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kronin323
Font of Useless Knowledge
Yeah, it wasn't really manufacturing issues. It was cost. They took a lot of time and money to make, and eventually Lux shut it down.
The plant was located in Nevada, unlike the rest of their plants (before Lux started outsourcing) in Cali. I don't know if this is true or not but the story goes that one of the components in the Ti alloy had some special handling regs in Cali that were not in Nevada. The Nevada changed the regs to match Cali and it would have been too expensive to move the plant, so they shut it down.
Which brings up another point - x-metal was a special Ti alloy, not standard Ti.
And the x-metals were made via a casting process. I know the cases are CNC machined, not sure how they're making the links.
Yeah, Nevada wasnt too keen on letting them continue. kronin323
Font of Useless Knowledge
If machining frame components was more efficient / cost effective than casting, I'm sure they would have done that initially, instead of going through all the pain they had to in order to develop a method of casting Ti alloy into such small, thin pieces.
And they outsource their frame manufacture to China these days anyway; doubt the factories making sunglasses are set up for CNC already... kronin323
Font of Useless Knowledge
They're ok, as long as you just evaluate them for their own merits and don't get caught up in the revisionist marketing and compare them to "real" x-metals...
They were mismarketed. If they were $200 less, they wouldve been a wicked concept instead of a disappointment They really messed up with those spring hinges. A totally unnecessary failure risk when you factor in the flexibility already provided by the nose bridge. But they really are a bad ass frame set.Similar threads
