Comments on: Hubless wheels

By: A hubless wheel from the past: The Black Hole | Bicycle Design

A hubless wheel from the past: The Black Hole | Bicycle Design — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:56:21 +0000

[...] better time to revisit a couple of old posts about a hubless wheel, which (I believe) actually went into production for a short time in the mid [...]

By: Anonymous2

Anonymous2 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:50:53 +0000

“Well from reading this you all sound like a bunch of engineers seriously lacking creativity and flare. ” __________________________________________________________________________________________How exactly does this design advance anything other than aesthetics? This is clearly a road bike. A hubless wheel will add a tremendous amount of weight to the rim. Spokes significantly add to the radial strength of the wheel with very little weight. Without spokes, you will need to beef-up the rim weight a great deal to have an equivalent radial strength. You will then greatly increase the amount of rotational interia – your physics book hasn’t changed a bit in several hundred years with regards to angular acceleration. Racing bikes is a big business with a lot of money behind it. Why wouldn’t they invest in a better racing machine?

By: 2009 in review | Bicycle Design

2009 in review | Bicycle Design — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:13:17 +0000

[...] E-hub10. Skua 11. Strida 5.0 review12. Homemade carbon fiber bikes 13. A 7 pound road bike14. Hubless wheels 15. Chrome Metropolis bag [...]

By: More hubless wheels and other links | Bicycle Design

More hubless wheels and other links | Bicycle Design — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:36:56 +0000

[...] the various design and technology blogs. I mentioned that I was skeptical about hubless wheels in a past post, and I still feel pretty much the same way. Mark Sanders, who knows a thing or two about [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:23:54 +0000

54, are you this critical with everything, or just having a bad day?

Yes we are art students, but we can convey our ideas on paper without autocad. We can do the research that is necessary of implementing next steps. We can design a product that not only works, but looks good and interacts with people in a positive way.

If we knew everything, we would be going to school for 8 years. We are students, we learn as we go, we aren't experts by any means. This design is beautiful and expresses itself as such. Criticisms are great, but don't pick apart our major because you are a pessimistic man who wants to keep product design strictly for engineers.

By: SteveB

SteveB — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:39:00 +0000

I actually bought a wear and tear black hole recently after looking for it for some time. Interesting, but not something revolutionary. It’s actually 4 rollers, 3 lower and a moveable upper one to tension everything. The rim is actually 2 rims stacked and held together by carbon fiber. Which makes rom for the valve stem. It’s very noisy, and at the moment seems to have quite a lot of drag due to having 4 rollers and 8 bearings. It’s 650C and about the same weight as a regular fork and wheel. Slick looking, very trick in its day, but not a great wheel.

By: romu

romu — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:33:00 +0000

As far as I know, Franco Sbarro is the inventor of the hubless wheel. He owns the patent, and never sold it to anyone.

By: Minh

Minh — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:27:00 +0000

Believe it or not, a local bicycle shop here in orange county, ca has that wear and tear bike in stock!!! I’m not sure if it’s for sale or not but it’s on display on the sales floor along side with all their other bikes, I did not see a price tag though. If youre interested in more details on it, feel free to email me.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:36:00 +0000

i think from the computer photo you can see if a thin, sleek, wheel came out for those on bikes, it would obvioulsy be a lot lighter and alot more aerodynamic. but, youd need super strength materials. but, other than that designs out now can beat it. i think though a magnetic levitated bike wheel, which is theoretically possible, would be the better choice

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:05:00 +0000

I saw one of these black hole wheels in Cycle Werks yesterday (May 21, 2007) It looked a little different, had more mass on the bike frame side, giving the appearance of a ying/yang type thing. The story the guy told me (and I realize this is all heresay) is that the company spent $250K doing the R&D, set-up & fabrication and produced 3 of these wheels. The owner of the shop got one of them. They worked temendously well, and were noisy as hell, but they worked (by worked, implied that it was a vast improvement over conventional design). THEN, UCI decided that the wheels were ‘illegal’ for competition, and that was the end of the black hole. Application was for track riding only.