From a previous blog, but pertinent here:
Little known fact, we offer the only commercially available wheelset upgrade for the Slate right now (I keep checking, feel free to link me to a competitor). Our carbon wheelset is based on our hookless MTB racing rim paired to Project 321 Lefty hubs, Shimano 11 or XD driver at your choice. The wheelset weight is about 1400 grams, a very very significant weight savings over the stock wheels and not something you can get anywhere else, even at your Cannondale dealer (to my knowledge, please let me know if this is not the case).
Speaking of Cannondale, we also build wheels for their asymmetric chainstay bikes, Cannondale Asymmetric Integration (AI), which is Cannondale-speak for SCS. And we know a thing or two about SCS, so we may as well help out those of you with Cannondales as well, right? If you need Lefty or AI wheels, just let us know. We have AI and Boost AI as an axle option right on the wheel configuration section of the applicable wheelsets. We even made up some custom tooling to ensure a precise, repeatable offset when building.
Quick note on AI - some folks will tell you its not a big deal and you can just re-dish a stock wheel over the 6mm needed. Ok, yes, in our experience there is enough spoke on the drive side to make this happen but that is a long way to re-dish over a wheel.
A spoke has 9mm of thread on it. Any good builder will size the spoke length to come up flush with the bottom of the slot in the head of the nipple (or maybe flush with the top of the head). Most carbon rims use a 14mm nipple. That is total length of the nipple. The slot in the head is about 1mm deep. That leaves 13mm of nipple. The threads start about 4mm up into the wrench flats on a Sapim. That leaves 9mm of working thread. Precisely what you need for the 9mm of threads on the spoke. It's almost like these things were designed to work together as a system. Crazy, I know. Darn engineers, always thinking of stuff!
Spokes are 56TPI, there are about 20 full revolutions of nipple to engage the full 9mm of threads. Precisely, its 2.2 threads per mm (one thread equals one full revolution... think about it). The slot in the head is about 2.5 revolutions of the spoke, and the should of the nipple is about another 2.5 revolutions. You have about 2.5mm of spoke reinforcing the head of the nipple and providing the strength holding the wheel together. There 9mm of threads engaged in the nipple, which is very strong. The head is your failure point well before the threads could pull out of the body of the nipple. If the head is not reinforced by being filled with spoke, you are asking for trouble. This is the same reason I don't like to use an alloy nipple in an old style rim with eyelets. The outer flange of the head of the spoke is holding the wheel together and is much less supported than in a drilled rim. Different, but similar scenario.
Asymetrical Integration design is going to change the spoke length required to do this right. On a CX bike or endurance bike like the SuperX and the Synapse, or on a hard tail race MTB like the Scalpel-Si and the F-Si, I think you want to do this right.
We will build you up a sweet set of wheels ready to go out of the box for your Cannondale with the right parts in any color you want and the expectation of many years of trouble free use backed by our great rim replacement plan.