TPE15: Pillar makes the simple spoke a bit more durable

Or you could just use Wheelsmith DH13s. How does creating stress risers reduce failure rates? Is there extra material at the flattened sections?

I don’t think the features create stress risers when the inside corners are rounded. I think the concept here is like shot peening, by compressing the surface it leaves residual compressive stress, and that’s how you increase fatigue strength against tension, which is how things typically breaks, under tension… Btw totally guessing here…

Round sections deal with torsion better than square sections to begin with. The way to higher fatigue life is to shot peene (proper ball size and peeneing velocity are key), and form the elbow with preferred grain direction (i.e. running the length of the spoke), use material with lower stress corrosion cracking issues, surface finish, and proper hub hole/spoke elbow geometry. I’m not sure how the flat section other than what @birdman indicated will help the fatigue life of a spoke. And properly rolled threads with a smaller pitch would also help, but this would increase wheel building times due to having to turn the nipples more revolutions. And pre-stressing the wheel after it is built can also increase fatigue life by a small plastic overstress with the resulting increase in strain hardening and a usual increase in yield and ultimate tensile strength in the material.

the nipple story is a clear gimmick, and bout the spoke, well, it may work, just like tapered spokes are stronger than non tapered ones, as they work as a spring, so they are more elastic and may break less. But, this spoke with have way more torsion when truing, so it will be more difficult to true properly, and yes, straight pull spoke solve this problem already, problem is that there are still very very few straight pull hubs in the market.

I suspect that these are meant for machine built wheels. A proper hand build will deal with these issues through setting the elbows and stress relieving. The nipple concept is not bad – IF that was a problem. It’s over-engineering in search of an issue. And why does the drawing not match the cut-away? I’ve worked with Pillar spokes and they’re generally decent. They seem to have a spoke in every conceivable iteration of gauge in round and/or flat cross section. It’s no trick for them to throw something like this up to the wall and see if it sticks.

I agree with birdman that implementation of a proper radius is effective at mitigating stress risers (e.g. seat tube keyhole) but it looks like the transition between the two flat sections could be a stress riser. I would like to actually look at one under a scope.

What is the cost associated with the extra manufacturing work?

I feel that there are a lot of straight pull hubs on the market. Half (5) my bikes have straight pull spokes. Still using a thru-axle Pulstar front hub I built up with union Ti spokes 20 years ago. My CX bike is wearing heliums still on the original build from 97 or 98. For wheel builds I made a pair of soft jaw pliers for holding straight pull spokes. They are also good for reducing wind-up on bladed spokes.

About nippless i thinks that it s eady during pre assemgly spoke on to overloap une picand do a disadter…

jr,

Some people still build their own wheels. I build mine with silver spokes. I can’t say why, but I’ve never broken a silver spoke, only black ones (on machine built OE rims). I’ve never had an issue with DT or Sapim spokes either. I usually build 32h and 3x, so no issues there. I imagine that in radial or other high tension applications these might have some benefit, but as spokes are already getting expensive, I can only wonder what the additional tooling may cost here.

Creating a solution to a problem that hardly exists… broken spokes are a rare occurrence- particularly on properly built and tensioned wheels.

Three of my wheelsets are 5+ years old and I haven’t died yet so no, I’m not throwing away perfectly good spokes for “new and improved” ones.

I think it would have been better if they put that flat section near the thread so when you’re building your wheel and using a butted spoke, you would have a flat surface to hold the spoke with pliers and prevent the spoke from winding up when tightening the nipples so you can put a higher tension on the spoke, sort of what you could do with bladed spokes….