Post 1 of hopefully many (got my Slowtwitch login!)
Being super candid here, would love feedback as we are a young company entering a very highly discerning market:
We designed the WAKE6560 to really upend what everyone thought was possible from a medium to deep aero wheel. A lot of work went in to optimizing shape, and while the trend is leaning towards wider and wider, the reality of it is that we spend 90+% of our time between 0-10 degrees yaw… Like Dan mentioned in his write up, the majority of the aero benefits of a deep wheel occur at high yaw angles (that “pushing” sensation of negative drag) because, after all, the rim is acting like a wing; however, that cross section will definitely pull you around the road, and all those wobbles will kill any aero benefit you achieve.
A few people are discussing our relatively narrow width compared to current competitors. This was a design choice that will allow much better performance in the 0-10 degree zone we all spend the majority of our time in. Paired with an undulating/continuously varying trailing edge on the front section of the wheel gives us much better cross wind performance as well as myriad structural benefits.
Our width and depth are optimized for a variety of yaw scenarios, so you get exceptional low yaw performance (due to moderate width), and still achieve negative drag at higher yaw angles (due to 60+mm depth), all with more stability (due to continuously varying trailing edge).
Notice, the 6560 uses a symmetrical sinusoidal wave, whereas a 454 uses a sawtooth (asymmetrical, read stress concentrator)…Our sine waves allow much greater stress migration from the spoke point to the outer hoop (the strongest part of the rim) so we can use less material in certain areas while still achieving greater stiffness. The concept of putting the spoke at the convex point of the sine allows us to use unidirectional fibers in tension (whereas all other rims have the spoke point on a concavity, putting the carbon into compression.) Fibers work really well in tension, not as great in compression, so simple stuff that gives us huge benefits.
The result is a wheel that is aerodynamically faster than 404, 454, 858, jet6, jet9, etc etc, but also lighter (considerably) and stiffer (we are working on ways to quantitatively measure deflection without destroying expensive competitor wheels we need to buy for testing!) with better cross wind performance.
As for protocol, we followed a very strict testing protocol and all tests were performed by staff at A2. To be honest, the days are fairly long and boring, as we are just swapping tires, checking pressures, loading into the test rig and waiting about 10 minutes for the test to run. We did test our wheels on a bike with a rider against a few other (404 namely) and have those numbers somewhere, I will dig them up (we were considerably lower drag).
This is our first product of many; we aren’t trying to hawk wheels like a lot of sticker brands are, we are trying to engineer a better solution for the rider to ultimately go faster, more comfortably, and more reliably. The goal is better speed under all conditions.
