Originally Posted by
Wilfred Laurier
Most modern carbon bikes are already stronger than super lightweight steel bikes.
Post a pic when you have your first frame manufactured from gastropod teeth.
Unfortunately there is a difference between dream and reality. We've discovered with CF that process matters as much as the intrinsic properties of the material. A new material like limpet offers us a chance to have something better than what CF currently is in real life.
As Technology Makes Bicycles Lighter and Faster, It’s the Cyclists Falling Harder
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/sp...rder.html?_r=0
Michael Kaiser, the head of product development at
Canyon, a German company that offers both carbon and aluminum bikes, and provides bikes to two teams at the Tour, said that
with carbon, careful manufacturing was as important as design.
To get exactly the right result is more demanding than with metals, as it requires a comparatively large degree of work by hand,” he wrote in an email. “Therefore the entire manufacturing process has to be incredibly precise with extensive quality controls in place to ensure there are no defects in the parts.”
What results, Perovic said, is that when a bike is stressed beyond its limits, it “fractures into many pieces while metals bend, the energy absorption is the bending.” While steel and aluminum bikes generally telegraph an impending failure by displaying cracks, carbon fiber generally fails without warning.