Carbon fiber is something that bicycle riders love and hate. Carbon fiber bicycles have a noble name and a high price. However, they also have unknown aspects, such as being unrecyclable and environmentally unfriendly, and easier to break compared to metal frames. So what about the carbon fiber bike?



The high price of carbon fiber bikes means that their glamorous appearance is not used to show off. In some aspects, the characteristics of carbon fiber are indeed more suitable for cycling than metal, such as lightweight and various ratios, as shown below:



Of course, carbon fiber materials are also inferior. It can be seen that the weight-to-rigidity ratio of the materials in the picture is almost the same under the same mechanism. Even lighter carbon fiber materials are inevitably lost in rigidity to heavier metal frames, so the lightweight rigidity of the frame is not good. This of course is negative. The designers of the frame usually do some tricks on the structure, such as adopting a design that increases the pipe diameter and reduces the wall thickness to allow the power transmission area of the carbon bike frame. It is more rigid, which is also common on many metal frames, which can reduce weight and increase rigidity. This is also the reason why many metal frames have relatively large pipe diameters.



Of course, there are disadvantages to this point. For example, aluminum alloy pipes will have problems in welding when they are drawn to a certain degree of thinness, and carbon fiber is the same. When it is thin to a certain degree, it will produce the opposite effect.



Take a look at this carbon fiber cloth, it looks like a tuft of plastic cloth. Many riders will find out why this material does not have that kind of carbon fiber pattern. Like this one below.



It turns out that the former is a single-direction carbon fiber cloth, and the latter is a real carbon fiber cloth. The K value of the woven carbon fiber indicates the number of carbon filaments in each bundle of carbon fiber. Of course, the bigger the better, because this is related to the production cost.

It's like seeing the strength of carbon fiber only in the longitudinal direction of the fiber, so we have to weave these fibers horizontally and vertically. After layers of weaving, the strength of the carbon fiber material will gradually appear.



Regarding the numerous numbers of carbon fiber, we can only "look at it", so how strong are the numerous models? This picture can be displayed very well. Inside, T and M are carbon fiber materials with two different characteristics.



The production of carbon fiber frames is not as simple as rolling carbon fiber cloth into tubes and connecting them. Each manufacturer has its own characteristics for the production of carbon fiber tubes and frames. The manufacturing of the frame is very technical, which is why the carbon frame produced by the cheap foundry is quite different from the regular brand carbon fiber frame.

So when buying a carbon fiber frame, please choose a regular brand frame, such as Trifox, click here to buy Trifox road frames and mountain bike frames