Hello and good day to you from episode 45 of our podcast series Project Breakaway. The metaphorical and literal time in the day when we here at Predator cycling take some time away from working in the back of the shop. To come and share with our listeners what we're doing, how we're doing it, what it takes to do it, our ideas, our innovative success stories and even our missteps and failures. If you find yourself with an interest in bicycles, composite manufacturing, out of the box design, or even curiosities beyond, I encourage you to stick with us. Settle in and learn a little. I'm Courtney B, co-owner and project manager at Predator cycling. And I'm here with my partner, Arm Goan, the other co-owner, CEO, lead designer and engineer and burrito buddy. Nice. How's it going? How's it going? I didn't have a lot to choose from this week and then I realized we've just been eating burritos mostly. Well, there's a Chipotle that just opened down the street, so like it's been kind of like a little burrito. Yeah. Yeah. Chipotle. And then Oscar's tacos. Oh yeah. We had Oscar's. Which I prefer, but it's just further away. It is, it's like an extra 10 minutes. There's not a lot of variety here in suburban Nashville for tacos and burritos. No, no, for tacos it's pretty. Yeah. Oscar's is pretty good though. I mean it's it's. I mean you can get El Pastor, so like I'm good. Yeah, so we haven't had Chipotle probably for like six years or so. And then they opened one. Yeah. I think I had it once at downtown like Nashville. I don't think I would get it other than that Chipotle lane. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's the game changer right there. Oh yeah, that's fast. Chipotle lane. It's super fast. I don't have to talk to anyone, I pull up, it dings. They hand me my food. Yeah, if you want Courtney's business, if she can have a non-social quick fast easy way to do it. Done. Well, that's what they were talking about on my news feed because apparently we share a news feed. And I get like robotics information. Well, that's because it's interesting. And they were talking about the first all robotic McDonald's drive through somewhere in Texas. Oh yeah, you were saying you talked about it. You either order online or you can go in and do a kiosk. But there's no people. Uh-huh. There's no cash register, there's nothing. There's just like a table where they get put your food out. If you go inside. But if you go in the drive through, literally it's a robot arm that like grabs your your bag and the robot arm comes out the window and gives you your food. That's crazy. Which is cool for me because you don't talk to anyone. But I mean like what if your food's wrong? Robot arms don't make mistakes. They should. Well, no, there's people making the food. Oh, I assume. I don't know, maybe there's robots helping with the food. I don't know. I'm not sure. Sounds pretty cool. Um, I I don't know. That's uh, I'm sure there's an app that tells you if there's a mistake and. A QR code and something and I I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either. Interesting. Anyway. Uh, but uh, yeah, I don't think I want a burrito today. I think I'm burrito out. Yeah. Okay. Noted. No burrito today. All right. So last week or two weeks ago. I can't remember. You were featured on the bike rumor podcast. Yeah. Where you were discussing carbon composites. And our uses, etc. Yeah, it was kind of a broad-ranging. I mean, I think it was about bars and then arrow bars and kind of how we use tack and a bunch of stuff. It was good, it was a fun podcast. Yeah. So from that podcast, we got hit up by a few people. Like with messages and questions, etc. Yeah, we did. So firstly, you got fan mail. Have you ever gotten fan mail before? No, I don't think I have. That's your first piece of fan mail. I don't think I actually have fans, but yes. That was the first. You get a lot of hate mail. I'm just kidding. Um, yeah, no, that was it was super nice. It was a, yeah, it was cool. So it came from like, I guess another composite, like small boutique bike manufacturer. Yeah. Um. So he's basically like relating his process and the design. And how there are people who do composite bike work. And then there are people who design for composite bike work. Yeah, and there's a big distinction. Because a lot of, I mean, a lot of manufacturers have over the years. Shipped out their composite work. And, you know, also when you're talking about smaller boutique brands, you know, we're allowed to not just look at methods. And methodologies that manufacturing facilities can pump out. We can actually look at new ways of how to make stuff that you couldn't do before. Um. So it's interesting, you know, it's like we. Have done a lot of work with like infusion molding, which in the composite industry is not used at all. Uh, we don't do it, I mean, at all is used. You said infusion molding. Infusion molding. So it's basically a process where you vacuum the part and then you basically suck the epoxy through. Oh yeah. That's difficult. It is difficult, it's tricky. But like, um, like we we've done like plates, like solid plate structures and stuff with it. Like panel stuff. Why isn't there just like one concise way. For the epoxy and the carbon to bond, like because you get your pre-preg. But then you have your dry and it's the way you introduce the epoxy. Why isn't there just one like formed way? That everyone does it. Like what structurally like what is the. The makes the carbon the hard, like, I don't know. The. Well, okay, so like. What makes it cook to the best, I guess. Yeah, it's a good question. It's a great question. I mean, and you know, it's the answer is the horrible answer. It depends. It's a depend thing. Um, because like, so like infusion molding works really well. Um, at getting it's it's it's a very good process. It works great for like car hoods. Um, flat large panel systems. Um, boat halls, almost every composite boat hall. That's how it's made. At least a high-end one is made like that. Not bikes. Um, bicycles can use it. It's actually a really good process for bicycles. The problem happens, you get into a couple issues. One with the epoxy systems themselves. Can be cold. costly and a little bit more difficult to use. Um, but also the problem that you get in is is now you have to pull the vacuum across. Like what's your substrate? You know? The original pilots that we did had um dissolvable core um systems with half metal, half soft uh tooling that was an infusion molding. Um, and there's a lot of reasons why it works well. It was a good process. It was just um it was just very time consuming, which is what, you know, stopped us from continuing down that path. Um, ironically, we use some of those processes that we came up with in that in our current lineup. But um, yeah, infusion molding definitely has a a purpose. Like for us, you know, something that we've I've debated about doing infusion molding is like our arm pads. Um, arm pads that we have, the cups for the aerobars. Mm. That's a process that's been a debate internally for me if I want to infusion mold those or not. Um, currently I'm we're not, we're doing them in pre-preg and and just wrapping them up, you know, doing it that way. But infusion molding may actually be a very applicable way to do that. Um, and some other small parts and stuff like that. Makes sense. Mhm. Um, pre-preg works a little bit better when you're doing more complex structures because you don't have to introduce the epoxy. The process. It seems like it folds or lays up better in Yeah, so like the pre-preg. smaller or tighter curves and stuff. Yeah. So like, I mean, well, yes. Yes, yes, for sure. So like, I mean, for those of you that don't know, like if you're using a dry carbon, um, you know, it it's it's like a piece of loosely knit cotton. I mean, it's very it's a fabric. Um, so it doesn't have much stickiness or adhesion to it. But it's also not like it's not like a shirt, like a shirt just drapes over the shapes. Yes. Yes. carbon fiber doesn't. I mean, there's still voids and like There's yeah. Yeah. For sure. It's more it's I mean, it's why I say it's like very loosely. But big threaded, I mean, you know, you have 2,000 threads. per stitch, you know, that's a lot of it's a lot of material. And and so it makes the stitch very large. Um, So in pre-preg, you have the epoxy is basically introduced correctly, the correct amount of epoxy is introduced to that carbon fiber. And then it's basically flash frozen and then frozen. And then delivered. So it has. Um, it's a little bit more rigid, but it has a little more tackiness to it. If you heat it up a little bit like a like a hair dryer or heat gun. You can contour the shapes really well. Um, Is that what the big boys do? So the big boys use that process. Mostly. Cuz it's faster. It's faster with unidirectional carbon fiber. And then they basically do them over inflated um um bladders, which are basically balloons. Latex balloons. And like a mold, a clam shell mold or whatever. Yeah. Or what they'll do is they'll take vinyl vinyl ester or nylon based bag material and then vacuum it over an EPS styrofoam core. And then they'll basically um stick it to that and then put it inside of a mold and inflate it. Um, and and they're mostly in leading at about 60 to like 100 PSI, plus you have the thermal expansion of air once it's, you know, pressurized, obviously, it expands additionally. But like you're not talking about a lot of compression. You're talking about 100 PSI. You know, in our processes, we're talking about 700, you know, 700 to 800 PSI range. Um, so the consolidation is much different, but. Um, and then anyways, you get down a rabbit hole pretty quick on on composite systems and layups and. So that's piece of mail, he was like mentioning how you mold in certain things for like net molding, so when you're bike, you're talking about how you don't have any like punctures on the frame itself because you are molding in the little metal pieces for. Yeah. I don't know, the bottle cage and all that stuff. I think I was talking about the bottle cages. Yeah, so like our the RF 20 does not have any puncture holes in the frame. Right. Um, there is a very, very little bit of post machining done that's basically trimming. Um, because there's there's like a couple. But it's not like going in with like I I don't know. Uh, yeah. I think like a drill and drilling a hole or like I don't know, your ears pierced, the little gun or something like you know, like shooting in the side of the bike. No, no, no. We don't puncture the holes. The only thing we do is in the dropout and one of the chain stays, uh, we we trim the end off. Anyway. Um, to make it shorter. Yeah, so this guy was like acknowledging like that type of uh. It's hard. Yeah. It's hard to do. Because like the big boys don't sit there with their little fingers and do that, right? Because they're trying to get more pieces out quickly. Well, also. They don't net mold. They don't, um. They don't net mold the part and they they basically just mold it and then they go and have a jig and they just drill out the holes and call it a day. Um, so this is one of the things that we did on the RF 20, we made it so there's no holes. Um, which is a big thing from a composite structural point, it makes a big difference. Um, to not have those penetrations and for the longevity of the frame. So, so he's kind of giving you a little bit props for like the ingenuity of like design work. It was good. It was cool. Like it's cool to see that people are like, oh yeah, you net molded it. Didn't put any holes in it. Like that's cool. That's, you know. That definitely is uh uh not easy. It's not it's not super, super hard, but it's not like it's not it's not easy. He was also touched it was kind of a lengthy email, he also touched on like um like pricing and how people don't realize the cost of creating these intricate little molding techniques. Oh yeah. And it's not just like, you know, the two little pieces slammed together and bam, there's a triangle, you know. Right. For sure, so then there's definitely a cost associated with what we're doing. And you know, it takes in. I mean, you know. Tyler kind of covered it, I mean, some of our development cycles. And some of these processes are very lengthy because. You know, especially for some of our products, we didn't we designed the part and then realized that the part can't be made. So now we had to figure out how to make it. Yeah. So, um. Yeah, it gets it gets lengthy. And there's a cost associated to that. So. For sure. Cool, so we got that. Um, mail. And then secondly, we got some messages like just acknowledging what we're doing because we're small and our reach is on the small side and. I think we focus a lot of our stuff in the tech industry and showcase our work on that side and in that arena. Um, but in the active cycling world, there's not a lot of outlets picking that up. So I think bike rumor podcast kind of like open that up to like more of like For sure. your actual just kind of like everyday cyclist. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we've kind of gone down the tech hole rabbit hole because to be honest, we we get a lot of reach out from them. So they reach out to us and partner with us on a lot of crazy projects and stuff that we're coming up with. Um, and you know, the honest truth is, I mean, that was one of the reasons why we came out, you know, when we moved from California to Tennessee was so that we could really focus on our manufacturing process and kind of the things that we thought were what was the most interesting and what was really going to, you know, put predator in a different position. Um, and so they've been big partners of us over the years. So, yeah, and it's good it's great for bike rumor to kind of just like, you know, talking about what we do and how that's applicable to our products and, you know, more in the bike scene. And plus I, you know, it was good. It wasn't it didn't we didn't go down to any technical rabbit holes. No, it's just kind of like a gateway type of information. If you want more, inquire. If not, have a great day. Yeah. Makes sense. Um, so, um, well that kind of segues into um, other messages. Which are always either curious messages with inquiries or people who are basically what I guess would be defined today as haters. But I'll just define them as uninformed. Yeah. No, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Maybe I see people just message you to let you know that your work is like. Yeah. Um, they, you know, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do this? I saw your picture. Why didn't you do this? So one question was about our fork system. On the RF 20. And why it's not arrow. So on the debut RF 20 that you we originally showed, there wasn't an arrow fork, but on the one he's sitting behind me in the office, there is one. So explain that. Uh, so when we first launched the RF 20, uh, we did not launch it with our own custom built fork. We built it with a stock off the shelf fork. Um, because it was just to be honest, it was a cost thing. Um, forks are not insanely expensive to produce, but they are expensive. We're a small company. So we didn't release a a um arrow specific road fork for it. But always with the intent that that was something we're going to do. Um, so we did at AU, if you were at AU and you got to see the bike in person, uh, that was our first time we showed off the new fork design. Mhm. And it just hasn't made it public. We haven't really shown it off much other than the bike here in the in the in the office. Um, I mean, we are a small team. It's it's difficult to get everything up and done and rolled out properly, you know, photographed and, you know, everything put up. So, um, and it's and it's an arrow fork. I mean, it's very arrow. But it's not a I mean, and that's the thing about the RF 20. The RF 20 is not built to be the most aerodynamical frame on the planet Earth. That's that wasn't its purpose, really. The purpose was that it was the best all-around road bike that we could produce. So aerodynamics is a considerate, it's a it's a consideration that we need to look at. I should put that on the website. You know how places have like best cup of coffee. I should put best all around, what did you say? Road bike. Road bike. That's what it's supposed to be. Like where we look at aerodynamics, we look at ride comfort, we look at stiffness, we look at power transfer, we look at ergonomics. We look at longevity. We look at construction. We look at tracking, we look at alignment, bearing alignment, load. Um, we're trying to look at all of those things and kind of thread that needle of saying like, look, we're, you know, we're we're trying to look at all of these things and make the correct assessments. You know, could we make the fork more arrow? Yes. Um, would it compromise the cross section of the tube? Yes. Would that mean that we lose a little bit of rigidity in the in the fork and not the torsional strength that we wanted? Yes. Um, is it an asymmetrical design that's pretty cool and designed around a disc brake and the function of disc brake? Yes. Um, so there's those fine lines that you have to kind of cross. And so we tried to thread that needle. Um, and at the end of the day, I kind of look at the RF 20 is somebody like myself who's, you know, I used to ride fast and whatnot. Now I barely ride a bike, but when I do, I want to just enjoy myself, ride a bike. Have fun. Descend as fast as I can descend and, you know, sprint for the little sprints and stuff. And enjoy myself on my bike. Um, and if I want to do a century, great. If I want to ride 10 miles to the coffee shop, great. Well, you wouldn't because we are best all around bike and best all around coffee here. If you like K egg pods. Yes, if you like K egg pods. We have some here. Um, anyways, but that's kind of my point. Like the RF 20 is really built to be an all-around road bike. Mhm. So, um, but it does it does have an arrow fork. It is custom built for us. Um, yeah. So. Um, okay, and then finally, we got a lot of inquiries from that podcast about the major red bars. Yes. Um, a lot of questions about measurements and sizing. Yep. Um, which are also not readily available. But they're not. And that's my bad. We did get a lot of messages emailed to us at info@predatorsycling.com. Yes. Um, and we can help you out. We can, um, talk about, you know, your best sizing. Sure. Yeah. And I we have the sizing. I mean, I have the sizing done. The problem with the road bars are is that because those tops are just a little funny, because they they point out. Um, I'm trying to like make a chart that makes the most sense. About what? How to basically take if I ride a, you know, 42, you know, width bar with, you know, 42 cm width bar with, uh, you know, 85 mm reach and 135 mm drop. You know, how is your bar relate to that measurement? Because those measurements don't directly relate to how our bar fits. Because the reach and the drop thing is a little funny because it's a one-piece bar stem system, right? Yes. And B, there's like a flare from the top of the drop to the bottom of the drop. Yes. That's why people are confused. That and also, if you look at the tops of our bars, they're not straight. They're they're pointed in the center and they kind of come out toward they come they come towards you as you get to the levers. Yeah, there's like a nose and then like a handle, a hand swoop. Yes, yes. So like because of that and because of the way we kind of designed the drops as well, it doesn't conform to these very traditional ways that we had to set our line of the tops. Yeah. We had a drop. So like I'm I'm I'm having a hard time quantifying some of those numbers and being able to like very present them in a way that says makes sense like, hey, if you're riding this spec, Yeah. This is the bar that's that spec. Um, so, anyways, that's what we're working on. I'm doing it. If you have a question, just shoot us an email. Um, Yeah. or if it's if we're on chat, I had to stop on chat, um, more than happy to answer your questions or help you or give us a call. Um, yeah, we can help you with sizing and whatnot. So, um, that was a big one. So. Cool. Yeah. Um, yeah, so I know you had a lot of fun talking about all that on bike rumor and it's a little different. Like I said, then from our normal, um, conversation, which is usually on the tech side. Yep. So speaking of that, you're being showcased again. Uh, in a live stream event hosted by Nvidia's Omniverse team to discuss our applications with Omniverse. Which we've talked about on our podcast quite a bit and you've talked also um on Nvidia's um channels quite a bit. But they're doing another one. Yeah, we've done some blog posts with them. And uh some GTC. So this one is specific to what now? What department? So this is part of their they have like a pretty good little social outreach that they do for Omniverse. It's mostly. Is it for like members or for customers or for anybody or what? I mean, they've really tried hard on Omniverse being this open source, open platform type environment. Um, so they have a Discord channel that anyone can join. It's the it's their their the thing's just Omniverse. And Discord is like a. It's like a forum chat place. Forum chat. Um, and they have live streams on there. So I think they have pretty much daily live streams. Every time I've gone on there, there's always something live. There's somebody's doing like some sort of live session. It's not like recorded. No. It's live, live. Live. And it's cool. Just. I mean, I follow it. I don't post much on it. I don't post anything on it actually. But I go on there to like when they do updates and set ups and new stuff, they have tutorials and little information and users talking about stuff. It's nice. It's a super cool. Um, place. And I've watched a couple of I don't watch the live streams live, I watch them recorded later. because they post on YouTube. I usually don't have time in the middle of the day. But um, it's super cool, like it's very informative. So you're invited. Yeah. Next week. It's cool. And you're. I'm excited. Just talking about how we're using Omniverse. Yeah, I think we're. mostly be talking about Omniverse and like how our workflows and Omniverse work and what tools we're using and stuff like that. Okay. I think it's kind of going to be the most of the discussion. Okay. But it should be I think it's supposed to be an hour. Um, yeah, and we'll be showcasing a bunch of the stuff and workflows that we're doing. Okay. So it should be fun. So that is Wednesday, January 18th at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, 1:00 p.m. Central, our time zone. And that'd be 11:00 a.m. Pacific. Yeah. And you can go to youtube.com/nvidiaomniverse. Or you said you can go to twitch.tv/nvidiaomniverse. I believe so. I've never done the Twitch. I haven't either. I've never used Twitch. I know friends that have done Twitch or used Twitch. I'm old. I guess, I guess we're old. Uh, yeah, I know. I've never used it. Um, but I know everyone talks about it. I thought it was for gaming. It's it's for live streaming. Twitch is all for live streaming. I know people just sit there and watch other people play game on Twitch. Yeah. Something I feel like our son will do eventually. He will, because he's like been watching all these YouTube shows of like watching people play Mario Brothers. Yeah, it's strange. I don't I'm like, why don't you want to Why don't you just play yourself? Yeah, I don't want to watch somebody else. I want to play it. Anyway. And then I'm sure they'll also have recordings of those both up after the live event. Yeah, I'm sure they will. And if you miss the actual live stream. Yep. Um, anything else before we wrap it up? I don't think so. Okay. I think that's Yeah, I mean there's a lot going on. But I mean, just it's kind of It's snowing. It's snowing outside. It is snowing. We got some snow. It's not sticking to the ground yet. Perfect burrito weather. I thought we were not doing burritos today. I don't know. Anyway. Things to mention. We're printing out more product um for Amazon. And if you are a bike retailer or a bike uh, I don't know, shop or online or anything. Yeah. Um, don't forget, we offer a wholesale option. Yep. Just go to our website, scroll to the bottom and click wholesale to start the application process. And get some bulk pricing options. Yeah, we have bulk pricing. And wholesale. Because uh, I mean, we want to support bike shops. And independent retailers. That's We used to be that. So, for sure. We used to be that. Well, we were a bike shop and we had a shop in Kenny. We had a shop in Santa Monica. How about deals? Uh, yeah, I mean, we used to deal with that all the time. Okay. Um, cool. Well, we thank you for choosing to take some time with us. And we look forward to future breakaways. Look for us on Instagram and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and in person here in Tennessee. We ask our listeners to please share, like and subscribe. We're available on all major streaming platforms. Thanks for listening, have a good one and find some time to break away.
EpisodeJan 13, 2023 · 23:47
← Podcast
Project Breakaway with Predator Cycling
45: Post BikeRumor Podcast Overview, EP. 045
Following Arm's appearance on the BikeRumor podcast, co-hosts Courtney B and Arm Goan dive into listener questions about carbon composite manufacturing. They explore the distinctions between infusion molding and pre-preg methods, discussing their unique applications and challenges in crafting high-performance bike components.
Loading player…