11: Design Intelligently to Prevent Repair, Ep. 11

Hello, and professional or bigger carbon repair services across the country. Yeah, there's just a handful. Um, probably like four or five. Not even there's three like three. Three or 10 years ago. I don't know about now. Three. Two three. And they all seem to be on the West Coast. ish. Okay. Um, so we even sponsored a team back in 2013 2014. I think it was actually Team Carbon Repair. Yeah, it was uh, um, yeah, I got the kit sitting up here. Um, yeah, it was uh, team that was uh, raced on entirely repaired carbon frames. Right. Um, and what's what league was it? Was it like Uh, it was an elite team. It was a US elite team. Okay. So we did really well. We actually one of the few teams that we were actually at the time United Healthcare was the biggest team in North America and we were the I believe the only team that year to to beat them in a sprint. Um, so yeah, we had a really good team. We had some really really good racers that raced on it. It was pretty awesome team. That was fun. It was a lot of work though because the whole point of that team was we got broken damaged frames that others would deem useless or in trash. And to promote our business and our services we were like, hey, let's take like 30 of these broken frames, put them back together, paint them, and we're Team Carbon Repair. Like great idea. Yeah, it was the concept was super cool. Um, it was just very hard to not only do all the repairs, but then you know, formally run a team. Yes, no, it was definitely a lot. But uh, it was a cool it was a very cool year. Um, Mhm. So we stopped offering these services, the carbon repair services in 2019 after our move from California to Nashville. Yep. Why? Um, well, one of the big thing I mean, carbon repair is a process that takes a lot of time to do and do correctly. And we started getting to the point where we were taking on we we definitely wanted to move in the direction of a lot of the tech that we were working on, a lot of the new products and concepts and we just to be honest just did not have the bandwidth to do repairs and on top of that all of what the projects we're working on and and to be honest the problem with repairs are is that it's a very um, surgey business. Like you'll all of a sudden get a bunch of work and you have to like get on top of it. Before the season starts. Before the season even during the season. Um, and then you have like huge dead sections where you have no business and it's just really hard to build your business around it. Mhm. Especially when you're trying to not just do repairs and you want to do like products and product development. It just It's hard. We had to decide Yeah, we had to make a decision at that point on what we wanted to pursue. Um, and uh, yeah, we decided that that we wanted to go down the product way and a lot of the tech and a lot of the software and stuff we were working on it just that was the direction that made the most sense to our business. And we still get hit up for repairs uh, nationally and locally. Um, but so we do still offer local repairs. And let me explain before we get surge of local Nashville repairs. We we do fit them into our schedule as a neighborhood courtesy of good faith. Um, but we don't abide by any concrete turnaround times and we don't take on intensive jobs um, basically just because of our own time and um, our own schedule and we want to focus on our own products. But um, the whole point of this podcast was basically um, to talk about a few repairs that we actually do have in the shop right now that we're fitting in between our 3D printing times. Yeah. So, um, one frame that we have in is has a water bottle uh, cage damage. Yep. So, explain what the damage is. So, um, the water bottle cage is attached to the frame using what's called a rivnut, which is essentially just an aluminum rivet that's pancake around the carbon and compresses and holds in. It's essentially how almost every single bottle cage is mounted on any bike in the industry. Um, and that um, bottle cage was under a lot of load and there's a loaded you know, full water bottle in it and it's getting knocked around and hit and um, the bottle got hit and it eventually ripped the um, rivnut out of the frame. Mhm. And so, now there's these basically big old holes in the seat tube that need to be repaired and fixed and then we need new um, rivnuts need to be put in. And this is actually pretty common especially when you get into ultra lightweight frames. This is the most common in really high-end really low lightweight bikes. Mhm. Um, and it's something that we've kind of touched upon in previous podcasts when we talked about the RF20 and that balancing act between ultra lightweight and like functional weight kind of concepts and um, it's something that we really tackled on the RF20 and you know, the there's there's nothing wrong with the bike. I mean, it's it's a very well made bike. It's done well. Um, they just cut they tried to cut the weight out of every thing they could to get that gram weight down and in the process you have to remove material. So, this particular bike it looks really cool. It's it's super cool. It's just too light it's too light. Yeah, and I mean the the word too light is that's it's that's like kind of a loaded term too because it's like you know, you want to make the bike light where do you take the weight from? There has to be a function to the bike at some point. Yes, there there definitely does. Why don't we chase a a weight we need type of measurement when we design our frames? Well, because we come from an app I mean, our roots are in racing bikes. That's where we come from is is straight race bikes and then um, over the years we started going into carbon repair um, and so we have that background always and so, you know, we come around this concept especially with the RF20 is is around function. Um, so we added about I think it's about 36 grams of carbon fiber um, in order to mount our water bottle cage Mhm. um, rivnuts correctly and more I say correctly uh, reinforce. Reinforce. So, And side note, I don't think that I mean, we're we're talking about a water bottle cage specifically but we do see other aspects over 10 years of damage 10 years of working on damaged frames we've we have other reinforced areas on the bike that we know are Well, and points of impact. And I I guess this so, yes, so our our RF20 has extra weight added to it um, to reinforce the rivnuts but not only is it reinforcing the actual mounting location of a rivnut, we actually mold in our rivnut locations and holes for carbon fiber around the rivnuts. Like it's actually molded into the bike. So, it it's a whole process in which we did so that we could actually make a super strong joint to mount the water bottle cage. Mhm. Um, now we also we've been talking a lot about simulation and chasing you know, material removal and correctly removing material and this is one of the I don't want to say downfalls but one of the limitations on chasing just off simulation data. Um, simulation data will typically I mean, most people don't actually simulate water bottle cages on the bike and side load hitting a water bottle inside a carbon frame with a carbon structure. I mean, most people won't simulate that. I mean, to be honest I haven't even run a simulation on that um, exact scenario because there's so many possibilities of impact. Too many scenarios. Right. So, I But, because of our 10 years experience with carbon repair that is something that we take in consideration. So, there's this idea of and I think that's what I on I've had a hard time explaining it sometimes. The RF20 is this balancing act of yes, we use the most sophisticated simulation tools, hardware to simulate and optimize the fiber orientation and thicknesses and weight but also added you know, 10 plus years of composite repair and composite work um, in the industry to know hey, your rivnuts need to be reinforced and you need to actually designed for these low loads and accidents and things that happened in real world usage. Um Oops, someone did not silence their phone. I did. No, you didn't. It No, it silenced. Just didn't silence. Anyway, um So, yeah. I've seen this but I mean, I'm not I still don't understand how you pull a bottle if you hit a bike. If you have a a bottle, a water bottle that's fully You rip it out too hard? No, if you hit it from the side. Hit it with what? Anything, your leg, your foot, a branch from anywhere. I mean, anything hits it. That's some hardcore riding. It's not I mean, it happens. That stuff happens or you you know, that kind of thing is like you got to remember a a water bottle. It's you're talking about anywhere from 6 to 15 Newton meters of force that can actually apply load to that. And you're only talking about a 16th of an inch around the rivnut that's actually holding it on. Right. And that's all that's holding it. So like in our case, anyway, I'm not going to get too much into our stuff, but we have a axial load that distributes it. So we have approximately 50 times the surface area on our rivnut mounting to frame than We've reinforced our our 20 uh Have you taken into consideration the bottle cage that we're designing currently? So the the the bike was simulated I the simulation that I did was with our bottle cage. Um so And the more interesting thing about our bottle cage is that we have more um uh It has a It has very high tensile load but it also has um it it has some flexibility to it. So it actually helps disperse the load if you did hit it. Um it would increase the impact time and you decrease the load on the on the rivnut. So it would survive better than most cages. Mm. Um So, yeah. That's what we've been simulating on has been on our cages. Okay. But Yeah. Anyway. So yeah, that's one of the things that we have been talking about a lot and that's kind of goes back to this idea of simulating but also you have to simulate but also you have to understand real world conditions and you're not going to simulate for every single possible scenario. It's It's there's too many scenarios especially when it comes to accidents and use cases um and component stacked on top of components because if you really want to simulate things correctly, you'd have to simulate you know, 50, 60, 100 different cages, different bottles, different weights. I mean, it just gets into this you know, you're not going to actually do it. So Okay. Let's talk about our other repairs. So yeah, there's Oh. You have more? No, no, no, no, no. You have more? I I always have more. All right. Um our other two repairs um both the same brand frame Yeah. Um both have the same problem. Yes. Um it's a uh bottom bracket threaded cup issue. Explain. Yes. So this is a very common issue in composite frames um and So let's just back up just one step and we'll talk about threaded a threaded bottom bracket. And so um this is a very debated issue in the bike industry. You basically have two standards that are out there. You have a threaded bottom bracket and you have a pressed bottom bracket. Um side note, this is the piece that the The cranks and the pedals go in. So this is the center of the bike. So it's where your cranks are rotating around. Now, here's my take on this. It there there really isn't two types of bottom brackets. Um a threaded bottom bracket is a pressed in bottom bracket because the bearing is pressed in to an aluminum cup that's then threaded into your frame. Um a pressed in bottom bracket is usually defined as a as a bearing that's pressed into a cup that's then pressed into the frame. So you're really just kind of splitting hairs on how these things connect. Now, in this particular case, we have a aluminum threaded sleeve that is glued into the carbon frame. And what happened is is that sleeve has come loose from the frame. Mhm. Now, this is really common especially on older composite frames because of how they mounted it was not the best system on the world. This is not that bad of a way of doing it. It's just it broke loose. Um and one of the issues is is because the bike wasn't really designed for a a bottom bracket shell to be glued in place. Like it just wasn't really designed. It It's obviously somewhat of an afterthought. Mhm. Um Because there's no easy way for you to get in there basically to There's no easy way to get in there. There's also not that much material used I mean, there's not that much material to build up on to to fix it. Um So they basically put kind of like a sleeve within a sleeve to do it and there's not that much mounting area. And so that epoxy broke loose is what happened. So basically this bottom bracket is just kind of jiggling in there. It's jiggling in there. So when you ride it It's rocking and it's creaking and it's making noise and your crank is actually moving side to side. So it's it's not good. So I mean, we're able to kind of get a a temporary fix in there. But This is one of the things that we've been working on again. This come comes back to the RF 20 and kind of what we've learned from these types of repairs and how we designed our bike around it. So, one of the things that on the RF 20 that we did is we designed the bottom bracket area to encompass the bearings. So, it basically holds the bearings in place around the carbon structure. So, even if the epoxy that holds our inner shell somehow, which would be almost impossible, broke loose, if that did happen, the shell is actually mechanically held in place inside the frame. So, I mean, you could get some very slight creaking. I mean, it would be possible, but the shell could not move because it's mechanically locked in there. Um, and the loads of the bearing and the forces of pedaling are actually are are being dispersed directly into the carbon fiber instead of having a cup that's twisting and loading and then flexing and then that's being um locked in by one side into preventing it from moving into the carbon frame. We're actually spreading that load from the bearing directly into the carbon because of the way we've molded that bottom bracket area. Mhm. And this gets back into my point of like our bottom bracket shell is is a single piece aluminum shell that's been coated and then glued in place and bonded into the frame and then the bearings press in and because of that system, there's there's less um there's far less fail points that can occur and we get a better connection and it's also something that's actually serviceable. Right. We actually remove our shell. We tried to make our parts serviceable. We've tried to make the entire bike so completely serviceable. Our bottom bracket is not just like a stock bottom bracket. We have designed we we we designed the bottom bracket for our designed RF 20. Yes. So, so It's a complete system. And so we don't have these afterthoughts of like threading in a bottom bracket into a cage and system. So, we get we eliminate those creaks, all those creak potentials and fail points we kind of just one by one eliminate them. Um, and anyways, so there's a there's a big topic and I know we've touched on it before, but this concept of of um designing the bike for what it does and not really designing the part around components or like standards is something that we just kind of tried to eliminate Mhm. So, that's one of the things on the bottom bracket that we really focused on and how we address this issue that happens more often than you think. Mhm. Um, And you can check out the bottom bracket simulation on the RF 20 webpage. Yeah, I got a cutaway for it. To get a better look at it. Yeah. There's on the on the on the bike page, there's a cutaway of the bottom bracket and shell system so you can kind of see how it all works mhm and how it's encompassed. Um, so basically we just wanted to talk about the repairs that we currently have and basically to explain and discuss our experience with an array of repairs over 10 years. We've really taken into consideration um the possible damage that can happen and we incorporated that into our own designs for our 20 and future frames. Yep. Um, is there anything else we want to talk about before we wrap it up? Oh, I did want to just say though we do not offer DIY or repairs, we do offer a DIY repair kit We do. For small and medium cracks for you to do at home. Yeah. Because if I can do it, you can do it. Uh, yeah. And it it is intended for small like hairline fracture type impacts and when you know where the impact came from. Um, so And a lot of people just I mean, when they find out the cost of a professional carbon repair and on top of that if they want finish work and paint work, they're like, "Oh my god." Yeah. And you know, people are you know, conscious in today's world about spending their money. So, For sure. For a hundred bucks, you can do it at home and Yep. small crack, it's not too hard to do. No. So, And if you have questions about repair kits or whatnot or damages, you can always just email us. Oh, yeah. Um, if you have questions or if Uh, we yeah, we have a lot of people that send in just take photos and attach them to their emails and ask if it is a viable option for the DIY kit and we let you know. Yep. And we also have a lot of people that do it for non-bike parts. Yeah. Camera rigs, fishing poles, Drones. Drones. Canoes. Canoes. I've had some automotive body panels and stuff that were fixed with the kit. So, there's a lot of applications. Okay. So, in recent news, our Nvidia and Lenovo customer story is making the rounds online. They've also released a one-minute version of the piece, which doesn't feature me. That's probably for the best. And there's a print page that's also being released here soon. I'm not sure where. Uh, I think it's in Lenovo's uh Newsletter. It's in there. uh their like customer workstation documentation. I would love to get on a plane and see myself in a magazine. Do you think that's going to happen? I do. Um we're also Why wouldn't it happen? I don't know. We're also working diligently on releasing a new water bottle cage Yep. Uh that I mentioned earlier and we're also fine tuning the 3D print of our bicycle cleat angle adapters. Yep. Um both stock sizes and custom options will be available. You are working on the custom builder right now. Yeah. I just finished the builder and Pretty cool. We printed some uh test parts yesterday. We did. We've been printing like crazy. We did. We're just getting our uh coating system dialed in so uh we can increase the lifespan of the part Mhm. And then we should be ready to release it. Yep. So look for those soon on our website. Yep. Um 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.