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If details are to be believed looks promising, but will depend how it rides and the price at the consumer end
https://gearjunkie.com/allite-super-magnesium
Oh we haven’t had any bike developments for a year or so now so must be the dogs
what you on about anyhow ?
edit: ah just realised the bottom bit of your post was not in fact an add. Just proves how useless adds are on here as I just ignored it 😂
There have been occasional magnesium frames of varying, er, quality (Kirk magnesium looked weird, flexed a lot as it was I beams the wrong way to allow manufacture, weighed the same as a contemporary high end steel bike, and cracked often, but there was a rash of welded magnesium frames around the early 2000s), and almost all fork lowers are magnesium, so it probably has its place.
The proof is in the frame though. Is it lighter than a carbon frame, and if so, will it last?
50 percent lighter than titanium, 56 percent stronger than grade-one titanium, 20 times more shock-absorbing than aluminum, 21 percent stronger than 6061 aluminum, and 75 percent lighter than steel.
Hopefully an engineer will be along to tell us how much lighter frames it may make.
Too late to the carbon party. Last magnesium bike didn’t do so well. Hello Kirk Precision. Great looking, cracked on use. Now collectors items.
Some parts in car suspension systems - and in the bike industry are being made from magnesium alloy. And of course certain aircraft parts.
Production and corrosion protection is very difficult so. Magnesium alloys are extremely fast corroding ...
LOL at the comparisons with Kirk. Could this be more different?
And what other magnesium frames have there been? I'm not aware of any,
Reading their page they've looked at coatings and hopefully up to bike-standards, given they are specifically marketing bike manufacturers.
There were a couple of Carreras, not sure about any others. There was a bit of a buzz about it as it's a good material but had previously not been available in a weldable alloy.
I think there was probably more excitement around Aluminium alloys with Scandium in to be honest - I remember a couple of Konas and of course the On One ScandAl.
The problem with strength claims is that it tends to be compressive buckling or denting that limits the minimum weight of a frame, and there are various concerns when making a frame other than just the strength and buckling (fatigue life, toughness/ductility of the material etc).
Comparing the density to titanium is a bit pointless as you can make a lighter frame out of Aluminium alloy than Titanium anyway. And if this material is any harder to work with than Aluminium, or even if it just has quirks that need to be accounted for when using it, there'll be more broken frames.
There were a couple of Carreras, not sure about any others.
I think that there was a Saracen Kili Flyer magnesium alloy bike some years ago and I think folk got quite excited about but I believe that they tended to break.
The 2011 comeback is still on it's way...
Kristiansen explained that Allite can customize the metal for welding, casting, and forging. But it goes beyond the manufacturing process and can tailor the material to have desired properties for unique uses.
It does this by aligning the magnesium crystals just so in order to attain properties such as vibration dampening.
“We can orientate the crystals in the magnesium for the specific forces, down to microstructure,” Kristiansen said.
Orientate the crystals, eh. Do they reorientate if you ride under powerlines?
The makers claim they can deal with corrosion. The one thing that article doesn't compare the new stuff with is existing grades of magnesium.
Orientate the crystals, eh. Do they reorientate if you ride under powerlines?
Similar language/concepts are not new - cold-forging is about stronger crsytalline structure no?
From another road.cc article:
Magnesium bikes are nothing new. The UK’s Kirk Precision started making magnesium frames back in the 1980s. These were cast in one piece rather than composed of jointed tubes.
Several other manufacturers have made magnesium bikes in the past too, including Pinarello and Merida. However, none of them have had access to this new material.
Forget stronger etc, think how awesome the ball of flames it'll kill you in will look.
Yes, it will certainly add to the problems we already have with people's fork lowers bursting into flames. Why add fuel to those fires?
Weren't there some russian made magnesium frames too - can't remember the name now despite me having one or two a few years back.
Oh and
21 percent stronger than 6061 aluminum,
A bit like other grades of aluminium then...
Orientate the crystals, eh. Do they reorientate if you ride under powerlines?
Metal is made of crystals, this is a real thing.
Right, another wonder material, heard about few of them during +25 years I have been been riding MTBs.
What was the American thing which used poisonous material in frame?
edit: It was beryllium. Ibis has some history here: https://www.ibiscycles.com/support/technical_articles/metallurgy_for_cyclists/the_final_chapter/
Yes, it will certainly add to the problems we already have with people’s fork lowers bursting into flames. Why add fuel to those fires?
Fancy welding magnesium ??
Welding magnesium appears to be a thing that is done without people dying.
50 percent lighter than titanium, 56 percent stronger than grade-one titanium, 20 times more shock-absorbing than aluminum, 21 percent stronger than 6061 aluminum,
Sounds a bit like the claims for Reynolds 953; now whatever happened to that?
Why add fuel to those fires?
Iirc magnesium burns hotter than alu any way* so it's not adding fuel to the fire so much, more that the flames when you try fitting 26" wheels or some other dangerous tomfoolery will be much more impressive than with a traditional frame, also the smoke it'll produce will be less toxic than alu so double bonus.
*It's been a long time since my chemistry classes so could easily be wrong on this and like most people i grew out of [having ready access to interesting things for the purposes of] burning stuff about the same time i left school.
So how does this compare to Scandium?
Presumably this is an alloy of Al & Mg.
Realistically its not going to be lighter than carbon* is it? And it's not going to be cheaper than aluminium. Titanium is desirable because it's a bit different (and expensive) and steel is tough. So unless it finds a niche where is it going to be used?
And big lumps of metal like the linkages are now being made from carbon* (presumably injection molded) so I can't really see a use for it.
*composites
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<div class="bbp-reply-content">So how does this compare to Scandium?
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Exactly my thought - and what actually happened to scandium frames?!
Oooh: http://www.bikeblogordie.com/2016/11/what-ever-happened-to-scandium-bike.html
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Welding magnesium appears to be a thing that is done without people dying.
Presumably though because aviation parts made of Mg alloys are very very expensive (even compared to bikes)... and themselves are cast when made.
Not too worried about new materials as long as it doesn't introduce any new "standards"! 😉
Anyone remember the magnesium frame then drove over on Tomorrows World, when it was first announced as the new wonder bike frame material...?
I’ll hold out for Scrith frame.
Wasn't there an episode of MacGyver where he ground down a Mg road bike frame and used it to blow his way out the shed he was locked in... a decent file and a cigarette lighter and it blew the whole door off.
No way I'm riding such a deathtrap... I'm out.
Magnesium 29" rims are what you want 😉
I'll file this alloy on the dusty shelf beside Aermet.
I'm guessing it can't be repaired?
50 percent lighter than titanium, 56 percent stronger than grade-one titanium, 20 times more shock-absorbing than aluminum, 21 percent stronger than 6061 aluminum, and 75 percent lighter than steel.
The article is very poorly written.
1. Structural things like a bike frame or primary aerospace structural elements are not made from Ti grade 1, they’re made from Ti grade 5. Grade 5 is 4 times stronger than grade 1.
2. Titanium alloy density is 4.5g/cm3 whilst this alloy claims to be 1.83g/cm3 (almost equivalent to composite) so more like 65% lighter, not 50%.
3. The article claims 56% stronger than Ti grade 1, so we can assume a yield stress of <450MPa (Ti G5 is 1100MPa).
What we don’t have is either the elastic modulus or elongation to break values, so I’m going to assume (based upon their comparisons to the weakest grade of Ti) that their “21% stronger than 6061” is also the weakest, non-heat treated grade) which would put the modulus at ~70GPa. Ti grade 5 is 115GPa.
So the specific stiffness (Modulus/density(in10^6)) is ~26 for Ti and ~37 for this.
That’s a reasonable gain and should allow you to reduce the weight and achieve equivalent performance to Ti grade 5. Couple with the claimed ability to absorb vibration...could be worth a look.
Someone mentioned the Tomorrow's World vid...
The article is very poorly written.
It's written by marketing people as clickbait to get attention. Seems to be working.
It is written by a journalist based on information provided by the company that was probably mainly written by its marketing folk, and may contain extensive verbatim quotes from that material.
But if you want to get it from the horse's mouth, follow the links to the Allite site. It is quite interesting, there is more technical information there including comparisons with existing Mg alloys (from which it appears this stuff is substantially different).