I was listening for this in the video as I also expected it to sound like a bucket of bolts, but it wasn’t particularly obvious in the footage at least.
It doesn’t look from the bottom picture like the bearings run on the aluminium so is there a two-part steel ring on either side that houses those (hundreds) of balls?
Spot on.
My immediate thought when seeing this uni was why?
It’s as if someone with too much time on their hands has come up with a solution to a problem that simply doesn’t exist.
However, it does look cool.
I’m amazed that it got past napkin drawing and a laugh over a pint, but if nobody every pushed past the why and just gave things a try, we’d not have half the cool things that we have in this world.
I think so. We were were too busy training uni-basketball to study the details but I remember seeing two steel rings. I should have taken more pictures 
Welll… That’s it. It was a school project that turned into real company and products.
There is some cool looking engineering in there too
Just found this on youtube. Obviously this design isn’t a joke, but I’m just curious what it’s advantage is for trials over a conventional design? It appears that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to produce this for some perceived benefit, but I can’t see what that benefit is.
This is a new video but there is a thread on this from a month or so back. Lots of discussion on the previous thread including alot of technical analysis from some of the unicycle tech gurus from the forum… I don’t know the benefit but it is certainly cool. It’s nice to see an actual human riding it, and not just riding it but really challenging it, nstead of just the cartoon in the original video. This proves that it is a viable design.
Cool uni, cool video and excellent use of Royal Blood
the main benefit is that is looks cool, that’s about it. You can say the same about hubless design in general. There are bunch of drawbacks too, but hey I’m happy someone made it happen, it does look really insane!
I wonder whether it still rides like it did when they first built it
Either when someone lands a bit too hard, or just over time from normal riding, the rim’s going to end up not perfectly round (there’s perhaps a tolerance of at most half a mm at a guess), and when that happens it’ll be knackered and in need of some new parts. There’s presumably no way to true a hubless wheel like you can when you have spokes.
What would make this interesting is if the rim were made out of spring steel and was thin enough to flex.
I get the technical analysis, but at the end of the day it’s pleasant looking and unique. Provided it doesn’t mangle anyone or break super quick there is a definite market for this kind of thing based on that value proposition alone. Depending how big is TBD, but our sport is already pretty niche so I don’t imagine these guys are expecting to sell boatloads of these 
Then it would most likely not be strong enough. This rim doesn’t have spoke so it already needs to be so much stronger than our usual rims. Using something so thin you can flex, you would deform the wheel in no time.
I have heard from people who rode it that there’s actually a pretty hard resistance when riding it.
I had the chance to ride it a couple of weeks ago, after it had been bashed up a lot that it had quite some resistance, but Mael said he’s working on it to replace the bearings.
It’s quite heavy too, but it’s only a concept so far with many potential things to improve, and I’m sure he can make it a lot better over time 
Also known as “riding” 
Trials is high impact and will always be so.
This still remains my major concern around commercial viability: being able to make it strong enough that it can withstand riding without needing an entirely new (completely custom no doubt) bearing set/rim after a few months or after you casually mess up hopping a two stair.