Unrelated to the title, but
Today I did a rim swap on the Nomu Lab Wheel #5 with silver spokes on a PowerTap G3 hub.
Separately from that, I also fixed the rear wheel of the Nomu Lab Wheel #5 with black spokes on a G3 hub—I bent a spoke by jamming my shoe heel into it when I missed the pedal clip-in.
Anyway, putting that aside,
another day of wheel building (and so on).
I built a front wheel with the SMART ENVE AD35 rim.
The rim height is 35mm, but ENVE currently doesn't make a complete wheel that corresponds to this spec.
The current SES 3.4 Disc (from late 2017 onwards) has a front rim height of 38mm and rear rim height of 42mm,
which corresponds to the original SES 3.4 Disc's front rim alone—
the original had a front height of 35mm and rear height of 45mm.
The other differences are that
the original had a rim outer width of 26mm front and 24mm rear,
and the rims were non-tubeless compatible,
while the current (second generation) has a rim outer width of 27.5mm front and rear,
and they're tubeless-ready rims.
The current SES 3.4 has "new-ses-3-4/" in the model name part of the manufacturer's website domain,
but even removing "new-" won't get you to the old model's page.
Chris King R45D (R45 disc)
24H, semi-CX Sprint, 6-cross lacing.
I haven't done the spoke nipple seating yet.
It's tensioned to finished state and perfectly centered.
In other words, it's ready to use without issues.
You might ask why I built it 6-cross instead of 4-cross—it's because ENVE says "don't build it 3-cross," so I deliberately went against their instructions and built it that way.
On the rim side it says,
"Don't use with rim brakes" and "Build it 3-cross," but
since the "NOT FOR" seems to apply to both,
Prohibited uses (bullet points):
・Using with rim brakes
・Building it 3-cross
↑This is how I interpret it.
But after looking into it, I found English-speaking people who
interpret it as "suggesting that you should build it 3-cross"
(the person who posted this also bought one of the original SES 3.4 Disc rims).
The same warning appears on the outer circumference of the rim,
but since it's broken up by the rim holes,
the second half can read like "use 3-cross lacing,"
which is part of what makes this confusing.
On ENVE's manufacturer website, for each rim model they list
several hub options that ENVE recommends—
Chris King, DT, their own carbon hubs, and
for MTB, Industry Nine hubs—
and they provide spoke lengths for each build option.
For rim brake front wheels they list radial lacing spoke lengths,
and for everything else they list 2-cross (4-spoke pattern) spoke lengths.
But this doesn't mean "don't use any other lacing pattern."
On ENVE's site there's a page that discusses radial, 2-cross, and 3-cross lacing in detail,
and while it mentions that 3-cross is used in the SES 3.4 Disc,
both the original and current generation are actually built 2-cross.
There apparently used to be some 3-cross cyclocross wheels with 32 spokes,
but when I checked their current MTB complete wheels with 28H and 32H,
they were all 2-cross.
ENVE's in-house brand of phase-offset hubs—
when you build 2-cross with these, it becomes a pseudo-3-cross.
I found a description saying "ENVE calls this 'virtual 3-cross' and
the spoke angles are optimized, etc.," but
I couldn't find the term "virtual 3-cross" on ENVE's actual website.
This isn't ENVE's position, but
an American was pointing out that 24H 3-cross is problematic because
the J-bend spokes overlap the non-driveside flange holes.
This hub has large flanges so we avoid that issue,
but the 6-cross lacing I normally do on the non-driveside of Evo Lite hubs
has spokes that slightly overlap,
and changing those spokes requires a bit of technique.
However, I've never seen a spoke break caused by this,
so there's no real problem
(with 28H 8-cross lacing the overlap can be complete,
and I have seen J-bend spokes break at the overlap point).
So, since later models don't have warnings about 3-cross,
and ENVE's hubs themselves are essentially 3-cross anyway,
I deliberately built it 6-cross (3-cross on both sides).
Compared to ENVE's off-the-shelf wheels,
there's noticeably less distortion on the non-rotor mounting side,
but this is less about the difference between 4-cross and 6-cross lacing
and more due to the semi-CX Sprint (asymmetric lacing) pattern.
The CX Sprint spokes can be re-machined to 4-cross length,
so I'll rebuild it 4-cross as usual.
It's not just ENVE, but
wheel builds from rim manufacturers' in-house operations generally aren't done well.
There are way too many places that see no problem with
65% spoke mass-ratio aero spokes in 4-cross lacing.
ZIPP and Reynolds sometimes do asymmetric lacing, though.
Today I did a rim swap on the Nomu Lab Wheel #5 with silver spokes on a PowerTap G3 hub.
Separately from that, I also fixed the rear wheel of the Nomu Lab Wheel #5 with black spokes on a G3 hub—I bent a spoke by jamming my shoe heel into it when I missed the pedal clip-in.
Anyway, putting that aside,
another day of wheel building (and so on).
I built a front wheel with the SMART ENVE AD35 rim.
The rim height is 35mm, but ENVE currently doesn't make a complete wheel that corresponds to this spec.
The current SES 3.4 Disc (from late 2017 onwards) has a front rim height of 38mm and rear rim height of 42mm,
which corresponds to the original SES 3.4 Disc's front rim alone—
the original had a front height of 35mm and rear height of 45mm.
The other differences are that
the original had a rim outer width of 26mm front and 24mm rear,
and the rims were non-tubeless compatible,
while the current (second generation) has a rim outer width of 27.5mm front and rear,
and they're tubeless-ready rims.
The current SES 3.4 has "new-ses-3-4/" in the model name part of the manufacturer's website domain,
but even removing "new-" won't get you to the old model's page.
Chris King R45D (R45 disc)
24H, semi-CX Sprint, 6-cross lacing.
I haven't done the spoke nipple seating yet.
It's tensioned to finished state and perfectly centered.
In other words, it's ready to use without issues.
You might ask why I built it 6-cross instead of 4-cross—it's because ENVE says "don't build it 3-cross," so I deliberately went against their instructions and built it that way.
On the rim side it says,
"Don't use with rim brakes" and "Build it 3-cross," but
since the "NOT FOR" seems to apply to both,
Prohibited uses (bullet points):
・Using with rim brakes
・Building it 3-cross
↑This is how I interpret it.
But after looking into it, I found English-speaking people who
interpret it as "suggesting that you should build it 3-cross"
(the person who posted this also bought one of the original SES 3.4 Disc rims).
The same warning appears on the outer circumference of the rim,
but since it's broken up by the rim holes,
the second half can read like "use 3-cross lacing,"
which is part of what makes this confusing.
On ENVE's manufacturer website, for each rim model they list
several hub options that ENVE recommends—
Chris King, DT, their own carbon hubs, and
for MTB, Industry Nine hubs—
and they provide spoke lengths for each build option.
For rim brake front wheels they list radial lacing spoke lengths,
and for everything else they list 2-cross (4-spoke pattern) spoke lengths.
But this doesn't mean "don't use any other lacing pattern."
On ENVE's site there's a page that discusses radial, 2-cross, and 3-cross lacing in detail,
and while it mentions that 3-cross is used in the SES 3.4 Disc,
both the original and current generation are actually built 2-cross.
There apparently used to be some 3-cross cyclocross wheels with 32 spokes,
but when I checked their current MTB complete wheels with 28H and 32H,
they were all 2-cross.
ENVE's in-house brand of phase-offset hubs—
when you build 2-cross with these, it becomes a pseudo-3-cross.
I found a description saying "ENVE calls this 'virtual 3-cross' and
the spoke angles are optimized, etc.," but
I couldn't find the term "virtual 3-cross" on ENVE's actual website.
This isn't ENVE's position, but
an American was pointing out that 24H 3-cross is problematic because
the J-bend spokes overlap the non-driveside flange holes.
This hub has large flanges so we avoid that issue,
but the 6-cross lacing I normally do on the non-driveside of Evo Lite hubs
has spokes that slightly overlap,
and changing those spokes requires a bit of technique.
However, I've never seen a spoke break caused by this,
so there's no real problem
(with 28H 8-cross lacing the overlap can be complete,
and I have seen J-bend spokes break at the overlap point).
So, since later models don't have warnings about 3-cross,
and ENVE's hubs themselves are essentially 3-cross anyway,
I deliberately built it 6-cross (3-cross on both sides).
Compared to ENVE's off-the-shelf wheels,
there's noticeably less distortion on the non-rotor mounting side,
but this is less about the difference between 4-cross and 6-cross lacing
and more due to the semi-CX Sprint (asymmetric lacing) pattern.
The CX Sprint spokes can be re-machined to 4-cross length,
so I'll rebuild it 4-cross as usual.
It's not just ENVE, but
wheel builds from rim manufacturers' in-house operations generally aren't done well.
There are way too many places that see no problem with
65% spoke mass-ratio aero spokes in 4-cross lacing.
ZIPP and Reynolds sometimes do asymmetric lacing, though.