Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I think I said that. On all the through axles I've seen, however, they don't use cone and cup type bearing and thus wouldn't have the same issue as cup and cone hubs. The ones I've seen have all used cartridge bearings which don't need adjustment nor do many cartridge bearing hubs have a way to adjust them.
Bearing type has nothing to do with TA vs QR. For example, all shimano hubs are cup and cone, their TA hubs are no different. In fact, For pretty much any hub model offered in TA and QR, the bearing type is going to be the same between them.
What you have seen (TA being all sealed cartridge bearing) is probably due to the fact that higher end and/or newer hubs are more likely to be sealed cartridge bearings (Shimano being one exception), and the same is true of TA frames and bikes (higher end and/or newer). It's a correlation thing. Higher end/newer frames and forks tend to have higher end/newer hubs on them.