Royce would like feedback

Is it still 1993? I thought we'd all gone past cranks CNC'd from billet (from drawings I could do in O Level Tech. Drawing) nearly 2 decades ago. The ring is inside the spider because they couldn't, or couldn't be arsed to, make a dished spider. It has no effect on Q-factor, which is constrained by the need to fit a wide enough crank outside the chain line. Square taper might snap on tank drive sprockets, but the axles very rarely break on track cranks, albeit that they are pathetically floppy in torsion compared with external BB systems.

My money is on the £80 SRAM S300 being objectively superior, as the Taiwanese forgemasters who made it have access to superior CAD/FEA skills and superior manufacturing techniques.

Personal opinion: Disappointing. Not keen on mirror finish, the 5 arms look rubish. logo looks rubbish. Maybe the photo doesn't give it justice but still, disappointing.

Professional opinion: Just looks like a blatant engineer's job with not much design sense.
I think they need to employ me for a while. Anyone's got a contact I send my portfolio to?

royce are known for their engineering, that's part of the appeal.
i think they don't need to employ you.
ultimately they will be the judge of that.

Why have Royce gone for such a small axle, when the diameter of axles by other manufacturers Shimano , Sram, Campy are much bigger and allegedly stiffer.
Seems a strange choice to me.
Hope RPM can test them t let us know how they are in reality. They are awesome looking if nothing else, and am i right in saying that rrp will be around £900 ? :o

They told me about £300 RRP, or thereabouts.

Why have Royce gone for such a small axle

Because they are wedded to the idea of housing the bearings inside the BB shell. Most internal BBs use 17mm ID (e.g. 6903) bearings, although I'm pretty sure 6804 (20mm ID) would work for a BB, yielding a 66% increase in torsional stiffness for no additional weight.

However, Campagnolo have clearly shown that it's possible to have a low Q even with two rings and clearance for the chain to swing out to the top sprocket on a 130mm wide rear hub, as well as plenty of heel clearance and external bearings of 25mm ID. These USE rings on a 105 HT2 crank will also kick Royce's butt:

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Royce may have ideas that possibly don't make the best use of the latest engineering designs, but they're British, and they DO have pedigree.
So, for some, thats enough. British FTW. :))

I'm not so sure you'd want a narrower Q factor than D.A. unless you are going for the hour record, my knees are brushing the TT as it is.

you get jiggy with time trialists?

They're totally fug btw...

These USE rings on a 105 HT2 crank will also kick Royce's butt:

But 105 don't come in 165 do they? the rings look like a great idea, but aimed at TT'ers?

This whole stiffness/weight argument is largely irrelevant for track use. There is no evidence to suggest times have improved with outboard bearing cranksets V octalink or ST.

It's very different to the road, where you have seated climbs etc, and all the added friction & wind resistance.

It's very different to the road, where you have seated climbs etc, and all the added friction & wind resistance.

Track riders exert more power, accelerate faster and achieve higher speeds. All strong arguments for stiffer/lighter/more aero. I'm pretty sure that track crank design has remained static for so long is a combination of the very small market and the fact that cranks are pretty much the most marginal component in terms of the gains available. I'm also pretty sure that the Royce crank will not be a material improvement on the current standard products, i.e. Record/DA/S75.

Track riders exert more power, accelerate faster and achieve higher speeds.

With very different dynamics and resistance, if there were sufficient gains to be had, they would be in use at top level.

I'm also pretty sure that the Royce crank will not be a material improvement on the current standard products, i.e. Record/DA/S75.

That's the benchmark I offered them.
Otherwise they may as well go with marketing it to Mr Smyth's "doe eyed hipsters"

SRAM are going to do a track specific version of their S900 crank which should be good! I'd imagine this is to facilitate the use of a track specific Quarq

The SRAM (and the royce) look ugly. Campy record all the way!

Campy record all the way!

I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous reply

heh.

fair play. campag record all the way. or would you prefer campagnolo?

royce are known for their engineering, that's part of the appeal.
i think they don't need to employ you.
ultimately they will be the judge of that.

Who knows!
As Mdcc demonstrated, there is clearly room for improvement and a little biomechanics and creativity could help.

Engineering is applying science to design, USE is obviously doing a better job at that! And they are british...

Pedigree just makes the past look good, not the future, nor the present!

Personal opinion: the 5 arms look rubish.

And what would you do to change them?

2 arm?

That's like an Escher drawing.,.. argh my eyes.

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r77/hilarystone/500EX-TA-GS150.jpg
3? haha

2 arm?

No arm:

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Been there, done that. I'll have those zipps though.

Any truth to the rumour that the London Ambulance Service are energetically supoprting the Save the Velodrome campaign on the basis that, without Rollapaluza cc, they would lose out on their overtime?

sounds about right.

When I saw these as the show I thought they were awesome, not convinced about the oversize logo, but apart from that spot on. I realise that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but they most definitely work for me.

I'm not entirely clear either on the exact benefit of the triangular tapers, at the show they were talking about increased surface area for contact between the axle and cranks, I do know enough math to realise that a splined contact would have even greater surface area. They're not the only people to have tried this, The Hive have tried something similar;

People also seem to be forgetting that for rather a long time a large part of Royce's business has been producing high end bottom brackets with an absolute emphasis on weight and stiffness, this isn't something they're new at. I understand that if you're starting with a clean sheet of paper it's easier/cheaper to get a stiff axle with a bigger spindle in aluminium or steel than to use something exotic like titanium, but titanium is Royce's default material and raison d'etre, so it's hardly surprising they're sticking with it.

I spoke to Cliff today and he's in the process of building a rig to do some comparative deflection testing of Royce's new cranks and the competition's, he seemed pretty confident Royce's cranks would come out on top and he sounded a lot more like an engineer (rather than a designer) who'd done his sums than a marketeer hyping his product. I don't claim to be unbiased about this, I've just ordered a set of 162.5mm cranks arms off them to put on a Schlumpf Speed-drive I'm putting on the recumbent I'm building for next year's P-B-P and I am paying for them, haven't blagged them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. Will let you know how I get on with them.

Earlier in the thread someone said something to the effect that CNC'd cranks were an outdated fetish of the 80s, a couple of years back Fair Wheel Bikes did a large and fairly objective group test of a variety of high end chainsets. A CNC'd EE Cycle Works chainset seemed to comfortably trash the competition, Cannondale also use CNC to make their Hollowgram cranks and Rotor use CNC to make their 3D cranks, both cranks with an impressive reputation for stiffness, so not sure that CNC'd cranks have had their day. I'm not suggesting that CNC is necessarily the best way to make a set of cranks, just that the alternatives aren't inherently better, just a different way of doing things.