Another day of wheel building (and so on).
I had a customer request to build nomu-lab Wheel #5 with a silver Shimano XT hub,
but the supplier only had black hubs in stock,
with silver hubs scheduled for late June.
I was planning to contact the customer about switching to black or waiting for silver,
but when I checked inventory the day before yesterday,
I found we somehow had silver hubs in stock, so I ordered one.
Both front and rear are disc brake hubs, and both have (faintly) asymmetrical flanges left and right.
The image above is the front hub,
and if you look at the spoke holes rather than the flanges themselves, the asymmetry becomes clearer.
The Tni hub from the other day has "the rotor side as large flange" as its asymmetrical design, so
speaking left to right in the direction of travel, the front hub is low-high flange,
and the rear hub is also low-high flange.
Shimano hubs have "the side where spokes run more steeply is the large flange" as asymmetrical design, so
the front becomes low-high flange, and the rear becomes high-low flange.
When building normally with identical flange diameter and spoke count left and right,
on the front wheel with low-high flange, there are two interests:
"the rotor side should have higher tension"
and "it should be an asymmetrical flange favorable for correcting left-right spoke tension differences"—
these align, so there's no problem.
The Tni rear hub from before is designed with "definitely large flange on rotor side!"
so from the rear hub's perspective on spoke tension left-right balance,
it creates harsh conditions, and I had considerable difficulty.
Theoretically, the XT rear hub's approach is superior to the Tni disc hub
regarding only the correction of left-right spoke tension differences.
It's a matter of what you prioritize as the primary concern.
When conflicting design priorities require choosing one over the other,
the goal is that whichever choice you make results in feeling like "it rides better,"
but that's the difficult part.
Wheel building is heavily influenced by hub selection before anything about
assembly method or spoke selection comes into play.
Front wheel is built.
32H, all competition spokes, reverse Italian lacing.
The Tni from before, I decided to use JIS lacing for specific reasons,
but today I went with reverse Italian.
Shimano specifies reverse Italian as the recommended lacing method, which also factored in.
I went with 6x6 lacing, but I deliberated on this.
The front hub's spoke dish isn't as pronounced as the rear,
so if I maximized asymmetrical different-count lacing,
I could even make the steeper spoke side (rotor side) lower tension.
Left and right being the same is fine, but I wanted to avoid reversing the relationship.
Building with 32H all competition spokes, there's 6x4 lacing, 8x4 lacing, 8x6 lacing, etc.—
I could test all of them to find what's closest to optimal,
but with 6x6 lacing, even accounting for the faint low-high flange asymmetry,
the rotor side will definitely have higher tension.
So I went with 6x6 lacing.
↑If you flip the front wheel left and right, wheel logic-wise it becomes
"rear wheel Italian lacing with the rotor mounting surface as a short freebody."
Because the dish amount is small, I'm hesitant about using large asymmetrical spoke counts.
Rear wheel is built too.
32H, all competition spokes, 4x8 JIS lacing.
I'll solder the crossing points, but haven't yet.
I want to change the tip on my soldering iron.
The rear hub is only very slightly high-low flange.
While building it didn't feel pronounced enough for me to think "yeah, this one's high-low,"
conversely, even slight low-high makes me go "argh, low-high flange, absolutely need asymmetrical lacing!",
so even a slight high-low is probably having an effect.
For information on Shimano disc brake hub lacing specifications (→here).
That linked wheel, after much deliberation too,
ended up with the same lacing method as today's build.
I do think it through each time, for what it's worth.
I had a customer request to build nomu-lab Wheel #5 with a silver Shimano XT hub,
but the supplier only had black hubs in stock,
with silver hubs scheduled for late June.
I was planning to contact the customer about switching to black or waiting for silver,
but when I checked inventory the day before yesterday,
I found we somehow had silver hubs in stock, so I ordered one.
Both front and rear are disc brake hubs, and both have (faintly) asymmetrical flanges left and right.
The image above is the front hub,
and if you look at the spoke holes rather than the flanges themselves, the asymmetry becomes clearer.
The Tni hub from the other day has "the rotor side as large flange" as its asymmetrical design, so
speaking left to right in the direction of travel, the front hub is low-high flange,
and the rear hub is also low-high flange.
Shimano hubs have "the side where spokes run more steeply is the large flange" as asymmetrical design, so
the front becomes low-high flange, and the rear becomes high-low flange.
When building normally with identical flange diameter and spoke count left and right,
on the front wheel with low-high flange, there are two interests:
"the rotor side should have higher tension"
and "it should be an asymmetrical flange favorable for correcting left-right spoke tension differences"—
these align, so there's no problem.
The Tni rear hub from before is designed with "definitely large flange on rotor side!"
so from the rear hub's perspective on spoke tension left-right balance,
it creates harsh conditions, and I had considerable difficulty.
Theoretically, the XT rear hub's approach is superior to the Tni disc hub
regarding only the correction of left-right spoke tension differences.
It's a matter of what you prioritize as the primary concern.
When conflicting design priorities require choosing one over the other,
the goal is that whichever choice you make results in feeling like "it rides better,"
but that's the difficult part.
Wheel building is heavily influenced by hub selection before anything about
assembly method or spoke selection comes into play.
Front wheel is built.
32H, all competition spokes, reverse Italian lacing.
The Tni from before, I decided to use JIS lacing for specific reasons,
but today I went with reverse Italian.
Shimano specifies reverse Italian as the recommended lacing method, which also factored in.
I went with 6x6 lacing, but I deliberated on this.
The front hub's spoke dish isn't as pronounced as the rear,
so if I maximized asymmetrical different-count lacing,
I could even make the steeper spoke side (rotor side) lower tension.
Left and right being the same is fine, but I wanted to avoid reversing the relationship.
Building with 32H all competition spokes, there's 6x4 lacing, 8x4 lacing, 8x6 lacing, etc.—
I could test all of them to find what's closest to optimal,
but with 6x6 lacing, even accounting for the faint low-high flange asymmetry,
the rotor side will definitely have higher tension.
So I went with 6x6 lacing.
↑If you flip the front wheel left and right, wheel logic-wise it becomes
"rear wheel Italian lacing with the rotor mounting surface as a short freebody."
Because the dish amount is small, I'm hesitant about using large asymmetrical spoke counts.
Rear wheel is built too.
32H, all competition spokes, 4x8 JIS lacing.
I'll solder the crossing points, but haven't yet.
I want to change the tip on my soldering iron.
The rear hub is only very slightly high-low flange.
While building it didn't feel pronounced enough for me to think "yeah, this one's high-low,"
conversely, even slight low-high makes me go "argh, low-high flange, absolutely need asymmetrical lacing!",
so even a slight high-low is probably having an effect.
For information on Shimano disc brake hub lacing specifications (→here).
That linked wheel, after much deliberation too,
ended up with the same lacing method as today's build.
I do think it through each time, for what it's worth.