Road Cycling - New Columbus Steels

Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.

PDA

View Full Version : New Columbus Steels

nutbag

05-06-04, 12:54 PM

What's the word on the new Columbus niobium steels: "Spirit" and "Life".
Too light? Too thin (0.38mm at center)? Really good?

I can't find out much, mainly because the Columbus web site is down for repair.

Thylacine

05-06-04, 06:28 PM

Niobium apparently increases the metals fatigue resistance as well as improves corrosion resistance, according to Columbus. "Spirt" - the super thin stuff - I guess is akin to True Temper S3 in terms of wall thickness, but takes advantage of the alloying of Niobium. They're no lighter than the same tube in UltraFoco, though.

These alloys are very very new, and as far as I know Serotta and Ritchey are the only ones using Niobium alloys in any quantities. I haven't tried any Spirit or Life, but it's just a matter of time before I do I guess.

It's getting to a point where these ultra thin steels are such a pain to fabricate, that the advantages of them compared to titanium almost vanish - both from the framebuilders perspective as well as the customers.