Late edit on that last post…
It would save 200-250gm going from a chromoly hub to a Ti hub, so closer 1/2 pound, but still a whole lot of weight savings for not much money, while at the same time not hurting performance.
As to the aluminum hub, like that lovely golden Oracle, be forewarned that even some road users have twisted the flange on the aluminum spindled hubs, so hard core hill climbing with big descents might not be a good use for that hub.
The M41 is the ideal hub for my purpose, which will be solely for steep hill climbing. There will be no drops or any impact forces. It would be highly unlikely for the hub to bend or twist as you mentioned, under the described use. I will have the lightest ISIS hub available, at far less cost than the Ti hub, which would be total overkill for my stated purpose.
My first-gen TI KH-hub is still alive… and im using it for trials only.
Guess im not that hard to hubs 
Im more likely to break rims…
I dont like the design of the current TI-hub… if i buy TI, i want to see it! No CF-body or something…
No they’re not. They’re really not. I’m sure a hub designer doesn’t sit down and think “how do I make this flange flex more?” - quite the opposite in fact. The irony of course being that leo is correct about track bikes using high flange hubs (back in the old days when track riders used conventional spoked wheels), but the reason advocated for that is increased stiffness!
If you really think flex in a wheel is a good things, then you should be using DT revolution or Sapim Laser spokes (or DT Aerolite/Sapim CX-Ray if you have lots of money and perceive some advantage from those). Hands up who here is using those spokes on their unicycle wheel, and for those advocating high flanges, if not, why not?
Though lets just delve into this thought process a little more - in what direction exactly do you thing the high flanges are flexing?
BTW the point about the wheel not caring what sort of wheeled vehicle it is on is that the physics doesn’t change - I understand the forces are different, but if the size of the flange doesn’t affect the force on the spoke head on a bicycle it won’t on a unicycle either.
For the record (but I think you are aware of it): that’s the KH ti, not the Exceed that we’re discussing here.
I’m not in the flex camp, that flex thing seems even bigger nonsense than what you wrote and write. Although yes, cast-iron is not exactly suitable for a hub, quite the opposite in fact.
I stated that high flanges make stronger wheels. “Stiff” is not the same as “strong”, nor “sturdy” which may be the best word in your language.
Track bikes, Artistic bicycles and unicycle deal with different forces than BMX freestyle bikes, motorcycle wheels, electric bicycle wheels, or normal bikes.
Because Sapim (nor any distributor) has never any stock and never wants to make something in the size of my unicycle wheels.
Or if they do, then against a ridiculous price.
Bytheway, Sapim has nice whitepapers available for download, which I recommend you to read, as you certainly could learn some things from it.
Today I had to think about your post and my response, and that very moment I catched in a video recording:
Now this happens after a proto-type pair of cranks of Mad4One already failed on us. Now am I mad on Mad4One? No, not at all.
The proto-type test cranks were just a test to push the limit. To find the limit you have to get over it.
And the broken hub; it was already known that Ergal is not great in dealing with high tention. The hubs are meant for trial, not for freestyle. And when doing cross 1.5, or cross 1, or (with this hub impossible) cross 0 patterns on these, then you will need extreme tention, as forces on the spokes become much higher than on big flanges, and therefor narrow flanges are incapable to keep a unicycle wheel solid. My posting history shows that I clearly knew that in advance, so the failure was anything but unexpected. The moment it happened was even perfect; now I know I will deal OK with it. Yes, the Exceed is costly, but to me worth it’s price.
Not knowing the background on that hub/wheel failure, I can tell you what I see in the video…
That hub flange failure occurred because the flange was overloaded. Radial (or low cross) lacing is inappropriate for torque bearing wheels; that includes all unicycle wheels, all bicycle rear (drive) wheels, and all disc-brake bicycle front wheels. It overloads the spokes (due to the high tensions required to make the wheel torsionally stiff) and it overloads the flange (because all spokes are pulling “outward” the forces don’t cancel each other out locally). Some bicycle hub manufactures, notably Chris King, prohibit radially lacing on most of their hub designs.
If a spoke leaves the flange at a 90deg angle (as in a radially spoked wheel), how can it convey a torque? It it were to leave the hub at a tangent (for example, a 4-cross wheel is usually very close to this), when you try to twist the wheel, the tension on half the spokes increases, pulling the rim along. If it leaves at a 90deg angle (radially laced), then twisting the hub does nothing to increase the tension until the hub “winds up” and the angle changes from 90 degrees. The closer the angle is to 90 degrees, the greater the increase in the spoke tension needed to convey the torque.
Hubs designed to flex? No way. And certainly not to “save” spokes. High flange vs low flange? The difference is largely historical. All modern high tension wheels, independent of the spoke gauge, flange size, etc, are so stiff as to be modeled as a solid as compared to the tire.
Track bikes used high flange hubs because ancient spokes couldn’t handle the tension that spokes can today. At lower tensions, it was important to bring the flanges up toward the rim, which in turn increased the angle between the left-flange and right-flange spokes, making the wheel stiffer and stronger. It had nothing to do with forces on the head of the spoke (which are not a function of flange size).
Is that an ad-hom I see there?
As far as wheels go, there’s a pretty good correlation between stiff and strong - I’m also still waiting to see your argument why you think high flanges make stronger wheels. In any case, the original point I picked up on was your claim that:
which is just plain wrong.
The magnitude of the forces might be higher, but that doesn’t change the way the forces are distributed in the wheel. I’m really not quite sure why you keep bringing up track bikes though, as the forces in their wheels are little different to those in road racing bicycles - is it just because you think their use of high flange hubs supports your argument?
So what exactly about spokes and wheels is it you think I’m wrong about which those whitepapers would correct me on? 
So is this what you are basing your whole argument on? That you managed to break a hub by lacing it incorrectly in a way which overstressed it? adelman has already mostly covered that issue though.
You could always try cross 2 or cross 3 as is traditional. You’d then find such a small flange hub perfectly adequate at dealing with the tensions of the spokes. In fact a large flange hub would be just as likely to break if you laced that in a similar way. It’s your choice of lacing pattern which is the problem, not the size of the flanges.
Some good stuff there, thanks for the support, but the thing about large flange hubs making a wheel stiffer and stronger is also largely a myth. The spoke length used with a large flange hub and tangential (3 cross) lacing is almost identical to that with a small flange hub. Given basic geometry and that the lateral distance between the flange and the rim is identical for small and large flange hubs (as the flange is still in the same position on the hub), it is clear that the bracing angle hasn’t improved.
The fallacy is the idea that a large flange hub moves the head of the spoke towards the rim, whilst with tangential lacing it actually moves the head of the spoke parallel to the rim.
Oh, and whilst I’m at it, it’s worth mentioning that spoke tension doesn’t actually make a difference to the stiffness of a wheel in normal use (provided tension is high enough that you don’t have spokes going completely slack), though it can make a difference to the strength.
Yes i know 
I love the look of the exceed hub.
I’m not an engineer, but I do know that hubs flex, and I was told this by a person far more knowledgeable than I, so flange flex is important, does happen, and a short flange will put more stress on the spokes.
Everything metal flexes, frames flex, wheels flex, a larger flange will flex more than a shorter flange, so is it significant, who knows how much (an engineer who has run flex tests?), but if you are breaking spokes on a shorter flange, something is different and it doesn’t take an engineer to guess what that difference is 
I have broken flanges on the KH Ti original hub, at the welds, probably because the flange was laser cut with KH initials to the point that it allowed too much flex. I have also broken the original KH aluminum flanged hub, cracked the spoke holes, likely due to excessive flex and repeated flex cycles over a long period of time.
The newer KH flanges seem to be stronger due to increased thickness, so flex is probably lessened, and thus they are less prone to fatigue, but I wouldn’t be suprised if there is more spoke breakage. Aluminum does not handle as many flex cycles as steel, so it needs to be thicker, Ti tends to be more brittle than steel but less brittle than aluminum, so it can be thinner, but not too thin (KH Ti spindle).
I understand the Exceed folks wanting the lightest hub possible, but I’d be nice if it was a slightly larger flange to make build ups and spoke replacement easier.
Personally, I like the idea of using Ti, but having broken a Ti hub, and having struggled through building and breaking a Ti frame, and watching friends break multiple Ti bike frames, I am gonna stick with steel for now.
Back on hub topic, you all probably know that hub “squeak” has been an issue on the two piece hubs (KH and Nimbus), this appears to be due to tolerance/material issues with the internal spline that holds the spindle into the hub body. Exceed rightly avoided that problem by making a one piece hub. So who will be bringing the next one piece hub?
My Nimbus 32hole hub squeaks so i am looking at the mad4one.
I concur on all of this. 40-50 years ago proper analysis wasn’t given on these subjects. It was believed that a large-flange hub would make an improved strength wheel. The argument on improving triangle geometry was that moving the flange outward effectively increased the flange-width as far as the geometry was concerned. As you point out, this is only the case radial or near radial lacing patterns, and not at all important with 3- or 4-cross near-tangential lacing. It is all mute at modern spoke tensions.
Ken
Hubs do flex; they just aren’t designed to flex for reducing the stress on the spokes. Modern stainless steel spokes can handle stresses nearly twice what we put on them.
Tires flex. All the metal flexing in the frame, wheel, flange, etc, in a modern wheel is totally insignificant compared to the tire flex.
There are only three reasons spokes would break –
Mechanical trauma leading to an overload on a small number of spokes (eg, putting a foot or branch through a wheel)
Low quality or defective spokes (spoke has a low strength; we don’t see very much of this anymore)
Metal fatigue. Metal fatigue failures will occur at the most highly stresses areas; the head and the threads.
Note: There is one reason that they DON’T break, and that’s simple mechanical overload during normal use (absent #1 or #2).
I can tell you what the difference you’re referring to is –
If you’re breaking spokes on a small-flange hub, absent #1, the problem is #3. The reason is an improper wheel build – the spokes where not property strain relieved during the building process which led to a fatigue failure. This can be confirmed by examination of the broken surface under a 10x loop or low-power microscope. It has nothing to do with the size of the hub flange, but rather the wheel builder’s improper technique.
Ken
The difference is that the small flange wheel was built badly, or has poor quality spokes. What do I win?
…and if you remove the tyre from the equation and look just at the flex in the wheel, any flex in the flange is totally insignificant compared to the amount the spokes stretch. If you consider this flex to be such a important thing, I presume you are using DT Revolution or Sapim Laser spokes, Nurse Ben, given at least some of your wheels use spokes in lengths which are readily available?
I usually try to keep out of arguments like this, but this one’s quite interesting…
I’ve always thought that the argument for “bigger flanges are better” was to do with torque transmission (although that doesn’t explain why people used big flanges on the front wheel of rim-braked bikes). Anyway, it seems sensible to me that with tangential spoke lacing, a larger flange would reduce the tension required in the spoke to transmit a given torque from the hub to the rim. So spoke breakages on a larger flange should be less likely with all other things being equal. Small flanges, in my mind, look like they should be putting more tension on the spokes to transmit the torque, so therefore more pull on the spoke hole and more likelihood of flange breakage. And the spoke holes are closer together for a given number of spokes than on a larger flange, so less material round each hole.
BTW, I’m not trying to take sides or disprove anybody’s opinions, and I’m quite happy to be told I’ve over simplified things or am just plain wrong 
I too thought it was in regard to torque transmission. This is why in the old days Campy made a high-low rear hub with the tall flange on the drive side. That being said I also am not taking sides and do not know if it was just a marketing ploy on Campy’s part.
I need more and more dictnionaries here. Don’t switch my opinion that’s pure about your statement for incorrect asumptions about my opinion about your personality.
I don’t know exactly how to phrase it in English.
But unicycles, track bikes and artistic bikes have a lot of sideways forces on the wheel. A road racing bicycle only in unusual situations.
Look from behind, and look at the hypotenusa, and tell me what’s more solid. The triangle of a large flange or a small one.
Now that current rim that I use has a X-spoking factor, making the hub virtually even wider. Adventually I had the opposite.
But twist the wheel 90 degrees look from the side. Mad4One is about 30 mm dia, Exceed 45 mm. The difference between a 30 mm hub and a 45 one is already significant when using cross 1. A regular freestyle hub is 55 mm. The striangle of a Mad4one setup is again too weak for me.
This (side-look) triangle difference (while having the same spoking method) also still translates to adelmans pattern statement (that you repeated twice, and I do agree on).
Another factor we may be arguin may be the twist of the head.
Semcycle’s used to come radial spoked. But since people didn’t maintain too well (and went to quick to too high tentions) they became cross 1.
I build wheels since age 8. I base myself on practical experience. So I’ve made radial wheels myself. Even for track bicycles, for wheelchairs and for unicycles.
You can write whatever, but I know for a fact that radial spokes are possible on such flanges, but total impossible on flanges of 30mm. Regardless wether it be Ergal or heat-treated cromoly steel, and even if the holes had an equal correct corresponding sizing to the spoke (which in reality is a very oversized 2.9).
I don’t know what forces you are talking about (if I would know better we actually may agree), but I talk about practial friction (in reality) at the twist, plus the difference of the forces of the lever/crowbar/heaver/whatever which at large flanges is less close to the center of the main force.
You are switching my words and the timeline. And so (again) annoy me: adelman pretty much only repeated a post earlier; my own post; in which I already mentioned this myself. No, I’m not basing my initial statement on events that later happened. But to get a wheel with small flanges as strong enough I need to put forces on it that are impossible. That’s what I stated before and after. And it’s because of friction at the center. Or my preference of pattern that you may wish to label non-traditional. I like it better, because it feels better to me.
Is it? I’ve been I’ve been riding that pattern for over 19 years. And I certainly wasn’t the only one.
I don’t even want to know what bullcrap argument you will return if I drop the fact that I never saw Semcycle hubs breaking like this, while for the past 30 years they all were cross 1 (since this make stiffer wheels). Not sure, but Teresa & Sem may still use radial wheels for themselfs. Maybe cross 1, but certainly NOT cross 2. You truly think those wheels last pure and only because of the difference of material?
In my case the spokes I use on my other wheels were equal. The rim pretty much to.
Reason why the hub survises this is because the pattern is “loose”. I prefer a more stiff wheel (but without overstressing hubs). I want to feel a direct and harmonious response. And so you wont see me with narrow flanges again. It was an experiment, and I already knew the very predictable outcome in advance.
But if large hubs are that bad, explain me this (cross 2) one:
He’s currently riding a KH hub/crank combi on cross 3, but I know his preference…
I tried to also, I actually only was looking for the size of the holes, which I was missing on merchant websites.
Not sure if I understand correctly, but I think you have to mention that these modern wheels very often now have spokes with straight heads.
Would it be advisable to use brass spoke head washers when lacing the Ergal hub, such as I have on my GUni? Would they strengthen the hub spoke holes at all?
"Gerd’s book says that he uses always brass washers when the difference between the spoke diameter and the hub spoke hole diameter is greater than 0.3mm. He also says you seldom see a professional, manually-built wheel without washers."
