Home > Bike Types > Road Bike

One K Wheels show 930g road wheelset with carbon fiber spoke system

one k wheels bicycle wheels with one-piece carbon fiber spoke sheets closeup details
9 Comments
Support us! Bikerumor may earn a small commission from affiliate links in this article. Learn More

While these wheels won’t be released until Spring 2022, the sub-1000g weight makes them worth looking into. Claiming road bike wheels as light as 930g, One K Wheels uses a composite spoke structure to replace the steel spokes and reduce overall wheel weight by 20% or more.

one k wheels bicycle wheels with one-piece carbon fiber spoke sheets closeup details

Designed with two sheets of spokes per side, each sheet contains all of the spokes angled in one direction, then another sheet is laid over it with spokes angled the other direction.

one k wheels bicycle wheels with one-piece carbon fiber spoke sheets closeup details

These sheets are pre-formed to slot into small nubs on custom hubs (more on these below)…

one k wheels bicycle wheels with one-piece carbon fiber spoke sheets closeup details

…and once both layers are in place and they’re looped onto the nipples, it traps the hub between them and prevents it from spinning off. Or, in other words, it forces the hub to drive the spokes around, turning the wheel with it.

one k wheels bicycle wheels with one-piece carbon fiber spoke sheets closeup details

The ends of the spokes have a loop that’s slotted into titanium nipples.

one k wheels bicycle wheels with one-piece carbon fiber spoke sheets closeup details

Bolts thread into those from the rim, pulling everything tight and allowing the wheel to be built and trued.

non plus bicycle hubs with conical engagement ring

The hubs come from Non Plus Components, who custom made these flanges with the hooks for One K’s carbon spoke sheets. Non Plus also make hubs with more traditional spoke flanges and a 6-bolt rotor mount that continues the bolt studs into the flange to improve overall stiffness:

non plus bicycle hubs with conical engagement ring

Their main differentiation is an oversized drive ring that not only contains a lot of teeth, but also has a conical shape to maintain maximum engagement, even if you’re torquing the drivetrain hard enough to induce rear axle flex.

non plus bicycle hubs with conical engagement ring

Which means they’re rated for everything from XC to long-travel eMTB, despite being exceptionally lightweight themselves. Claimed weights range from just 64g for a front Road hub to 169g for a rear Mountain Bike hub. The rear Road hub comes in at a claimed 145g, and this custom One K version at just 150g.

non plus bicycle hubs with conical engagement ring

Note the extra machining at the ends of their Shimano Microspline-compatible freehub body.

One K says their wheels should start shipping in spring 2022, pricing TBD and will be based on rim selection. Because they’re using titanium nipples and bolts that match the diameter of a standard spoke nipple, the system is compatible with any standard rim.

one-k-wheels.com

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

9 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
MaraudingWalrus
MaraudingWalrus
3 years ago

This looks absolutely bonkers. I’m curious about the rim these folks are using, and would love to see these spokes in person.

If someone wants something (slightly) more conventional with somewhat more well known parts, and with more or less immediate availability, the math puts a set of wheels with Extralite’s Disc hubs, Berd spokes, and a Nextie NXT29XM24U rim should be around 911g +/-. That rim is one of their mtb rims, it’s 24mm external width, something just under 20mm internal width, hookless.

alloycowboy
alloycowboy
3 years ago

So just doing some engineering math, because their are only 24 spokes and because the spokes are connected in pairs, when you loose one spoke you actually loose a pair of spokes, reducing the wheel strength by 8.4%. In contrast to a 24 spoke Sapium steel spoked wheel where if you loose a spoke, you only loose 4.2% of wheel strength.

Lets ramp that up and lets say you cut two pairs of spokes at same time, that is 17% of your wheel strength.

Loosing three pairs of spokes would be 25% of total wheel strength.

The grand conclusion here is that if you are going to use a paired spoke system like this you want to go with a wheel that has 32 spokes because you have a better margin of safety if you start loosing pairs of spokes.

adamrice
3 years ago
Reply to  alloycowboy

It might be worse than that. Each side of the hub has two “sheets” of spokes. If you sever a spoke, are you detensioning the entire sheet? Hard to tell. If so, cutting one spoke would reduce total wheel strength by 25%.

An203
An203
3 years ago

BR, you show an interesting (at least different) wheel and have no info except the 20% weigth drop for spokes. They clearly went through quite a lot of complications with this spoke system, why? what are the gains? Cmon guys!

K-Pop is dangerous to your health
K-Pop is dangerous to your health
3 years ago

When it comes to this looped carbon spoke design I think Partington does a much cleaner execution of the spoke/hub interface. Fun to see this kind of stuff, but is really only going to be consumed by the 1% to show off at their slow coffee shop rides.

ChrisC
ChrisC
3 years ago

The *look* is cleaner on the Partington wheels, but as far as I can see they have no positive engagement between the hub and the spokes for torque transfer. It’s unlikely but at least possible that the hub shell could spin inside the loops.

Ed
Ed
3 years ago

Assuming the spokes break in such a spot as to lose tension on two. As for the lose the whole sheet comment, stay away from opining on physics…

Robert J. Higgins
Robert J. Higgins
3 years ago

All good points, true. But, as someone once said, “What this country needs is a good 5 cent cigar.” Now, what I say is, What this country need is a good bike/wheel combination topping the $20,000 mark. KISS!!!!

Pawel
Pawel
3 years ago

Just wondering… these nipples are located near the rim and look bulky/heavy. With traditional spokes You can use aluminium nipples (i.e. DT squorx) with 3-4gramm per 10pcs. If these proprietary nipples (and I mean set: titanium nipples and threaded bolts, probably steel) are noticeably heavier, there is no advantage in wheel inertia, beacuse the heaviest part of spoke/nipple combo is at the rim… Pi Rope also uses oversized nipples… None of them wants to tell us the real weight od the nipples. Just wondering…

Subscribe Now

Sign up to receive BikeRumor content direct to your inbox.