RGMN

This sounds like an ideal material for bike frames and components. The same strength as titanium but 4-5 times lighter. 'Metallic wood' has the strength of titanium and the density of water

rollagain

If it's pure nickel, it won't be very good structurally. Nickel is a lot softer than steel. Very expensive, too.

CliffordK

A few months ago, there was an article about Super Magnesium.

Also strong and light.

For this Nickel Wood, it may well be a technique that was easy to perform on Nickel due to its purity and stability, but it could theoretically apply to other materials. Or, perhaps custom alloys can be made.

We may well be in an era of many new materials and fibers. Some of which will pan out, some of which won't.

Theoretically a basic steel bike can be made as light as carbon fiber. And, it is likely that manufacturers will continue to milk the CF bandwagon for a few more years before jumping to the next hot "aircraft" material.

Oh, and don't forget "Transparent Aluminum", as long as you never forget where you parked your bicycle.

Ok, better known as synthetic sapphire.

My guess the next place we'll start seeing these exotic materials is not in the bike frames, but in common wear items such as chainrings, cassettes, and chains. We're already seeing the ceramic bearings and races.

Better 3-D printable materials?

Caliper

I think the limiting factor of a steel frame is real world durability vs tube wall thickness. Even current top end steel tubesets can be dented if treated carelessly. Drawn thinner I think you would see problems where a frameset could be ruined by rough handling. Carbon, with its lower density allows a thicker wall and better dent resistance, not to mention the ability to do directional layups.

The metal structure above could possibly allow lightweight metals that would still have the robustness to dents and such that is needed?

fietsbob

Coal?

rollagain

They're on to something with the lattice-like structure there, but it's not optimized for things like bike frames. It's a clever process, though. What they need to do is to work up 3-D printed frames with mostly-hollow lattice structures inside, like bird bones, with the webs of material arrayed in direction and thickness to get the best characteristics for the final part.

When they're done, it will become clear that *all* of our present frames use way more material than is needed. But I don't know that they're even making aircraft parts this way yet, and I suspect that these frames might be just as exotic and expensive as airplane parts.

BlazingPedals

Whatever happened to that wood product that was supposed to compete with crabon? Some college group treated wood to death and ended up with something very light but still strong.

fietsbob

Renovo could have used that , they might have saved the company .. Pretty hardwoods was not enough..

bluehills3149

If we're talking new materials for bike frames - here's an article on how they have managed technology to weld 6000 series aluminum which is much stronger than the 7000 series currently used in bike frames but has always been impossible to join. It's why aircraft are still riveted together rather than welded and it's interesting they say bike frames are a key market.
https://phys.org/news/2019-01-nanote...-weldable.html

CliffordK

You've got that backwards. 6061 is your basic Walmart bike frame, and easy to weld.

7075 is used in things like chainrings, and is hard to weld.

7005 is apparently used in bike frames, but apparently not significantly better than 6061.