When designing a bike, an engineer (or team of engineers in some cases) has to decide how the swing arm's pivot points will... er... pivot.
A lot goes into engineering the bushings and bearings that are available in industry (and by industry I mean ALL manufacturing. Real industry) . We've got literally hundreds of ways to allow something to rotate on an axel, and yet every day, an engineer at your favorite bike company sits at his desk designing the latest useless manipulation for a hydroformed tube while the roller bearing on that bike takes a 20deg beating. There really is only a handfull of frame builders that use anything else.
headsets have evolved. Where there once were loose balls packed in a sleeve, there's needles and angular contact. BB's have even been treated to outward thought. So why is it then, that 99% of bikes use crap roller ball bearings to perform a task that they were never designed to do in the first place ('roller' mean anything to you?) ?
I guess what I'm asking (and ranting about), is if cost was no object what's the IDEAL pivot system for a frame? Can an Iglidur Z poly bushing suit the task at hand? Anyone here have any ideas on something not just different but better than Nicolai's needle/Axle/Polymer bush combo ? There's got to be some people on here that have some ideas.
A lot goes into engineering the bushings and bearings that are available in industry (and by industry I mean ALL manufacturing. Real industry) . We've got literally hundreds of ways to allow something to rotate on an axel, and yet every day, an engineer at your favorite bike company sits at his desk designing the latest useless manipulation for a hydroformed tube while the roller bearing on that bike takes a 20deg beating. There really is only a handfull of frame builders that use anything else.
headsets have evolved. Where there once were loose balls packed in a sleeve, there's needles and angular contact. BB's have even been treated to outward thought. So why is it then, that 99% of bikes use crap roller ball bearings to perform a task that they were never designed to do in the first place ('roller' mean anything to you?) ?
I guess what I'm asking (and ranting about), is if cost was no object what's the IDEAL pivot system for a frame? Can an Iglidur Z poly bushing suit the task at hand? Anyone here have any ideas on something not just different but better than Nicolai's needle/Axle/Polymer bush combo ? There's got to be some people on here that have some ideas.