Our current incarnation has done lots of miles without problem. I've never had this problem in 39000 miles on my solo machine.
I made a suggestion to Robin Thorn when we attended the Cycle Show quite a few years ago about the lacing of the hubs. He pooh-poohed it at the time, but the third occasion that they fixed our back wheel they had incorporated my suggestion and, for good measure, added a reinforcing ring around the hub flange.
The above image is from the
official Rohloff handbook for lacing Rohloff hubs. Because of the large hub diameter, combined with Thorn's preference for 26" wheels, you can only lace the wheels 2-cross. That photo shows the bolt and the thick lump of aluminium which the bolt screws into. That recommended lacing method puts all the pressure from adjacent spokes onto the thin bit of CNC-machined flange and it looked to me as though that was the fatal weakness in the hubs. If the two adjacent spoked cross immediately above the bolt, a much thicker lump of hub shell is taking the strain of the spoke, and, of course, the mass of the rider(s). That was what Thorn did on the third occasion that we sent our wheel back to them and it seems to have worked.
