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A 5 spoke wheel does allow a smaller diameter hub pad area, which would then require longer spokes. Longer spoke needs to be thicker assuming the same attachment points. Fewer spokes need to be thicker than more spokes.
A 5 spoke will also have bigger gaps between spokes at rim. Those larger gaps mean the spoke attachment needs to be broader (more mass) and barrel isn't as well supported between spokes. Not to say you can't make a great wheel with 5 spokes, just pointing out that there is a technical reason you don't see more 4 and 5 spoke wheels in top level motorsports. Generally speaking, more spokes improves stiffness to weight and strength to weight ratios. 6 spokes or 6 pairs of spokes are our brand.
First batch will be 18x10 and 18x11. Currently no plans for 17x7 or 18x7.5. Not our market.
Coto, tou our surprise, has about the same high strength to weight ratio as 6UL. I thought it would be heavier. Different properties overall though, slightly stiffer in some areas and less stiff in other areas. Sanger is a tad heavier than either.
It was fun playing around with all the little fillets, chamfers, compound curvatures, tapers, pocket machining and seeing how they affected fatigue life and stiffness. The best part is that we can have an idea, make a little tweak to the design and run an FEA simulation very quickly now because it's all in house. Rapid iterations are king. For the 6UL, we replicated our 10% over VIA 15x10 6UL and saw that it had 2x the fatigue life required for the VIA test (100,000 cycles) even when loaded to 20% over VIA load. The new 6UL and Coto designs runs to 1 million cycles at 20% over VIA.
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