Materials

Colnago was the first frame builder to see the poten­tial of car­bon fibre in the evo­lu­tion of the cycling. He chose to match the lat­est tech­nol­ogy with the con­cept of cus­tom geom­e­try frames. Muscular exten­sion, flex­i­bil­ity and per­sonal pref­er­ence for posi­tion com­bined with aer­o­bic and ped­alling effi­cien­cies are too many vari­ables for a rider to be locked into the con­fine­ment of only a few frame sizes. This is why all the top Colnago frames offer lugged con­struc­tion to fit all rid­ers. Whether for one of the 130 Colnago-sponsored pro­fes­sional cyclists or one of the mil­lions of demand­ing ama­teur rid­ers around the world, there is a Colnago that offers the per­fect fit. With this con­cept, Colnago takes age-old crafts­man­ship into the future.

Research and Method

Even with the vast avail­abil­ity of car­bon fibre, there are a num­ber of poten­tial prob­lems that can exist in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. Only with great invest­ment in man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nol­ogy can a car­bon prod­uct be con­sid­ered safe and reli­able with no sac­ri­fice to per­for­mance. The tubes of Colnago frames are built with an advanced fil­a­ment wind­ing sys­tem. This process, which is per­formed over a solid, stain­less steel INOX core, yields a highly con­sis­tent wall thick­ness, even in cases where the tubes use intri­cate exter­nal and inter­nal shape and struc­ture. Moreover, thanks to the INOX “mir­ror treated” cores, all the dif­fer­ent lay­ers are com­pressed with extremely high pres­sures. This advanced process lim­its excess resin in the com­pos­ite, reduc­ing weight while increas­ing strength. This, plus advanced tube shap­ing and struc­ture, yield the high­est strength to weight ratio.

Construction prob­lems

If to build a tube on a rigid core to be later removed is easy to imag­ine, to per­form a com­plex struc­ture as bot­tom bracket junc­tion is pretty dif­fer­ent and show prob­lem­atic dif­fi­cul­ties to be solved because of its shaped and because of all the dif­fer­ent and simul­ta­ne­ous forces that come there together once in action. The fibres ori­en­ta­tion, the nature of car­bon type itself and the total con­trol of the join­ing walls are the fruit of an exhaust­ing research, lab­o­ra­tory and road tests. The car­bon junc­tions of Colnago Frames are built by the same fibres of the tubes: made in Italy with the high­est qual­ity stan­dards. As for the tubes are the sum of over­lapped lay­ers of uni­di­rec­tional type alter­nate with var­i­ously ori­ented wefts. The inter­laced lay­ers are com­monly named 1K and 3K, the best con­fig­u­ra­tions to give homo­gene­ity, strength and reac­tiv­ity to a win­ning road bike. This comes over any aes­thetic choices that some frame fac­tory take with­out a real tech­ni­cal base.

Any detail makes the difference

Length and shape of the join­ing sur­faces, lay­ers an ori­ent­ing of the fibres. Nothing is for noth­ing and every­thing is related to angles and dimen­sion in any sin­gle frame to obtain the max­i­mum homo­gene­ity in reac­tions. The junc­tions of Colnago frames take shape around a spe­cial high den­sity poly­mer to be man­u­ally destroyed after the poly­meri­sa­tion. This exclu­sive sys­tem makes pos­si­ble to build a cave com­po­nent with com­plex (mul­ti­fac­eted) shape with­out to renounce to press the strat­i­fied fibres under excep­tion­ally high pres­sures, as it hap­pens on the tubes.

Colnago and Frame Weight

The weight of the frame is a detail which is push­ing unsafe prod­ucts into the mar­ket­place. The often unre­li­able and incon­sis­tent tra­di­tional man­u­fac­tur­ing process with car­bon can pro­duce end-products with often sus­pect yield and fatigue strength. Circumstances can lead infe­rior frames to not only crack, but can result in cat­a­strophic fail­ure with­out warn­ing. Many processes used to lighten frame weight are sim­ply not proven to be reli­able. With tech­no­log­i­cal appli­ca­tion, it is pos­si­ble to see frames in the mar­ket­place with weights between 700g and 800g. These frames can be tempt­ing to the con­sumer look­ing for the light­weight advan­tage. Colnago believes in a limit of 1000g. It is sim­ply not worth sac­ri­fic­ing han­dling, safety and reli­a­bil­ity for the neg­li­gi­ble advan­tage of a few grams of sta­tic frame weight.

The com­par­i­son “Colnago is like a Ferrari”

The car­bon fibre pro­duc­tion in the entire Colnago 2013 prod­uct line is para­mount in the mar­ket­place. Not just the raw mate­ri­als, but through­out the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, no cor­ners are cut. This is one of the most impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions in the final price of a Colnago bicy­cle or frame. Another aspect is Colnago’s unwill­ing­ness to go out­side of Cambiago, Italy for design­ing all aspects of the finest bicy­cles avail­able. This is why Colnago offers a unique style matched with the most advanced tech­nol­ogy. “Made in Italy” on a Colnago prod­uct truly means “Made in Italy”. Behind the Colnago sig­na­ture lies the most metic­u­lous and com­plex study of every aspect of the bicy­cle, from design table to final prod­uct. It is this invest­ment in detail that make Colnago logo on bicy­cle anal­o­gous to the Ferrari Horse on an auto. This a com­par­i­son that Colnago wel­comes with pride.