The frame is the soul of a mountain bike, the use of different choice of frame material will be different, like people who often ride long distance and often cross-country, the choice of frame is different, so many riders do not know what material is good for mountain bike frame, here we will introduce you to the four commonly used materials for mountain bikes and what advantages and disadvantages they have.
Carbon fiber frame and features
The use of carbon fiber as a high-tech material in bicycles is a recent decade. Technically speaking, carbon fiber is not just carbon, but a mixture of carbon that has been woven and reinforced with epoxy resin. In the early days of carbon fiber, due to technical reasons, the epoxy resin used would even decompose in the sun. With the progress of technology, the shortcomings of this excellent material is gradually overcome. For example, the German K frame uses a high grade 16K carbon fiber, which is even stronger than steel and has a lifetime warranty. I think this is a best hardtail frame and lightweight frame bike.It is also a cheap road bike frame.
Generally speaking, carbon fiber as a bicycle material has the following characteristics.
1、Extremely light weight: carbon fiber road frames of about 1200 grams have been seen everywhere. Since the mass of carbon is only 1.6g/cm3, it is no longer a dream to make a frame of about 1kg.
2、Good shock absorption performance. Carbon fiber can effectively absorb shocks and maintain very good rigidity. This feature makes it a very good competition grade material.
3、Can make a variety of shapes of the frame. Unlike the general manufacturing process of metal frames, carbon fiber frames are generally made by first making a mold, then paying carbon fiber sheets on the mold, and finally glued with epoxy resin. This process can be used to make a frame with minimal wind resistance by using aerody.
Titanium frame and features
Titanium is an emerging metal, this new material has very superior performance and is one of the best materials for making top quality frames.
1、Titanium alloy can be made very light weight and strength of the frame, from the table above can be seen, titanium strength and steel, but also only a little more than half the weight of steel, so the same strength of titanium alloy frame will be much lighter than steel frame.
2、Titanium alloy has very good elasticity, which makes it in the absorption of cycling vibration. Frames made of titanium have very good comfort, and titanium is a metal with memory, which has an almost unlimited life within its own deformation, which means that buying a titanium frame is a one-and-done approach. (laugh) Generally speaking, under professional use conditions, the service life of aluminum frame is 2 years, steel frame is 8 years, while titanium frame can reach about 20 years.
3、Under normal conditions, titanium almost no corrosion phenomenon.
There are advantages and disadvantages, titanium alloy also has its inevitable drawbacks, the most headache is currently a word: expensive!
According to the content of the metal, titanium is actually not a rare metal. But the natural state of titanium elements generally exist in the form of titanium dioxide, refining and processing process is complex, technically demanding, and spend time therefore high cost. Then there is the extremely difficult dissolution processing, because the affinity between titanium and oxygen is extremely strong, and air contact immediately into titanium dioxide, and titanium dioxide hard and brittle, the strength of the part will continue to decline. It must be carefully welded with inert gas. Tig welding is commonly referred to as: (Tig: short for tungsten and inert gas) arc welding with tungsten electrode and argon gas. Welding of titanium must be done under air isolation. Due to the above reasons titanium frame price is very expensive. General domestic air wheel and Bao Titanium 3/2.5 titanium alloy frame price is about 3000 yuan
Aluminum frame and features
1、The metal fatigue of aluminum is very poor.1、The metal fatigue of aluminum is very poor.
The fatal weakness of the bicycle frame made of aluminum is that when riding a bicycle made of this material, the more times you ride, the higher the number of stresses occurring, and the strength is significantly caused by changes. Recently, in order to seek light weight, many frames are made using thin materials (the thinness has reached its limit). These are the use of aluminum alloy without fatigue limit to make the frame, which is why in the professional use of the strength of an aluminum frame can only support 2-3 years of the reason.
2、 Aluminum is not flexible and cannot absorb the vibration of riding.
A hardtail frame made of aluminum will transfer the vast majority of the vibration directly to the rider’s body. This makes the aluminum frame quite bumpy to sit on, and the ride is very uncomfortable.
Because of these two defects of aluminum, it is not suitable for general hardtail frames. However, most of the competition XC cross country frames use aluminum, because the weight of aluminum can be very light, and through heat treatment and tube extraction technology can also get a lot of strength, which makes the aluminum frame competition performance is very good!
Steel frame and features
Steel is a material with a long history of use, from the most common civilian bicycle to high-end competition-grade vehicles, all use steel in one way or another. In addition to the perfection of smelting technology, steel also has advantages that no other material can replace.
1、good processing performance, chromium-molybdenum steel is the oldest bicycle material, it is also the longest research time, so its processing technology has developed to a fairly stable degree.
2、strength, from the above we can see that the same volume of steel strength is much greater than aluminum and titanium, so the strength of qualified steel frame can let people rest assured.
3、comfortable ride, steel is a metal with good elasticity, the frame made of steel, can absorb the vibration brought about by the riding process. Therefore, the steel frame will not feel uncomfortable to the aluminum frame, especially suitable for touring frame.
4、steel metal fatigue is much stronger than aluminum, so under the same conditions of use, the life of the steel frame will also be much longer than the aluminum frame.
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