johnfoss said:Though the finished product should be cheaper than a Schlumpf, unless
they are made in large numbers they probably won't be much cheaper. The
upside will be that they are mechanically simpler, so you won't be dead
in the water if something breaks inside your hub. But otherwise I'd go
straight to the much more elegant, lighter and *shiftable* Schlumpf
design.
The engineer in me cringes at the way you are throwing around these
terms, John, with no substantiation or justification.
About the only thing I could agree with is that the Phaze approach is
"mechanically simpler". However, that does not guarantee not being
"dead in the water" if a hub part breaks. Field (or non-factory)
serviceability must be designed into any device to be effective.
The cost of an item of whatever complexity is not just a function of
number of parts, but of demand, production line, material costs, and
many other factors. It is often the case that a simpler thing costs
more than a more complex thing. For an extreme example, a diamond is
likely to cost more than a pencil, despite the pencil being more
complex.
"Elegance" is a subjective term, but to an engineer, elegance is a
combination of strength, simplicity, effectiveness, serviceability,
ruggedness, weatherproofness, appearance, and other factors.
Oftentimes, a customer only realizes an item's elegance when he finds
that servicing it is easy, or he finds that his product fails much less
often than a competitor's product.
Lighter - I haven't seen any data or setup that allows the two designs
to be compared weight-wise. Have you?
The Purple/Outta Phaze setup is shiftable, moreso than the Schumpf.
Perhaps you meant shiftable-while-riding?
Thanks for listening to my comments.
--
U-Turn
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'Strongest Coker Wheel in the World'
(http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albup39)
'29er Tire Study' (http://u-turn.unicyclist.com/29erTireStudy/)
'New York Unicycle Club' (http://www.newyorkunicycle.com)
-- Dave Stockton
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