Can anyone categorically confirm whether any decent wheels are machine built these days?

In my days in the trade only really cheap wheels were machine built. Even Merlin etc used manual building. Have things changed?

I think a lot of wheels are machine built. A bit of hand finishing can get you to the same quality as fully hand built – de-stress spokes, apply a little more tension and keep true, then de-stress again. Check after a light ride and repeat if needed.

i think the gap is closing quickly on the handbuilt crew, i run Fulcrum Red Metal 5's and cant fault them, yet to try and find a spoke in a hurry thought which seems to be the main problem with factory wheels

As I understand it, machines can build as good wheels as you are willing to pay for. The thing is that building a wheel to tighter tolerances takes the machine more time. So cheap machine built wheels will be built to low tolerances, but there is no reason why an expensive machine built wheel should be rubbish. I guess there's a point where the cost of machine time becomes greater than the cost of paying someone to hand build a wheel though.

Joe

lots of wheels are machine built, and then hand finished. Often they are refered to as hand built anyway even when 90% of the build is done on a machine.

Hope definately build all their wheels on a machine as they put photos of it on their website. To my knowledge CRC build on a machine and so do most of the good brands.

its really a bit of urban myth saying handbuilds are "better", there are crap machine builds in the same way as there are crap handbuilds.

The key is a good machine built wheel is checked by hand for QC. If you ever see a holland mechanics machine working at a high tolerance setting, i bet it would make better wheels than 90% of the handbuilders in the UK. Its just normally turned down for faster production rates to save money.

Swings avec roundabouts