Pillar’s New Spoke Tension Meter and Best Selling Wing Spokes

If you have never built a wheelset before, every cyclist should do it at least once. The process helps you understand how each component of the wheel works together and how to maintain your wheels to keep them rolling straight, round, and dependably. Part of building wheels is getting spoke tension just right. For dedicated wheel builders, Pillar‘s new Spoke Tension Meter offers a new level of accuracy for short spoke lengths and also heavier gauge e-bike spokes. And as always, Pillar had their Wing spokes, which not only offers an aero advantage over round or bladed spokes, but also enhanced stability and stiffness.

New Spoke Tension Meters

The new Spoke Tension Meter, called the 50, is unique as it allows you to tension smaller wheels with a minimum spoke length of 80mm. This is great for kids bikes, folding e-bikes, and any other wheel with short spokes.

The 50 can measure spokes anywhere from 12-15 gauge, just by flipping the posts that press up against the spoke. For 12-13 gauge, you use the narrow side of the posts. For 14-15 gauge, you use the wider side. To swap, you just remove the hex bolts holding them in place, flip them, and then reinstall the bolts.

Wing Spokes

Rims and hubs tend to get the attention when people talk about wheels, but spokes are the unsung heroes. They connect the hub to the rim, creating strength and stiffness, helping to transfer power to the rim, but also controlling braking and steering.

Some spokes are round, others are flat, but Pillar has created an ovalized shape for their Wing spokes. From an aerodynamic perspective, flat, wide spokes might be aerodynamic in the wind tunnel where the wind can flow over the sides of the blade, but in the real world, the airflow is much more complex. They found that the ovalized spoke can handle multiple yaw angles better as the wheel spins and the air flows around it. In testing, the PSR Wing20 spoke resulted in about a 3W savings compared to a conventional 0.9×2.2mm bladed spoke.

The tests included are:

• Conventional Drive Side – This tests the lateral load on the drive side. The test is performed by placing a perpendicular load on the side of the rim and measuring the rim deflection on the drive side. This isn’t a true force you would see on the road, as it does not include a radial load, but is used to highlight differences in results in the other tests.
• Conventional Non-Drive Side – Same as above, but testing rim deflection on the non-drive side.
• Lateral Load From Drive Side – Similar to the Conventional testing, this adds a radial load as well, which makes it more realistic to actual riding. Examples of where you would see these forces would be high speed cornering and sprinting. A tire is included in the test. Deflection is measured on the drive side.
• Lateral Load From Non-Drive Side – Same as above, but testing rim deflection on the non-drive side.
• Radial Load – This measures the radial stiffness of a wheel, which includes the change in tension
• Dynamic Spoke Tension Behavior – This measured the change in tension during all tests. The change from no load to the different scenarios of testing can help show the stiffness of a spoke and help manufacturers improve spoke fatigue failure resistance. Lower changes in tension is better for fatigue life.

With the graphs above, you can see that there is a bigger difference on the drive side as noted earlier. For the test, they used a Syntace Straight RS hub with a 142x12mm axle, internal nipples, 24 spokes, and a 55mm carbon tubeless ready rim. The competitor spoke was a 4.3g straight pull spoke, 272mm in length, with a 2.0-0.9×2.2-2.0mm butted, bladed spoke. The Pillar spoke was the straight pull Wing 20, using the same length, fully ovalized airfoil shape, also weighing 4.3g a spoke.

On the Conventional Drive Side test, Pillar Wing 20 spokes were 16.24% stiffer than the competitor at maximum deflection. In the Lateral Load Drive Side test, the Wing 20 was 13.21% stiffer at maximum deflection. In the Radial Load test, the both spokes performed about the same in displacement with a 50kg load applied. In the Dynamic Spoke Tension Behavior tests, the Pillar Wing 20 saw lower changes in tension values across the test, which leads to less fatigue on the spokes for longer operational life.

So the next time you are getting wheels custom built, or maybe building a set yourself, you’ll now have a little more to think about when it comes to spoke selection. Road, gravel, cyclocross, mountain biking, really any discipline of cycling, the Pillar Wing spokes make a great option. Whether you are looking for speed or strength and stiffness, you get it all with the Wing ovalized spokes.

We are working with Pillar to get spokes in for an upcoming wheel build, so look for that article coming in the near future.

www.pillarspoke.com