Shimano not embracing carbon fibre?

As we all know, carbon fibre is dead good :
* Excellent strength to weight ratio, compared to other materials.
* Works well with other materials (fibre, plastics, metals, wood, concrete).
* Suitable for complex contours and designs.
* Superior fatigue properties.
* High Stiffness.
* High heat tolerances and resistance.
* Flexible thermal and electrical properties.
* Corrosion-resistance (with proper resins).
* Varying classifications (tensile modulus) of strength.
* The strongest carbon fibre is 10x stronger and 5x lighter than steel.
* The strongest carbon fibre is 8x stronger and 1.5x lighter than aluminium.

and many manufacturers make carbon fibre parts but apart from rear mech plates, Shimano does not seem to use it. Opening it up for discussion as to why.

An example is this from Campagnolo.

maybe its so UCI world tour teams don't have to add as much extra weight to the bikes, probably not I'm just throwing it out there.

Quite a few reasons i should imagine.

Shimano actually use carbon on a few of there components, but still use metals to strengthen/stiffen the design. Their Dura ace range is regarded as one of, if not the best, lightest and strongest groupsets. Carbon fibre doesnt always mean lighter, stronger and better.

Shimano is still the top OEM supplier for bikes, having said that, more and more people and companies are using carbon so Shimano will introduce it more into some of their designs but they still prefer function over form.

Mark

Because carbon requires a complete redesign to make use of all the properties you've mentioned (ignoring the fact that some are not completely accurate).
Campag *haven't* done this. They pretty much duplicate the metal design in CF.

Also worth mentioning that shimano have masses of experience designing in CF and have put out a "few" CF bits, but still go back to aluminium, ti or steel where they think it is the best material. The CF DA crank springs to mind. Only a hundred or so distributed globally. To make it as stiff/ strong/durable/damage tolerant as the aluminum one, they had to make it heavier.

They seem to be investing most of their engineering into developing electric shifters, derailleurs and brakes etc. As they move that direction it doesn't make much sense to spend money on tooling for parts to go on non-electronics components. We will most likely see carbon fiber parts in the future but they will be used to lighten more complex electronic mechanisms.

Re:

I had a chat with them, they are not going full carbon everything as they are leaving it open to help 3rd party people to make bootique parts.
It help sales both ways.

mattr":1oge9a1z said:

Because carbon requires a complete redesign to make use of all the properties you've mentioned (ignoring the fact that some are not completely accurate).
Campag *haven't* done this. They pretty much duplicate the metal design in CF.

Also worth mentioning that shimano have masses of experience designing in CF and have put out a "few" CF bits, but still go back to aluminium, ti or steel where they think it is the best material. The CF DA crank springs to mind. Only a hundred or so distributed globally. To make it as stiff/ strong/durable/damage tolerant as the aluminum one, they had to make it heavier.

Click to expand...

Good post, I think this sums it up.

Re:

Slightly off topic, but looking at Campagnolo's web site, I think their lower end, metal, groupsets look much nicer than the than the carbon stuff, which looks plasticky and cheap.

Having said that, I think a lot of the more recent groupsets by most brands look a bit fugly compared to some of the earlier ones.

Re:

Is that not just personal opinion and what you are used to seeing though?


Anyway that top one looks to use composite where the fibre weave cannot be used, which is just plastics like SRAM did at the start of their mech and groupset life and everyone hatted it.

Even shimano use plastics..

Shiny metal will always look better than cf, but that`s not the point.

Shimano has been conservative about things like keeping cup`n cone hubs when everyone else was moving to ball bearings and didn`t bother much with carbon frame parts because i imagine that they don`t need to, most of their revenue comes from selling lower-grade oem parts, not top of the line carbon parts which are very expensive.

I`ve seen XT derailleurs with carbon cage plates and carbon brake levers, but i don`t really trust them on the long run. They might be extremely good to have in the first 5 years of use, but once the carbon layers start to delaminate, then what? How many of these parts are going to be around long enough for them to start being called "vintage"?