Framebuilders - Stainless Steel
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Garfield Cat
11-03-09, 10:04 AM
There is an article in today's (Tuesday, 11-3-09) Los Angeles Times Business Section about KVA Stainless, Inc. The company was started by 88 year old Ed McCrink to supply steel to the auto industry but now that part of the business has dried up. So they turn their direction towards the bike frame and other sporting goods applications.
The article talks about new formulations of stainless steel. But didn't go into what formulations it was. The article talks about KVA having a patented process of rolling steel into tubing.
What's this new formulation of stainless steel? Does it make it lighter and stronger?
Nessism
11-03-09, 12:52 PM
Try this... http://www.google.com/search?q=KVA+Stainless%2C+Inc.&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
First look suggests a similar composition to XCR. Don't ask me to explain why I think that. It'll be long.
Silverbraze
11-03-09, 03:51 PM
you cannot make steel lighter. {.00789mm3 gram**
Stronger is not always the answer
fatigue is important, not just tensile and yield numbers
Ductility is important
this is why stainless tubes are not the best way for a tough, long lasting workable tube set. XCR goes a long way closer to this, but ....................
I have a project with Columbus for 2010 under way
Nessism
11-03-09, 10:17 PM
First look suggests a similar composition to XCR. Don't ask me to explain why I think that. It'll be long.
Link says this company supplies Reynolds, so the alloy must be similar to 953.
sokyroadie
11-08-09, 08:26 AM
I have a frameset on order with a builder that uses all 3 (953, XCR, KVA) he actually recommended the KVA + it was a couple of hundred cheaper.
Jeff
Sorry I took so long to reply...
Link says this company supplies Reynolds, so the alloy must be similar to 953.
Don't be so hasty. 953, as I've pointed out before isn't some special alloy, it's just a rebadge of Carpenter's Custom 455 alloy, which is now an internationally available standard composition. The strength level, filler and filler metals suggested imply a purely martensitic steel with a low carbon content, which is usual for such stainless steels and similar in behaviour to XCR, not a precipitation hardening one.
Straight martensitic stainless steels, like 16-4-1 (what XCR is made of) are much more cost-effective and easy to deal with than complex alloys. The website makes a point of the distinction between martensitics and precipitation hardenable grades (martensitic or otherwise matrix), so I'm inferring that they've just got clever, simple chemsitry going on.
They may well supply Reynolds, but that only makes it *more* unlikely that they'd offer a competing product of the same chemistry ranges. You want to partition the market and cover all your price points, not saturate the very high end with six tubesets all out of the reach of most builders.
What say you?