Hunt Launches Range Of MTB Wheelsets

 looks promising

 All day long I believe

 @juansevo: that's not heavy.

 @crimedog: certainly not light...

 @stiingya: TrailWide 650b is 1757g. DT XM 1501 30mm is 1685g. DT M 1700 30mm is 1838g. Those are 28/28h rims and cost a lot more money. Stan's flow mk3 is 1794g. Unless you're comparing them to i9 wheelsets which are more than twice as much money they are ridiculously light for the money.

 @juansevo: better for consumer..more compitition=(build, design, $)

 Faith

 The force.

 Fishing line....

 It is an old trick. The wheel lies flat, they just rotated the world a quarter turn.

 They've clearly just photoshopped the rider out, this would be the only time-effective way of achieving such a shot, short of having the technology to freeze time in a localised area around the bike so it doesn't fall

 Its action shots duh! The wheel was spinning.

 @juansevo: name these loads of other wheels w high engagement hub for 500-600 for a set. As to high drag from the high engagement, I didn't notice inc drag 12 deg to 8deg. The inc could be exponential but haven't experienced it or seen hard numbers so it's I'll defined concern at best

 4.3 degree, don't get too excited.

 Oh snap

 Hi Crimedog, thank you ever so much for this feedback. You are right, we are aware that some companies have had issues with previous versions of a similar drive mechanism on slightly different hub models. As I’m sure you know freehub systems are under incredible forces and can take some time to run through testing/dev. However, there have been several updates to the design and it has been tested extensively since and they offer excellent pickup, strength and durability. Of course, we are always welcoming of any extra information and will keep listening to riders like yourself as we know many riders have extensive experience and learning from that is invaluable for us. We would also like to say that we have an ‘above and beyond approach to helping customers’, we work incredibly hard to make sure riders are happy with any experience they have with our wheels or ourselves as a company as we know that growing a long term satisfied rider base is key to being able to serve riders with the best product long into the future, which as self-professed bike geeks is all we aim to do. Thank you again for the feedback and please do let us know if there is any extra info on this matter or anything that might help us make better wheels. We are always keen to speak on the phone +44 1273 931 428 or email thechase@huntbikewheels.com.

Cheers again,

Tom Marchment HUNT | TheRiderFirm

 Thanks Tom, that's what I was hoping to hear. Never had a hiccup with my three pawl all season wheelset.

 Sic burn. That is the best link ever.

 @Rockingman - What particular wheelset were you looking at? All of the options are available in non-boost and boost widths. We are still ironing out of the issues on our new website - it seems no matter how much proofreading we do, it won't be 100% so thanks for the feedback! If you want to get in contact please phone +44 1273 931 428 or email thechase@huntbikewheels.com and I am sure we can help out in anyway possible.

Enjoy your riding,

Hamish Paine HUNT | TheRiderFirm

 @HuntBikeWheels: I’m interested in a TrailWide wheelset but couldn’t find a non-boost 29er option on your site. I’ll have to have a look at the finances and then shoot you an email : )

 That's what she said!

 Tensile strength isn't necessarily that interesting. What matters most is the yield point and fatigue resistance. And those don't necessarily increase along with the tensile strength.

 Hi Core559, we really appreciate any questions or feedback so thank you. You’re absolutely right several companies do indeed use 6069 (490MPa UTS Ultimate Tensile Strength) including Stan’s for their high end rims, in their S1 rims they use 6061 (290MPa UTS). I think Race Face use 6061 for most of their alloy rims but I could well be wrong. 6061 is a great material that is regularly used in very high end aerospace applications, however it’s lower UTS and yield strengths do mean you need to use greater mass to achieve the same comparative strength, and this is fine and we actually use 6061 in our 4Season Road and Gravel rims where ultimate performance is not as important as the balance of competitive pricing for a wheel used primarily as winter/training wheelset and often replaced with carbon wheels when summer comes round. Whereas for MTB we felt that, as MTBers ourselves, we never change our wheels from one season to the next and so wanted the highest spec/strength/weight combination to give us the best performance year round if that makes sense? So we specced thick sidewalls (not the thickest but close) but we did spec the highest strength material in 6069 and this equals one of, if not the, strongest Enduro specific rims available (as far as our material strength:wall thickness calculations and checking/measurements of other rims goes).

Thank you again and I hope this helps. Enjoy the trails,

Tom Marchment HUNT | TheRiderFirm

 @vinay: Hi Vinay,
You know your stuff and yield strength is key. I have discussed this in depth with my father John (Chartered Materials Engineer and works here at HUNT | TheRiderFirm) when selecting the materials. UTS (Ultimate Tensile Strength) and yield strength are closely related in alloys and if I recall the details correctly when failure on bending occurs it is the extension side of the material that is passing it’s upper yield limit and so is under tension hence UTS is the figure we used but as you say we could change this out for yield strength, and the numbers/%ages would compare higher for 6069 in the same way to approximately the same % as well. However I have to admit this is reaching the edge of my knowledge, but please do come back to me with any further questions and I can refer my father and brother Pete (also co-founder her at HUNT and materials science graduate from Cambridge University) with some more details on the material differences. Thanks again as feedback, questions and understanding from riders is key to us to a better job,

Cheers,

Tom Marchment HUNT | TheRiderFirm.

 accidental reply, soz.

 @HuntBikeWheels: I really appreciate the time you are taking to reply to the comments here. I dig the engagement with the consumer and to me it implies good customer service. Big hugs.

 @HuntBikeWheels: Hi Tom, thanks a lot for your response! I don't know the numbers but I trust you that the yield strength of Al6069T6 is higher too. Not sure about fatigue life though. In my experience it is often a trade off. In metallurgy it seems like if you increase yield and ultimate strength, ductility decreases. Not sure if this applies here too, but if it does wouldn't reduced ductility also reduce fatigue resistance? Obviously yield is generally considered unfavorable but what happens when a crack starts to grow (and aluminium is always subject to fatigue, unlike steel) yield could actually ovalize the crack tip which reduces local stress peaks and slow down the crack growth. This is the reason why in aluminium aircraft they use 70xx series aluminium in skin panels loaded in compression though 20xx series aluminium for skin panels loaded in tension (hence subject to fatigue). A friend of mine used to ride a 20xx series aluminium hardtail (I think it was from Miyata) and loved it as the designers could allow it to flex more than a 60xx or 70xx aluminium frame. People just don't like lugged frames anymore though (as 20xx gets the T3 treatment and can't be welded). But I digress (again). I think we agree that ultimate strength is not the main thing to look for in a material and I trust you probably have found the right balance in yield strength and fatigue resistance. Was nice chatting tech with you. I like it when the tech people come down and explain their design choices, just like people from Unno and Robotbike have done before. I won't use your wheels anytime soon simply because my bike takes 26" wheels, but I do wish you all the best!

 @vinay: You raise some really great questions, so we reached out to Hunt co-founder Pete to see what he said. Here is a short summary of what he said to your response:

The ovalizing at the crack tip is a very good point, and that is why higher ductility (which normally means lower UTS) materials will have better fatigue resistance relative to their strength. However, having a higher overall strength helps vs fatigue in two other ways:

At the tip of the crack itself, the material is still stronger, so the benefits of ovalizing the crack tip are somewhat offset by the higher yield strength of the material itself.

If you are using the same shape, thickness and extrusion dimension, you will get less overall deflection under stress, (because stiffness is usually higher in materials with higher UTS and lower ductility) and that means less local stress at the point of the crack.

So if you are an aircraft engineer trying to achieve your design spec strength at minimum weight gain in a stiff material like 70xx series then you will have problems with fatigue that you need to solve. But if you are designing for fatigue resistance you can achieve better performance with slightly over-engineered shape and a high strength alloy at the same weight as 6061. This actually is very good for MTB because you then also have a very high UTS on top of that for protection against really big hits. Lastly, it is worth mentioning that the drop off in fatigue life for 6061 to 6069 is much less of an issue than it is going from a 60xx to a 70xx series alloy.

Thank you again and I hope this helps.

 @vinay: Just to further this with some more information from John (Peter and my Father and our Chartered Materials Engineer here at HUNT.

The Fatigue life of 6069 is also significantly superior to 6061 at approx +60%.
Research Gate has some excellent information if you want to search it but the link and charts may not work on here, I'll try the link anyway. www.researchgate.net/publication/250335394_The_new_aluminum_alloy_AA_6069


"The yield strength of 6069 T6 is 490 MPa as opposed to 6061 T6 at 290 MPa. It still has an elongation (a measure of ductility) of 10-22% depending on the extrusion process. This is similar to 6061 T6. Anything over 10% is pretty ductile.

The link above is a chart showing the fatigue cycles to failure of 6069 and 6061, both in the T6 condition. It is in a weak salt solution, so probably quite good for winter riding. It shows that 6069 is almost twice as good as 6061.

Your correspondent is right in most of what he says and it is true that some yielding will blunt the crack tip and reduce stress and hence crack growth. This is why you do not want materials with very low ductility, they just crack really quickly, however 6069 does not suffer low ductility and as Pete says the higher Ultimate Tensile Strength actually reduces this issue too in other ways."

I hope this helps Vinay and I hope this helps, please do let us know as these discussions opens our understanding further too which is really cool,

Tom Marchment HUNT | TheRiderFirm

 @HuntBikeWheels: Wow Tom, thanks a lot for all this! The link to the document works and I can even download it as .pdf. I quicky read through it and they indeed seem to have struck an impressive balance with that Al6069T6 alloy. Also what John and Peter responded makes perfect sense. CFRP is getting all the attention these days yet metals have silently improved at an impressive rate. I've studied aerospace engineering too (Delft University of Technology, faculty of aerospace engineering) and obviously a huge chunk of the materials courses we focused on composites (though including metal composites like Glare and Arall too). One professor was indeed a bit bummed that there was too little attention for the newly developed "supersteels". Like what Reynolds 953 tubing is made of, I suppose. Apparently there have been some interesting developments in aluminium too, so thanks for the heads up!

So yeah, I definitely love these discussions too. And I think it is good for the audience to realize that is isn't so black-white as "metal=old, carbon=future". This is cool stuff and deserves a stage. Thanks for the chat and say thanks to John and Peter for me too!

 The bike is from Cotic, probably a Flare Max but I'm not sure as they look quite similar (which isn't a bad thing). They sure are beautiful!

 @vinay @gibspaulding - Sure is a FlareMAX! We are good friends with the guys up at Cotic so were lucky enough to get one down for a shoot. We are yet to take it for a ride but sure can't wait!

Enjoy your riding,

Hamish Paine HUNT | TheRiderFirm

 it's a press release...