MATERIAL

. . . the making of XC FS racing machine - STEREO . . .

Published Friday, February 02, 2007 by indrek | E-mail this post

Firs of all, I'm not yet sure which tubing to use and as I've been searching for suppliers, it seems that my choice will be quite limited. The dream would of course be to make the frame, or at least the front triangle out of carbon, but this is a mission impossible, as the carbon is so expensive and difficult to manufacture. So actually my only possibility is aluminium. I thought about titanium, but it just doesn't feel right, plus its too heavy for STEREO. Only considerable supplier I managed to find was Novacycles from US. They seem to be suppliers for individual frame builders and they also deal with Easton and Columbus tubes, which are 2 most known tube manufacturers. I have not yet contacted them (regarding whether they deliver to europe), but I'm fairly sure that this is THE place for my raw material. So my final decision has to be whether to make the frame out of Easton Scandium, Easton Ultralight 7005 Al or Columbus Altec2. The Easton scandium tubing has been used successfully by many top end manufacturers, but mostly only in hardtail frames. The Scandium would be my first choise, as it is lighter than 7005 Al, but at this moment I'm not sure whether it will hold up in a FS frame (I already see a riders weight limit about 85kg). Also the negative aspect about scandium is the complexity of the welding as there are a need for a special welding rods, cooling owes and so on. Thankfully both Easton and Columbus have a quite thorough description on their website regarding the welding and cooling procedures. At the moment I am heading to the Altec2 direction, but time will tell...

I will be doing a comparison chart for weights and prices soon because I need to decide the tubes I'm going to use before I can start modeling the frame.