Why isnt the industry scanning composites for flaws?

Canyon of Germany scans composites for flaws, most of the rest of the industry d
oesnt. We should be worried about that, argues Carlton Reid.
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Chris Keller-Jackson I I know FSA do it, saw their goods inbound with an X-ray
machine in Taiwan, checking crank blanks. All part of Lean manufacturing, only a
dding value to products where the outcome will be saleable products. Quality Che
cking costs less than poor quality entering the marketplace.

Victor Major Because they are not doing it. CT scan takes too long to take, and
even longer to process the results - up to 30 minutes for a full set of images,
per scan. The CT scanner belongs to the factory and any one of their customers h
ave access to it, and use it occasionally, not just Canyon.

Even if theyre crafted in start-of-the-art manufacturing facilities not all carbo

n cycle products are perfect. Some dud ones will slip through. A carbon frame wi
th a porous bottom-bracket shell will likely snap, crackle or pop but it wont fel
l the rider because the rest of the frame will stay intact. However, a faulty fo
rk isnt so forgiving. Its for this reason that Canyon of Germany spent 400,000 on i
ts first CT scanning machine it could be cheaper than a fork recall. Canyon now
has four such scanners; three at its Asian factories and the original one in Ger
many, installed in 2012. While Trek is said to be about to install its own CT sc
anner much of the rest of the industry isnt so fussed, relying instead on visual
quality controls and random slicing of products.
This isnt terribly confidence inspiring.
According to Raoul Luescher of Carbon Bike Repair of Australia, common problems
with composite frames and parts include:
Delamination - "where the plies are separated and can no longer transfer load."
Unbond - "when the plies or other fittings were not bonded properly during manuf
acture."
Porosity - "dispersed air trapped in the resin during cure causing a reduction i
n mechanical properties."
Void - "large, trapped air bubble."
Cracks - "broken fibres and/or matrix."
In the aerospace industry every carbon part is tested for such problems, usually
with non-destructive inspection (NDI) technologies such as CT scanning and ultr
asound.
Luescher uses ultrasound equipment to work out where repairs to the matrix are r
equired.
"I am not aware of any of [cycle] factories doing any ultrasound scans of produc
tion frames or parts," Luescher told BikeBiz. (In fact, Canyon has an ultrasound
machine, but CT scanning is quicker.)
"The data interpretation on a typical frame is not straightforward. I have discu
ssed this with factories in the past, but they are looking for a "go or no go" s

olution. This is not simple with the shapes and laminates used in a cycle frame.
"I have seen some bars, forks and rims from the fakes all the way up to the very
high-end brands that were full of porosity, voids and other flaws such as wrink
les, which could cause a catastrophic failure or at the very least reduce the li
fe-span of the part.
Just because one carbon part passes the stress tests of ISO 4210 doesnt mean all
from the same batch will do likewise. One of the weaknesses of the existing stan
dard is that it was developed before carbon became commonplace, and doesn t take
into account carbon s very different build, use and failure characteristics. Ex
perts from the cycle industry, testing laboratories, and trading standards bodie
s have been working on the composites-specific CEN Technical Committee 333 Worki
ng Group 8, or WG8 for short.
"The current fatigue tests are based on the properties of steel and aluminium,"
says Peter Eland, technical service manager for the Bicycle Association of Great
Britain.
"There are differences in fatigue behaviour between metals, but the differences
between metals and composites are much more significant. The key factor is that
impacts have a far more significant effect on composite materials than they do o
n metals. But low-cycle impact loads were not really considered when the [origin
al] tests were agreed."
This means that a composite component could very likely pass all of the fatigue
testing specified in the current standard, but still fail in use.
"This sort of failure was identified in seatposts by some of the major companies
producing composites, and they swiftly changed their in-house fatigue testing t
o be more stringent," says Eland.
New tests proposed by WG8 which includes tech experts from Shimano, SRAM, Trek,
Accell Group, and Mavic will include the effect of temperature on composite rims
, which have to withstand burst pressure from the tyres when heated through brak
ing (or being left in a car in the sunshine).
There will also be composite-specific tests for steerer tubes and composite sadd
le rails. WG8 will make its recommendations in a Technical Report due out soon,
and this will eventually become part of the ISO standard for bicycles. Currently
, all factories should already be testing to the imperfect ISO 4210 as a minimum
.
But such tests are only ever conducted on samples. Canyons CT scanning is done on
every carbon fork, as I saw when I visited the Koblenz assembly plant in June.
Lab technicians take five photographs for every part and frame scanned. It takes
between two to four minutes for every test. The technicians check for delaminat
ion, wrinkles, and the proper wall thicknesses the CT scans are checked next to
the CAD drawings. Between 0.5 to 1 percent of scanned products are rejected in G
ermany, and this will be the second time they will have been scanned.
Every okayed product is labelled with a QR code laser-etched on the underside so
that it can be married up to the scan photographs should any flaws be reported
by a consumer.
Such an assurance of quality and safety is a major selling point, which is why i
t can only be a matter of time before most other brands pressure their Asian fac
tories to offer the same sort of NDI testing.

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