cookeaa – We (western engineering/manufacturing) perhaps need to look at why is it that this sort of volume manufacturing of composites (for the cycle/sporting goods industry at least) are almost by default seen as a cost exercise rather than a quality one

Not sure that’s true, the far east are market leaders in carbon manufacture.

We (western engineering/manufacturing) perhaps need to look at why is it that this sort of volume manufacturing of composites (for the cycle/sporting goods industry at least) are almost by default seen as a cost exercise rather than a quality one

from where Iv’e been this is more to do with do we want to make a duct and earn 10k or make a bike that they want to pay a few hundred quid, there is a shift however in automotive for low pressure high production rate (methods that dont lend itself to bikes readily)

I did some work with eco friendly composites iirc one of the guys at toyota also was doing it at the same time flax hemp etc and there were also a variety of naturally sourced epoxies (im also dumbing this down a bit as eco epoxy wasn’t ready for prime time) but they were viable to some degree for sporting applications

the problem is im supposing that the taiwanese get good at doing something en mass and we go ok thats great , if you went out there tomorrow and said i want to do this, you probably wouldn’t find anyone to do it outside of the prepreg molded route I know of one facility 3 d braiding and they cater for aerospace , we had several delegations from china at the AMRC always chasing a lower production cost or trying to discover new production methods, by the time id finished with all that a bike frame could be made here the same money as an ultra high end frame from taiwan, problem there is out of the 20 or so folks that say lets go for UK manufacturing they want you to do the grunt work prove it then give it to them for free….i can see why hope did it all in house

If someone brought out a biodegradable bike made of composites it would still cost a good chunk of money and then you would still need to sell it i doubt many would care about its eco friendlyness to make it viable

Ummm

we are helping society in the long term by adding more aluminum to the pool of material available to recycle.

This doesn’t make sense. It would help society a lot more to make a frame from recycled aluminium – can’t be that hard unless the purity of grade is hard to achieve. But to spin more aluminium production as a favour to society?? Please.

I’m doing society a favour in the long term by buying 5 bottles of water a day – adding more plastic to the pool of material available to recycle.

But to spin more aluminium production as a favour to society?? Please.

It’s a bike frame, of course it’s a favour to society. Not to the planet, though.

If you make 2million tons of something a year of one thing and only 150k tons of another at 14 times the cost of the thing you made 2million tons of which was the most environmentally friendly?

If you make 24 million tons of something a year of one thing and only 150k tons of another at 14 times the cost of the thing you made 2million tons of which was the most environmentally friendly?

Does it matter in the slightest the environmental impact of making a mountain bike?

If it’s 100kg* of CO2, thats probably about the same as your car produces on a trip to Glentress from Manchester(~500 miles, ~180g/km) . And you’ll drive arround a lot more than that over the course of owning that bike.

*Brompton claim 113kg which is the only one I could find so Im ballparking.

I’d guess it’d be reasonable to assume that UK/EU/US manufacturer’s of CF produce a similar amount of waste to their East Asian counterparts.

What’s their policy for disposal? Landfill? Or does viable recycling exist in this context?

If it’s 100kg* of CO2

What about NOx and particulates?

… too soon?

We (western engineering/manufacturing) perhaps need to look at why is it that this sort of volume manufacturing of composites (for the cycle/sporting goods industry at least) are almost by default seen as a cost exercise rather than a quality one

Cost and quality go hand in hand. If you can’t produce a product cheaply enough (or sell it for a high enough price) then you go bust. If you can’t get your quality right you still go bust because you’ll trash your reputation and sales will drop off and the replacement/warranty costs will sink you. You can’t separate the two.

Carbon fibre manufacture is a labour intestine process and, once you’ve got the process down then it is a semi-skilled job. Labour is cheap over in China and Taiwan and the required quality can be achieved.

Laying up carbon in sheets and layers is not how it is done in the aerospace industry now….or the latest technique. Now individual strands are being laid down by robots and weaved directly together to create a 3D lattice rather than a 2D laminate structure. Alot lighter and stronger, but the machines and tooling is very very expensive. Might take a few decades for that technology to trickle down to bikes, or at least mass produced bikes.

If we want to be truly eco-pious then the answer is to buy an old British lugged steel bike made with 531 or up..

A proper repaint, built up with new wheels etc, and it’ll look like new and be good for another 50 years.

It’ll stop the needless slaughter of all those little bauxites and carbonites. 🙂

I think this is where Robot Bike Co have got the edge. They are using tubes which should have far less carbon wastage instead of going for some crazy space age shape

What about NOx and particulates?
… too soon?

Exactly, making the bike in the first place is far from the worst environmentally destructive phase of its life. The CO2 is just the tip of an iceberg.

You’ll use thousands of litres of water to wash it.

All that degreaser, paraffin, IPA, acetone, chain oil, brake fluid, grease ends up somewhere.

All that litter on the trails (no one admits it but someone drops it).

Yes avoiding buying a new bike if possible will help, but you’re kidding yourself if you think mountainbiking is a ‘green’ hobby unless you really do ride an old steel singlespeed bike from your door and dont own a car.

Now individual strands are being laid down by robots and weaved directly together to create a 3D lattice .

We did this for a company from Taiwan…they cried at the cost of the weaving head alone, oddly the automated technology was from a company in the next country along to Finland,