As someone who has never built a wheel but as someone who has spent hundreds of dollars getting a wheel trued only to have it go out of true a month later, I can understand this price.
It's easy to make (or buy) a shitty wheel, but if you commute on a bike, you need to invest in well built wheels
> As someone who has never built a wheel but as someone who has spent hundreds of dollars getting a wheel trued up
That sounds like you were ripped off. It isn't hard to do and it isn't hard to do right. It takes very little in terms of investment in tools (the most important thing is a stable stand so you can rotate the wheel, an old fork with a guide attached will do fine for this, and a $15 hardened spoke key).
An issue with wheels is that bringing them up to correct tension takes time, even if someone or something is guiding the process. If the wheel is going out of true, then it wasn't properly tensioned. In that case, a machine isn't going to motivate a shop to do a better job. Deming said: "Quality control is a management problem."
According to fairly widespread bike folklore (i.e., in the absence of real stats), machine built wheels tend to start out with insufficient tension. Correcting that one issue will result in a more stable and longer lasting wheel. I've seen this on two bikes in my family's fleet, both were new from bike shops, and of reputable brands. Our oldest bikes, with hand made wheels, have stayed put for decades.
Spokes can and do stretch differently over time due to manufacturing variance. Checking your wheel periodically by strumming the spokes can help identify spokes that have stretched unevenly compared to the rest. Typically you'll find the opposing spoke to also have lost some tension and probably one or two spokes earlier and later.
Spokes coming loose over time can be caused by lack of stress relieving. This is where there is some twist in the spoke due to friction between the nipple and rim. This is where handbuilt wheels have an advantage
To be a little more specific, you're conflating two things here.
1) Stress relieving is tensioning the spokes by grabbing pairs and squeezing them. This takes a elastic bending moment in the j-bend and over-stresses it into plastic deformation, permanently changing the shape of the spoke. When relaxed from the stress relieving, the spoke is bent differently, and the stress in the spoke is more uniform with less of a bending moment. (bending moments lead to a compressive stress on one side and tension on the other, superimposed over the tension of the spoke. If the compressive side of the spoke winds up with an actual stress reversal on every wheel revolution, it will start to crack and fail in O(1e6) cycles, or 2000km). Due to the overstress here, this also beds the spoke into the hub.
2) Windup comes from the spoke being a long torsional spring. There's friction between the spoke threads and the nipple, and if the threads aren't lubricated, the friction is enough to twist the spoke instead of tightening the thread. You'll still see some of this with thinner spokes and higher tension, but you can back off a bit on each adjustment and make sure that the spoke isn't twisted before going on. This windup causes the pinging when a new wheel is used for the first time, and each spoke is somewhat unloaded when it's at the bottom of the rotation. This reduces the friction in the threads, and the spoke springs back, changing it's total length.
Incidentally, the highest compression in the rim and highest tension ever in the spokes is in the stress relieving step of wheel building. This is where a super tensioned wheel will potato chip buckle if it's going to. Adding a tire and air pressure reduces the spoke tension. When riding, the bottom ~4ish spokes detension somewhat (depends on the spoke count, numbers are for old school 32ish/ 700c not terribly deep rims).
I wasn't conflating two things, it appears my stress relieval procedure has more steps than yours. For your part 2 (in addition to what you said for part 1) I also used to grab the wheel with one side against my belly, forarms across the rim edge, so elbows at 3 and 9 oclock and hands at 12. Then I would push my elbows down to get the pinging sound you described, and then rotate a quarter turn and repeat. Then turn over and do the same. When it stopped I would retrue the wheel and do it again. If you don't do this you get the pinging you described on your first ride and a therefore a wonky wheel.
I believe this is one of the important steps in making a wheel stay true and not need trueing after one ride. This is described better in the Art of Wheelbuilding if you want to try it.
Yes, as well as the spoke end becoming embedded, stretch and the spoke nipple becoming embedded (typically: harder spoke nipples vs aluminum wheels). So make sure when you get a new bike to check this after your first couple of rides and then again after 6 weeks or so when more subtle effects start to kick in.
What (specific) type of deformation are you seeing? Elastic deformation, plastic deformation, or creep?
Elastic deformation is not a time dependent property, and should be the regime in which the wheel is operating.
Plastic deformation is (also not time dependent) where you have gone beyond the yield point of the material, and have permanently changed the shape, even after unloading the part. All of the plastic deformation of wheel components should happen at build time.
Creep is when a constant load causes additional time dependent strain. There shouldn't be anything in a wheel that creeps, but it's possible that some plastics or epoxy/composites could creep.
I have to admit that my stress relieving method is pretty much ad hoc. I take the wheel off the stand a couple times and press the axle against the floor. I grab the spokes and squeeze. I pluck the spokes and listen.
Usually I put the wheel back on the stand after a week or two of riding. A really good builder shouldn't need to do this, but part of this whole exercise is to evaluate and improve my skills as I build more wheels. And I'm not building racing wheels, but trying to do the best possible job is part of the learning process.
I have never had these kind of problems with dtswiss spokes and nipples and quality rims. Handbuilding is so labour intensive why would you compromise on materials like this?
It's easy to make (or buy) a shitty wheel, but if you commute on a bike, you need to invest in well built wheels