hey all,
Just wondering if there would be much of a market for a beasty 48 spline 48 spoke aluminium hub with interchangable flanges. Glen porter of Bathurst winning edge cycles and i will be making a few of these hubs to fit the standard profile crank size. The hub is made from aluminium and as of such allows the larger amount of spokes without adding too much weight. At the moment plans have been drawn up on auto- cad and we intend to start building prototypes soon, i was just wondering if anyone is interested in the idea, and or has any comments queries on the plan. They are intended to rival the strength of the profile and also have a more reasnable price tag on it. Thanks,
Mark
Mark,
How are those frames coming along? The hub certainly does sound exciting. Why the interchangable flanges?
Thanks,
Andrew
Re: 48 spline 48 spoke aluminium hub.
Forgive my ignorance, but how does this work? Are your hub and the profile hub’s made with aluminum axles, or are they the more conventional steel or titanium?
If the latter, how are they attached to the hub body/flanges? Press fit? Splined couplings? Bolted? Braised? Welded?!?
Just curious,
Tim
I’m interested in anything cheaper than Profile. If you’d make a set of cranks too it would be really nice.
Presumably to allow for 48 or 36 hole flanges or maybe wide flanges without having two different hubs.
Are you thinking of making a disc brake compatible flange too?
Are they going to be similar price to the onza or kh hub sets as those seem to be getting close to the profiles on quality even if they don’t look so nice?
Joe
but the profile hub body is aluminium, and can be had with 48 spoke flange as a specials order.
sureley you’d be better making a hub that was compatible with the kh and dm cranks, there are many cheaper 8 spline bmx cranks available. there are many 12 and 16 spline bmx abd mtb cranks out there too.
seriously though i think the hub market is kind of saturated right now. unless you can get one made cheaper than anyone else.
apart from the disc brake hub option, there are none on the market yet, but some people have them in development.
if you can cnc machine aluminuim stuff, then you might try making some reasonably priced, but extreemly high quality square taper cranks. theres not much choice on the market right now. get a realy good freestyler to help you design them.
still though if youve got the skills and the equipment then just go for it.
of course there are some people out there who break profile hubs, perhaps you could design on that was stronger and not worry about the price.
Why bother making a 48-hole hub? 36 spokes are more than adequate for making a strong wheel. Any more and you’re just adding weight. What’s worse is that its rotating weight, not static weight.
Just my 2c.
Tony
I think what you should make is a hub and crank set, nice like the profiles, exept not bendy like the profiles. Something that doesn’t hit your ankles (KH) and is pretty light. And it woud only need to be 36 spoke, especially for Trials. Anyways, a hub like that would be sweet, and make it so that the warrenty is really cheap/easy to use. ( ie. send you cranks in, you send them out, so you only pay shipping 1 way!, and no extra cost, and have them availible on all continents!) With something like this, price wouldn’t be much of an issue.
well, that’s about it.
-Ryan
Re: Re: 48 spline 48 spoke aluminium hub.
You can’t weld braze or fuse 2 different kinds of metal for the simple reason that the heat expansion coefficients will be different, so the weld will crack when the temp. changes. Basically, welding 2 materials that expand at different rates when exposed to the same amount of heat doesn’t work.
As for the first question, the the splined coupling was the closest guess. They make a keyway in the flange piece (basically a trench for a piece of metal to go through) and put a key on the axle, then they press them together. Usually they use a single keyway, but on the newer hubs (KH, new Onza, possible Q-ax) they use a double key, which is stronger. That’s about it.
As for the hub design, I agree with Ryan, build a full hub/crankset, not just the hub. Also, you really don’t want to mate aluminum with a press fit to hardened steel, as you run a reasonable risk of the steel of the cranks shredding the hub splines.
I think you should do some custom work, and if possible, build a completely new hub. Preferably a 1.5 in or 2 in. axle diameter, with some 1.5 in. diameter cranks, which would be tons stronger, fixing riders like Ryan’s problem of bending their cranks. You could drill out the middle of the axle to save weight, and it would make machining the splines much easier.
Also, an aluminum axle will quickly begin to fatigue if it has even the slightest flex, so you probably ought to stick with steel.
My 2 cents.
PS. Ryan: profile cranks aren’t bendy until you have a go on them;) . Also, with the stuff you’re doing, the only thing that’ll fix your problem is a thicker crank, which will handle the forces you pur them through better. And you could also go with aluminum, but it’ll eventually snap, instead of bending, which i imagine would be much worse.
hello all and thanks for your interest in the project. I am unsure of the specifics of the hub- i am only the messenger boy and the eventual tester of the new hubs to be made. At the moment a full hub crankset is not on the drawing boards, just the hub- it depends if it (the hub) does well we might move onto the crank idea. The idea of the disc brake has already been taken into account, and one of the interchangable flanges will have a mount for it. looks might not be one of our objestives- we just want something relativlly cheep that can handle what we all want to do to it. i’ll get some info from Glen soon so i can better answer all your questions,
Mark