Originally Posted by
Dee Hubbs
Yes, It allows them to use an industry standard (I mean industrial bearing standard, not a fawking bike standard) off the shelf bearing manufactured to high standards and tolerances based off of the load vs bearing size to increase wear and life.
Where as the RaceFace 30mm axle crammed into a 41mm hole has to use a specially spec'd and limited run production bearing that uses undersized balls for the load that it is expected to carry.
When the 30mm axle was designed, the engineers/product managers never imagined that people would try to jam a 30mm axle into a 41mm bottom bracket shell, and it wasn't until Race Face (who bough Easton (who had the carbon fiber crank technology) who was then bough by Fox) decided to go to 30mm axles across their whole line (to reduce SKU's). They engineered and made the 30mm to 41mm BB readily available, and solved the BB shell width issue by making the cinch system connection on both arms allowing for swiping out different axle lengths.