On Fri, 23 Jan 2015 12:58:10 -0500, Ed Huntress wrote:

On Fri, 23 Jan 2015 11:49:40 -0600, Tim Wescott
wrote:

On Fri, 23 Jan 2015 07:49:51 -0800, Larry Jaques wrote:

On Thu, 22 Jan 2015 22:19:35 -0600, Tim Wescott
wrote:

On Thu, 22 Jan 2015 23:36:24 +0000, John Doe wrote:

Anybody do the research? I will look around. I guess "elastomer" is
another name for plastic. Generally speaking... Is it durable as
steel for Springs?
I'm thinking about the elastomer springs on a bicycle seat/saddle.
They might require less rigid structure than steel springs, so maybe
there's less chance of them breaking off of the saddle.

"Elastomer" is High Falutin for rubber, urethane, etc.

AFAIK there's a lot of opportunity to make things better as well as a
lot of opportunity to screw things up -- there's a huge range of
available materials, they'll be more likely than steel to not age
well,
and you'll need to select one that withstands the elements.

But, having said all that -- who knows, it may work great.

Or not. I was curious and googledit.
http://dirtmountainbike.com/features...mountain-bike-
products-
ever.html/4#iAPD8PXaJPcHMKVW.97

That would come under my "opportunity to screw things up". Just tossing
a hunk of randomly-cut, randomly-chosen rubbery plastic in between a
couple of pieces of steel is probably not going to lead to joy.

Anything that _does_ work is probably going to require a lot of trial
and error, and careful testing after you've perfected the product to
make sure that you haven't just trained your butt to like what you've
made, instead of making a seat that everyone else's butt will like.

(What serious rider actually puts weight on a bicycle seat? If you're
sitting on the damned seat you're not riding the bike as fast as humanly
possible. You can't pedal hard with your butt on the seat, on the
downhill you can't stand on the pedals to minimize the unsprung weight
of the assembly with your butt on the seat -- the seat is just there to
stick between your thighs and help you control the bike, for god's
sake!)

Ok, but bicycle tourists do spend rest time with their weight on the
seat.

Or we did. I rode the AYH Century (100 miles in 24 hours) at age 16,
and I spent plenty of time with my weight back on the seat on that trip.

I carefully constructed my definition such that any counter-argument does
not refer -- by definition -- to serious riders.

I think a little time spent searching on something about lifetime
cycling of elastomers would produce the answers one needs. Some of them
are formulated for very long lifetimes.

That's part of it (and one shouldn't ignore lifetime cycling of steel,
since that's an issue with springs). Performance over temperature and
resistance to damage from minor accidents are two other things I can
think of.

--
www.wescottdesign.com