Have you ever wondered how a BMX fork is tested? Anyone who has been riding BMX long enough knows that Odyssey have upheld a reputation of having some amazing forks thanks to their quality and the 41-Thermal heat-treating process they use. This video above gives us a little look into the testing that they do to ensure they are producing the best forks that they can. The video gives you a brief look at how an Odyssey BMX fork is tested in a lab. This doesn’t necessarily apply to other BMX forks, but it’s how they get it done to ensure they are doing it right.
“As part of our mission to make the best BMX forks possible, we continue to refine the 41-Thermal® process at all stages of manufacturing. Each step in the process is held under strict scrutiny, and we continue to examine the strength and fatigue testing methods used to evaluate our designs.
STAMPY TEST GOES ABOVE AND BEYOND THE INDUSTRY STANDARD:
– Much higher load than industry standard EN tests
– Load is applied in the correct direction
– Proper mounting rig to replicate real world use
– Test doesn’t stop until the fork fails
In the previous round of Stampy fork tests we blew the industry standard EN tests for bicycle forks out of the water, and yet we still couldn’t break our own fork. In fact, we had to give up after running the fork for 2,000,000 cycles and with the machine operating at its ultimate limit.
So, in order to push the tests and our forks even harder we created an updated rig design that would let us supply much more force than the last time around. With this test we doubled up the cylinders that are applying the load and ramped the force up by 25%, going from 4000 Newtons to 5000 Newtons. That’s just over half a ton! (1124 lbf per cycle). Even so, at half a million cycles we started to wonder how long our forks were going to last, and since our competitor’s forks had already been taken to failure, we decided to ramp up the load on our forks to 6000 Newtons (1349 lbf), 50% higher than the previous tests, and after over 650,000 cycles, we were finally able to break them.
It is important to note that the 41-Thermal forks not only outperformed every other model that we tested by a huge margin, but that they did so while being lighter than most of the other forks too. This is direct evidence that proper design, engineering and manufacturing are much more important factors than simply always making the part heavier in hopes of making it stronger.
UNMATCHED AND LEGENDARY LIFETIME WARRANTY:
– Best in class replacement program
– Warranty against bending, cracking, and breaking
– No fine print to limit coverage to basic manufacturing defects
When you see how hard we push to make the best forks; to make them better and better every chance we get, it is easy to understand why our legendary lifetime warranty against bending and breaking is still around 20 years after we first introduced it. And when you see the contrast between our forks and our competitors you can also quickly see why most of their warranties have long since been quietly canceled or modified with complicated terms and conditions that usually limit the warranty to manufacturing defects alone.
Feel free to contact us at stampy@odysseybmx.com with any questions you may have.” – Odyssey
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