Manufacturing standards and testing?

Quite straight forward, anyone knows what standards and/or testing is required / desirable when manufacturing and selling bike parts? Is there any?

Standards or not, any idea how to test say a stem without risking my life?

Clamp it to some tube, whack it in a vice, put a long bit on tube in the other end, and hang on it giving it some mighty kaharumph.

What's it made of?

There are British Standards for the bike as a whole and for a bike which is for sale, possibly these apply to hire bikes. Dunno if there are component standards?

There are British Standards for the bike as a whole and for a bike which is for sale, possibly these apply to hire bikes. Dunno if there are component standards?

any name of this standards or info on who tests them?

I don't think there is likely to be a standard test but you could try the British Standards website. More likely is that you will need it looking at by someone competent to 'sign it off' if you want to avoid any trouble if it causes anyone an injury.

These guys will do the tests for you.

http://www.efbe.de/pruefservice/ermuedung/enindex.php#Lenkervorbau

They also list the relevant standards.

Here's the order form:

http://www.efbe.de/efbedown/Englisch/Pruefauftraege/8_EUR_handlebar.pdf

bike frames and components have to pass the CEN test

http://www.biketesting.com/CENtesting.html

There was a recent change in the testing of bike frames, the CEN MrSmyth is on about. I think a few manufactures had to beef up / tweak some of their frames. I think COTIC may have had to tweak one of their frames.

I've been in some ISO working groups.
There are ISO standards for various areas like:

• lighting
  
• safety requirements
  
• terminology
  
• brakes
  
• ...
  
  

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_ics/catalogue_ics_browse.htm?ICS1=43&ICS2=150&published=on

Funny you should ask, I've done some research on this subject only recently. Apparently, the idea of imposing a set of industry standards for the manufacture of bicycles was first mooted in Britain by the Earl of Somerset (Liberal MP for Maidstone East) during a Parliamentary broadcast session (one of the very first Chrystal-Ether Radio Broadcasts of the nascent BBC, which back then had the rather clumsy monicker the Wireless Telegraph Dispatch Emporium (WTDE) in April 1910 after the four-year-old step neice of one of his constituents was badly injured riding her Ipswich-built Cosworth Flying Gate through Longleat safari park (which had been established just three months earlier by Douglas Powell, the grand nephew of Lord Baden Powell, on his return from active service in the Boer War (an experience which had left him enamoured of the flora, and particulary the fauna, of Kenya's Red Centre, which was at the time known as Maku Maku). Although he'd lost his left wrist in battle, Douglas and his pygmy wife, Zwani, had hand-reared a clutch of tiger cubs, an ostrich, three pandas and a 16-strong brood of Zimbabwean rhino, which were paraded in front of the Lady Mayoress of Longleat at the opening of a local nursery, much to the dismay of a young Winston Churchill, who was apparently courting her cousin, Annabel Maudson, at the time. Churchill's monocle, as reported by the Essex Comet, fell into the goblet of porter he was drinking from (it now hangs behind the bar at the Cricketers Arms in Somer Street Dudley) when one of the park's ring-tailed vultures escaped and emitted a "bloodcurdling squak of the damned that would have set Lucifer's table afire" [sic] [Shropshire Gazette] after being startled by a Ford T with nitrous backfiring on an adjacent back alley that had been tagged by the third earl of Baconshop on Ash Wednesday a mere 11 hours after the corner shop opened that sold blackberry sherbert, which was called gobstoppers back then. I hope that answers your question!

Apparently, the idea of imposing a set of industry standards for the manufacture of bicycles was first mooted in Britain by the Earl of Somerset, after the four-year-old step neice of one of his constituents was badly injured riding her bike through Longleat safari park.

I hope that answers your question!

Sorry, was that post serious? I am very likely to have missed something, but after cutting out everything off topic & irrelevant, this is what I'm left with........

Sorry, was that post serious? I am very likely to have missed something, but after cutting out everything off topic & irrelevant, this is what I'm left with........

Entirely serious, I can assure you! My work as a founder member and researcher at the Ethno-Mechanical Institute of Geo-Anthropology (EMIGA) takes me all over the world as part of a four-strong team that sources, tests and reports on new technology. We aim to demistify complicated, esoteric mechanisms, structures and devices, rephrasing and deconstructing industry jargon where possible, and ultimately putting our colated findings into the public domain via publications, websites (such as this) and, chiefly, word of mouth. Our mission as an organisation is to one day have a single global techno-ethnic language, with roots in the common vernacular, that brings communities together around a single set of linguistic and technological values and norms. Our goal, as one of the less conspicuous partners of the London Olympics, is to have a 80 per cent-plus informed, techno-savvy population by the year 2012. My work in London over the past four years has focused almost exclusively on wheeled self-propulsive devices (bicycles, to all intents and purposes, although childrens' wheeled hobby horses and 'balance bikes' that I have studied arguably fall outside of this category) and my role on this forum has been principally that of a data-harvester, although I have 'seeded' a number of my conclusions in posts over the past few years, which, I am proud to report, have become assimilated into its quotidian lingua franca. For instance, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, the phrase 'my ride' was my work! Before I started referring to my Cannondale in this way, a large contingent of this forum habitually referred to their ride as 'my bike', or 'my wheels'. I strived to steer this forum away from this ugly and pernicious malaprop with oblique references to an anthropological database (mainly lexographic charts and pie charts) that we had compiled based on the work of numerous field trips over the spring and summer of 1996 for the Geo-mechanical Department of Bognor University's Ethno-structural Faculty to study the hunter-gatherer Malaita rainforest tribe (which subsists primarly in canopy-dense sub-tropical esturine nodes on the fringes of limestone basins). Our work here is, although the connection will perhaps seem tenuous to the layman, is of the upmost relevance to the self-specific personal transport nomenaclature used widely among London fixed-gear and single-speed riders. To whit, my colleagues and I observed the tribesfolk referring to their kapok tree bark and twine canoes as 'my ride' ('zhulan rahjan' in their primitive mother tongue). This conflation of verbal and nounal lexicographical elements into a unified adverbial form brought the whole community together in a well nang way dat's proper wicky-wicky wild-wild well-good.

:(

bloody postmodernism

Tarantino and cultural neotextual theory

“Society is fundamentally responsible for capitalism,” says Foucault; however, according to von Junz[1], it is not so much society that is fundamentally responsible for capitalism, but rather the economy, and subsequent absurdity, of society. Derrida promotes the use of prestructuralist Marxism to modify class.
If one examines cultural neotextual theory, one is faced with a choice: either accept textual neocultural theory or conclude that the significance of the artist is significant form, given that reality is interchangeable with sexuality. But the subject is interpolated into a cultural neotextual theory that includes consciousness as a paradox. Many narratives concerning not situationism as such, but postsituationism exist.
The main theme of Geoffrey’s[2] model of material theory is a conceptual totality. Therefore, Debord uses the term ‘subcultural demodernism’ to denote the role of the reader as observer. In Jackie Brown, Tarantino denies cultural neotextual theory; in Four Rooms he deconstructs material theory.
But the primary theme of the works of Tarantino is the common ground between reality and society. An abundance of narratives concerning cultural neotextual theory may be discovered.
It could be said that the ground/figure distinction depicted in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is also evident in Reservoir Dogs, although in a more self-referential sense. Textual Marxism suggests that narrativity, perhaps paradoxically, has objective value.
Thus, Bataille suggests the use of material theory to challenge the status quo. The main theme of Sargeant’s[3] analysis of cultural neotextual theory is a postcapitalist whole.
Therefore, the subject is contextualised into a textual Marxism that includes consciousness as a reality. The premise of Lacanist obscurity holds that the law is a legal fiction.
In a sense, Baudrillard uses the term ‘material theory’ to denote not, in fact, discourse, but neodiscourse. Bataille’s critique of textual Marxism implies that art may be used to reinforce class divisions.

1. von Junz, K. M. E. ed. (1987) Deconstructing Modernism: Debordist image, objectivism and material theory. Panic Button Books
   
   1. Geoffrey, Q. W. (1991) Material theory and cultural neotextual theory. University of Massachusetts Press
      
   2. Sargeant, V. B. S. ed. (1973) The Reality of Failure: Material theory in the works of Madonna. And/Or Press
      
      

Glenn, without any post-modern irony, why the question? Have you made a stem, or broken one, or what?

Doesn't have to be a stem, but yes, that is one of the parts im sketching on. however I'm not gonna have it produced just to discover I cant sell it or that people smash their heads in using them.

If your material choice is governed by prettiness instead of sound engineering principles, I would suggest some testing.

Seriously, tho' are you drawing for the sake of drawing or intending to make something useful? If useful then I would go for fairly serious over design (in composites for eg) if you haven't got deep pockets for proper fatigue tesing, or........ use well-understood materials (eg steel) and a well-understood fabrication technique.

Uh, and some public liability insurance....

my 2p...