use the biggest bearing you can squeeze inside the standard shell. It is possible, and I know because I have one, to make a square taper BB which fits in a normal 68mm BSC shell with only the usual thickness of cup flange, with 20mm ID bearings spaced 68mm apart centre to centre. It's a bugger to assemble, because you have to carefully shim the axle between crank and bearing to control the end float, but you do end up with a BB axle at least twice as stiff in torsion as the 17mm diameter Royce Ti one, and also much stiffer in flexion due to both the larger diameter and the support being closer to the applied load.

Fair enough, I stand well and truly corrected :-)