Newmen is the latest brand created by Michael Grätz, formerly of Syntace and Liteville fame. Michi has gone his own way recently and is applying his unique approach to some new products. The Newmen brand first showed up on my radar at the Cube AM150 bike launch, where some of their high-end bikes were built with A.30 wheelsets; I thought it was a confident move to order a large batch of products for OEM bikes from a new brand.
Newmen's Tim Jürgensen was in town last week, and he dropped by to show me some of their products.
Evolution 318.2 Stem First up is the Evolution SL318.2 stem. 318 for the diameter, and the '.2' references the bolts (there is also a four bolt version). Similar to the Intend Grace (we can let those guys argue over whose idea it was first), it uses a two-bolt design to save weight and increase strength. The 3D hollow forged unit weighs a measly 69 grams (claimed) in 50mm length, and unlike the already super light 83g Intend stem, it
should accept any rise handlebar. The stem comes with a pair of extra grub screws and a steel plate which can be used to open up the clamp to slide in the handlebar.
Evolution SL 318.2 Stem:
• Length: 50-100 mm
• Material: 7050 aluminum
• Bolts: Titanium
• Angle: 6°
• Weight: 69-96 gram
• Price: €99
Pi Rope X Newmen Wheelset This wheelset will be sold by
Pi Rope, a new company born out of TU University Chemnitz, Germany. It's the result of after a ten-year development process to integrate Vectran textile fiber spokes into MTB wheelset, read:
the spokes are made out of string. Of course, it sounds like a really stupid idea initially, but this system promises benefits over metal spokes that only work in tension and not in compression. When the wheel is built, the Pi Rope spokes have around 7-8mm of 'preload,' which means they can be compressed up to 8mm while holding the same tension. In use, the idea is that all of the spokes will constantly be at the correct tension at all times regardless of what the terrain is doing, leaving an equal amount of pressure on all spokes, nipples and the rim bed.
Pi Rope Wheels:
• Vectran textile fiber spokes
• XA25 alloy 25mm rim
• Weight: 1230g pair
• Price: N/A available end of summer
The weight saving is pretty significant at a claimed 1230g with a 28 spoke Newmen XA25 25mm wheelset, the same wheelset with lightweight steel spokes hits the scales at 1440g. Great for XC racing and weight weenies, bad for people who get ninja stars thrown at them while riding. The two companies are working on a carbon wheelset where they are hoping to get the weight down to 1060g.
The tensile strength is claimed to be 8x more than a steel spoke, and on Newmen's test rigs this wheel outperformed any of their other products, taking 100,000 cycles on the braking test (the same as pulling your front brake really hard to do a stoppie) and 5.9 million impacts where the wheel rolls over a bumpy metal drum for hours on end. The rim finally cracked at the rim bed, but Newmen say this was down to the 4.5bar pressure needed in the tire for all of the testing.
And before any of you say that Vectran can be damaged by UV rays, the production versions will have a coating to counter the sunlight.
Advanced SL 318.20 Handlebar That ain't just a nice finish according to Newmen, that is actually blue carbon fiber. I can see this taking off and soon EWS racers will be riding multicolored, raw carbon frames, color-coded to the flag of the country they are racing in. Maybe. Aside from that, its a pretty standard carbon handlebar with 8º of back and 4º of upsweep.
Advanced SL 318.20 Handlebar:
• Clamp diameter: 31.8 mm
• Width: 750 mm / Rise: 20 mm
• Upsweep: 4° / Backsweep: 8°
• Material: Blue TeXtreme carbon fiber
• Weight: 183g
• Price: €189
TC Adaptor Remeber bolt-thru frames that didn't have a recess to receive the hub? Yes, they were annoying to fit the wheels as you tried to line everything up and slide in the axle. Cleverly, somebody fixed this with the move from 135mm rear hubs to 142mm, and with 150mm to 157mm, with 15mm front axles and most modern 20mm axles. Then RockShox waltzed in with their Torque Caps to increase stiffness at the front wheel on their heavy-hitting Lyrik chassis. (Wait, didn't we already have stiffer 20mm front hub axle with pinch bolts? Yes, but, shut up, Paul). The Lyrik design was something that worked perfectly well, if you had a wheel with Torque Caps. If not, and this has happened to me many times when changing wheels or even on complete bikes that do not have Torque Caps, you felt like you had gone back in time as that front hub never sat quite in the right place to receive the axle.
Enter Newmen's TC Adaptors. A simple concept that involves peeling off the paper backing, and sticking them on the dropout of the fork. Now your peasant-grade, non-Torque Cap wearing hub can correctly and easily slot into your Lyrik or Yari dropout.
TC Adaptors:
• Color: Black
• Material: Plastic
• Weight: imperceptible
• Price: €5
Evolution Wheelset E.G.30 Finally, the real reason why Tim popped around to the house, to bring me a pair of E.G.30 wheels in 29er size for long-term testing. The E.G.30 wheels are designed for eMTB with a 180kg total weight limit, and soon Newmen will be using the same rim for downhill wheelsets. Starting with the 590g, 30mm internal rim, Newmen decided to angle out the rim bead/sidewall slightly after finding that the damage from a vertical drop test done in most wheel labs didn't reflect the damage being caused on the trail. This is because the chance of a direct hit coming in perpendicular to the rim is unlikely if you are traveling in a straight line, the rocks and roots are generally at an angle, and pushing into rocky corners or compressions often cause rim damage.
Evolution Wheelset E.G.30:
• Intended Use: all-mountain
• Inner rim width: 30 mm
• Holes: 28
• Rim material: High-strength aluminum alloy
• Hub material: 7075 aluminum
• Tolerance Adjustment system
• Structural weight limit: 180 kg
• Price: €698 pair
On the samples below, Newmen tested their rim against similar competitors' rims. Their drop test involves an 8kg weight raised in 20cm increments, seven times. You can see the difference in between the damage incurred on each rim, of course, we will have to take their word for it that the test was equal.
The hubs also have a couple of interesting features, including equal length straight pull spokes all around, a star ratchet freehub system, and adjustable bearing preload. Newmen chose 28x Sapim D-Strong spokes, a thicker gauge spoke for eMTB because you are more likely to be hacking through sticks and debris without slowing down. The straight pull spokes are used in a three-cross pattern, and they are also all the same length left and right, front and rear. This was a concept piloted by SRAM some years ago where the shape, size and countersink depth of the hub flanges are adjusted to use the same length spokes all around; many people are against straight pull because they are more difficult to source, but only needing one replacement makes life easier, as well as not needing to remove rotors and cassettes to replace a broken spoke. Also, not having the spokes contact at the crossing points reduces the risk of breaking, noise, and the nipples digging themselves into the spoke bed. The spokes also feature a washer that sits between the nipple and rim bed, increasing the contact area, thus being able to reduce rim wall thickness, and making tensioning easier.
The hubs use a star ratchet system to connect drivetrain power to forward momentum. Newmen's system only uses one spring to move the floating interior ratchet, while the exterior ratchet is fixed into the hub (DT Swiss's similar patented system uses a spring to move both ratchets towards each other). They also have two versions, the smaller is for normal MTB, and the larger version is slightly heavier, but bigger to cope with eMTB loads.
The final feature of the wheelset is the TA Tolerance Adjustment caps. By
following a simple process, your hubs can get the ideal preload in your frame and fork. According to Newmen, different axle systems put different clamping forces on your hub, ranging from 3000N to over 10000N, of course, all this depends on the hub and frame design, and how aggressively you tighten the axles.
We will be putting the Evolution E.G.30 wheelset to the test over the coming months, in the meantime, you can check out
newmen-components.de for more information.
"It's for all of us."
"Brody, c'mon. He's just kidding. He's a joke maker. Tell him, Jerry."
"I'm a joke maker."
Ok I am sorry about that one, be back in few weeks.
And I guess everybody is aware that the impression of a person that one gets from their work can, and in a lot of cases will, differ largely from the impression in any personal encounter, if that is what you were referring to?
Appears cheesy. Paul Newman Foundation has zero-stake in this Business Newmen Components; inferring a likeness does nothing to generate customers.
For example - I love Burger King.
If I called Mr. Burger to check sales I doubt there would be indicators.
If I even called Kenny Roger's Roasters next door (which may have been the real reason I expound the love of Burger King - Kenny makes a strong Bird) I doubt anything could be attributable to BK.
These type-things need not seep into media relations, personal reservations not withstanding.
Whatever though.
Do those “spokes” work with other hubs? And will the spokes be available to buy by themselves to be able to build up a custom wheel set?
As for UV coatings for rope, it’s ok, kind of, but it wears off and with a material like vectran it will fail surprisingly quickly.
DSM (the maker of Dyneema) has a product called DM20 which is very low elongation, much better than Vectran, so it baffles me why these guys didn't use it.. Maybe now that I have told them they will go and do it
www.trailgroove.com/blogs/entry/135-dyneema-composite-fabric-cuben-fiber-and-backpacking
"Sorry I can't make Friday's ride bros...... my fiber spokes are looking dingy and need a wax."
www.apsltd.com/new-england-ropes-v-100-vectran-line.html
In order to get even tension on the spokes, you need an absolute minimum creep, and ideally you want to have the stretch very low as well. there is enough stretch for the load cases to allow for anomalies in tension due to flex in the rim, impacts and torsional movement.
regularly testing different wheels and stuff the torque cap "problem" can become quite annoying I can tell you..
I thought only Mavic was using them these days?
Steel are far more common and less brittle.
Aside from the fact that steel is far less elastic than aluminium as a material.
Besides how many reviews of Carbon Rimmed wheels complain about the harshness of the ride!
PS. i9 wheels use alu spokes to my knowledge.
But really super keen on string spokes, we use vectran in sailing a lot and its good stuff
www.spinergy.com/content/pbo-spoke-technology
"When the wheel is built, the Pi Rope spokes have around 7-8mm of 'preload,' which means they can be compressed up to 8mm while holding the same tension." That shoud read : "which means they can be compressed up to 8mm while holding the tension." Would really like to know how would you achieve the first result. That would be revolution
And common used wire spokes are nothing different than strings, really. Their rigidity is there unneeded property I would say, but you need the torsion (thus rigidity) to tension them...
Under riding situations the forces of the spokes in a regular wheel get distributed so unevenly that under extreme breaking for example certain spokes lose almost all of their tension when they were tensioned to 1200N.
With the fibre spokes the forces are distributed much more evenly onto the different spoke holes, since there would have to be much more movement in the wheel before a spoke loses as much tension as a steel spoke does - thus the fibre spokes last much longer on our drum teststand than any other wheel we have tested so far (the rims for example dont crack at the nipple hole).
The stiffness of the wheel is basically the same though.
Even if you don't understand a single word the video is very interesting.
When I saw it I have been like:"Please don't!" But now that Newmen are cooperating with them I'm like:"Shut up and take my money!"
jesse: string?
It would be interesting to see how many time you need to tension them before they keep it up.
regarding spokes losing tension under breaking
If your relying on the stretch to hide the problem then your wheels will have collapsed if you ever get to that state. Rims are weak like a coke can, put a distortion in and they collapse at the forces we are talking about.
It’s a classic “look what we did on our test rig” to prove a point which doesn’t happen in real life. Pseudoscience marketing rubbish @mirskeinereingefalln:
That the rim holds up so much longer at the spoke holes than the rim of any other wheel we have tested on our drum teststand yet, just underlines our point. The forces in the wheel are distributed much more evenly onto all of the fibre spokes under stress instead of having the forces peak on certain spokes in the wheel under certain riding situations.
I can also assure you that every wheel we have tested has been properly tensioned by my very self but considering your aggressiveness I am not sure if you are even trying to have a proper discussion.
Hello i get really frustrated when a scientific test result is used to illustrate a point which doesnt happen in real life, for example the static impact test on a pedal axle in the CEN testing system ( ive been there and done that along with many other things). That never happens in real life and is only in there as a repeatable benchmark test to catch out poor quality axles and NOT to replicate real life.
Putting a huge load on a test rigged bare wheel and wobbling a spoke doesnt replicate real life, because if the rim had distorted enough to do that there is something else which is the issue or will fail long before rim fatigue is an issue.
What would be interesting is to know what the breaking strain of the spokes are and if after 8mm of stretch what the failiure point is. Plus if the spokes are so stretchy they will stretch more when put under greater loads, unless they have a very "interesting" stretch/force graph. My guess is they are stretchy and then behave much like a steel spoke, if that is the case then your correct they wont flap around but will just be a spring with minimal force doing very little different to the floppy spoke. Otherwise they work like a normal spoke
If what your saying is true, the elasticity of the spoke is what rounds off the load spike (to help with fatigue life), then there is this other big rubbery thing in the system which does that in real life... its called a tyre and every wheel has one.
ive got nothing against interesting new ideas but this "scientific" claim seems very unscientific IMHO, but i want to see more factual data to back up the claims made.
Im not having a dig (honest, im just geeking out and really interested in the subject) but the vague claims made made me think about what was said.Questions:
1. you say the fatigue of x million revolutions on the new spoke, what does a normal spoke do in the same comparison, no comparison = no use to anyone/no science.
2. you say tensile strength of 8x a normal spoke. The breaking strain of a 1.8mm spoke is just over 300kg, so your saying 1 of these spokes can take over 2 ton of load? Really???
3. the rim has failed where you would expect it to from the fatigue of the edges flaring out from the drum test. this doesnt really show anything about the spokes themselves. Its the weakest point of the rim becasue thats where you generally blend/weld (in the extrusion process, the die insert doesnt magically float, it has supports which the material flows and rewelds once past) the material around the insert to make the hollow in the profile. Its the bit where it always goes wrong if your die or process is bad, please note yours isnt bad thats just fatigue life.
Thankyou for wasting my afternoon modelling up loadings on strings within wheels with solidworks....
Also this article title sounds like it was written by the same person as did "Gees brush with the law". Moonlighting from Buzzfeed?
Nothing is compressing a normal spoke... The nipple is assembled from the outside of the rim.
"String" is perfectly legitimate
Dentist- Thanks man! What is that you got in your hand there?
Me- a lighter.