Thread: stem drilling
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Old 02-16-13 | 12:01 PM
  #23  
unterhausen
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Joined: Aug 2008
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From: Happy Valley, Pennsylvania
a threaded hole is just about the worst stress riser you can put in a piece of aluminum other than an actual crack. Like I said upthread, if the plan is to put a significant number of miles on the bike, it's a really bad idea.

The whole issue with fatigue failures, and particularly fatigue failures in aluminum, is that the stresses required to start and propagate a crack are much lower than the yield stress. So your mental model of the strength of a component doesn't really do you much good in trying to decide if something will ultimately fail. We know that un-threaded stems have failed, so it is certainly possible.

Last edited by unterhausen; 02-16-13 at 12:04 PM.
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