It is good to know it melts rather than burning at 1200 degrees. It gets hot out there on the lava fields of The Big Island. I would hate to look down and see my frame on fire.

Seriously though, a carbon frame isn't that expensive to manufacture. There was an article talking about the different carbon frame makers, with regard to quality, and I think they mentioned something like 300$ in labor, materials and overhead for something like a Giant (a high quality frame). The marginal cost savings of these magnesium frames isn't likely sufficient to build an appealing low-end bike.

I wonder if they are talking about the cost after the mould for the carbon...whereas the mg tubing could just be welded with standoff's

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I believe my local reality has been violated.
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Happiness = Results / (Expectations)^2

If I recall, that was the labor and material cost. It didn't factor in the cost of tooling and its amortization ($50,000/mould is what I've been told). It also didn't account for the cost of shipping and carrying inventory. If you're selling bikes in the U.S. but making them in Taiwan you have to buy a slug of them at once and there's a significant opportunity cost of capital. When you start factoring all of that stuff in it's easy to see how the "break even" cost of a "$300 frame" is north of $1,000

For something like a SC 2.5 clone you could just have separate extrusions for the down tube, seat tube, head tube, and top tube, and a single mould for the bottom bracket. I've seen custom aluminum extrusion dies for as little as $2,000. So you're potentially looking at $8,000 in dies and probably $20,000 for the bb mould. Add in another $22,000 (arbitrary) for welding jigs and tooling to make your chain/seat stays and you're looking at $50,000 in tooling for all of your sizes vs $150,000 for just three sizes. If you make a frame using this method in the U.S. labor and material probably wash with Asian manufacturing of a carbon fiber frame but your shipping, inventory, and tooling costs have all declined dramatically. For a low-volume product it's easy to see how this could produce a less expensive product.

Magnesium was the future of the bike industry in 1992: https://www.independent.co.uk/...-future-1538389.html

and again in 2015: https://road.cc/...bike-material-future

Unfortunately magnesium makes alloys brittle so while many have experimented with it it has never taken off. Part of the problem is that having some flex/compliance in a frame is a good thing and Mg creates alloys that break not bend. I don't see anything in the new announcement to believe this has fundamentally changed. The way to deal with the issue is highlighted in the 2015 article but I expect it comes at a mind-numbing high cost.

Yeah that certainly seems to be an issue. A supplier in the industry I'm familiar with recently tried to bring a Mg stem to market but it failed testing pretty spectacularly.

I remember some magnesium stems, ITM IIRC, that nobody in the shop would dare try!

I saw a Kirk Precision in one piece 10 years ago. My girlfriend at the time was not as impressed as I was, so I didn’t stick a note on it.

Nice to see metallurgy move on. I’ll stick with plastic and aluminium for the moment I think, but I hope it does what it says and takes off.

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Developing aero, fit and other fun stuff at Red is Faster

1. I just don't see that there's enough space in the current pricing structure. In many cases, there's only a $300-$400 step from alloy to "low-mod" carbon. Is a manufacturer going to carry 4 frame iterations of the same model (high-mod carbon, lower-mod carbon, mag-alloy, alu-alloy) just to have an intermediate step in there?

2. Lightness doesn't matter much if the frame is stiff/brittle. I kept waiting for the article to tell us how the compliance of this new alloy compared to aluminum and/or carbon. Crickets. If you can't make it at least as compliant as aluminum, it isn't worth having as a bicycle frame material.


3. Nobody wants a $1250 alloy TT/Tri bike. Hell, almost nobody wants a $2000 carbon TT/Tri bike. Every manufacturer who's tried to offer an entry level alloy TT/Tri bike in the last half-decade has regretted it. Fuji Aloha, Felt S22/32, Blue Triad AL, Argon 18 E80? All recently retired, not as part of some conspiracy to make triathletes/TT'ers pay more, but because almost nobody who wanted to invest in such a purpose specific bike was looking for "entry level." The budget conscious mostly bought used higher-end bikes.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

My Mg soled DMT's were awesome. Right up until both cracked in half with less than 500 miles of pedaling on them. My CF replacements have lasted north of 10k.

Were those kirk precision bikes magnesium? Die cast frame instead of tubing

GreenPlease wrote:

Personally I think somebody needs to bring back the Speed Concept 2.5 and offer a 105 TT bike for less than $1,200.

I think you're on track here. I ride an old Equinox E9 and love the durability of the frame, (Vision TriMax alloy) basebars, pads (PD F-35 TT), and (alloy) stem. I have carbon aero extensions, but honestly I'd be happier with Zipp Vuka Alumina. I have lots of 105 stuff but am not afraid to upgrade parts when it makes sense. I run DuraAce front shifters, DA SIS cabling, DA jockey wheels, TriRig brakes/Kool-Stop pads, race wheels, etc.

I don't think the bike needs to be exactly $1200, but I'd like to see it updated to the modern SC shape yet, keeping external brakes and modular bars. Probably with a modernized alloy stem that hides cables like the TriRig Sigma X.
So basically a durable, travel-ready metal bike with easily adjustable and upgradable parts! When I last had some work done at the Trek Store I was kind of drooling on the 2018 SC and the mechanic told me how much easier my bike is to work on and travel with. Caught me by surprise but there's some truth to that.

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Madison photographer Timothy Hughes | Instagram

“Allite claims these new alloys also have "the lowest carbon footprint of any structural material throughout the value chain," as well as being abundant and 100 percent recyclable.”

This part I really like, especially when you consider carbon fibre is manufactured from petroleum products in big polluting asian factories, and cannot be recycled.
I’ve worked with Mg products in aviation, they’re marvelously lightweight but corrosion is an issue, apparently, Allite has solved that.
I’d try an Allite Mg frame if it was reasonably priced.

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res, non verba

I think just assuming a good Magnesium frame would just be made out of readily available tubing is a bit simplistic. It would seem that you would want to have butted tubes, aero profiles, and possibly different alloys in order to achieve desired design specifications ( compliance, stiffness, weight,...). Suddenly you have a ton of custom tubing to build An OK frame.

Yup, they were magnesium.

http://classiccycleus.com/home/kirk-magnesium/