But, only when you have a suitable frame design and have a good manufacturer and experience. That’s why, with one or two exceptions, aluminum frames are welded together from an assortment of pre-manufactured pieces.Ī carbon frame is a good opportunity to save about 200-300 grams of frame weight. When you consider how little material they have to work with, it’s a miracle that mountain bike designers have anything left after spanning the distance between the rear axle and the steerer tube to construct essentials like linkage rockers, shock mounts, suspension pivots, and the bottom bracket housing. Melted down, all the aluminum contained in a five-pound frame would make a block about the size of half a sheet of printer paper and just one inch thick. And, there is a lot more of it laying around that could be recycled. That is a lot of metal being added to the melting pot each year. Architectural and common industrial applications are next in line, followed by automobiles (which on average use 300 pounds of the stuff), then aerospace. World production of aluminum is estimated at 24.8 million tons annually, mostly consumed by 187 billion aluminum cans (100 billion in the USA alone). Global statistics: worldwide, the cycling industry is barely a sliver in the pie-graph of aluminum users. According to the International Aluminum Institute, manufacturing new stocks of aluminum releases one percent of the global human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. It also produces greenhouse gases that affect global warming. Primary production of aluminum requires tremendous energy. When you bought your last mountain bike, did you inadvertently finance its makers to rape and pillage the earth? This feature takes a step back from the hyperbole to compare the benefits and drawbacks of manufacturing mountain bike frames from either carbon fiber or aluminum. Like all hot topics, the truth can usually be found somewhere in the middle. I've been a manufacturer, I've worked directly with factories in Asia, and as a journalist, I have visited many factories that produce frames and components with both materials. Some hold that somewhere in Asia, children are slaving away, waist deep in toxic chemicals to produce high-modulus pre-preg so dentists in more developed nations can shave two seconds from their Strava times. Recently there has been a lot of finger-pointing within the sport, with aluminum’s supporters claiming that the abundant metal’s well established recycling channels make its products more earth friendly than carbon fiber. Read more on our dedicated open source page.Is aluminum better for the planet? Does carbon fiber's performance live up to its high price? Will my frame end up as ocean fill? Is carbon fiber poisonous to work with? Contact us if you are interested, and find examples here.Īnd by the way, the fact that openLCA is open source causes no obligation to publish or make accessible any data you use, or models you create in openLCA. This makes openLCA also suited for work in highly sensitive areas, but also in education and research.įurther, openLCA is also well suited for tailored software, developed by you or by us.
OPENLCA TSHIRT SOCIAL CODE
If you want you can inspect the code for any potential issues including security issues and any malicious behaviour. Since the code and program is accessible, you see the quality of our work.
OPENLCA TSHIRT SOCIAL SOFTWARE
We believe this fits perfectly to Life Cycle and Sustainability Assessment as a user, this brings you flexibility, you do not need to worry about software codes, and are not locked in, and bound by, a closed source, black box software.
OPENLCA TSHIRT SOCIAL LICENSE
One reason for its development was to make LCA and Sustainability Assessment more accessible and affordable, and we are grateful for supporters for the project, initially in Europe and later on especially in the US.Īs a result, openLCA is completely free, without any license costs, and there is no catch. This is uncommon for LCA software, where other main software packages are closed source, with costs for a business licence of several thousand Euros. Since its beginning, openLCA is an open source software, according to the standards of the open source initiative.
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