Spring Update:
On the bike-building business side of things that January through April is a massive sprint. Bike shows, lots of marketing, product launches, etc… You gotta make a lot of noise to get noticed. But we finally turned the corner through Spring and into summer.
Builds:
I finished up a rim Artefact Eterna for my friend AJ. She was the one who helped with the amazing graphic designs of Artefact
This build went much smoother than the first. I finally got the hang of working with titanium. Ti is much less forgiving than steel when cutting and forming. I also have a much better feel for “real world tolerance”. I realized all my clearance bodies in CAD are very conservative so I was able relax my expectations.
Nick welded it up:
EC37, rim brake, 3D printed Y-yoke
Designs:
Artefact DR30 Dropout:
I wanted to design a compact dropout for steel and titanium frames. The dropout I designed is 30mm in diameter with enough hoodspace for 22.2mm chainstays with 16mm seat stays.
I am also experimenting with titanium and 17-4 stainless hangers. The hanger shape is designed to be versatile. It can be used in 30mm, 38mm, 3D printed dropouts.
A sample run of 5 dropouts is in the works!
Here is the dropout in a road bike design:
Artefact Open Source (OS) UDH:
I am working on an “Open Source” frame project. More details coming soon! After much back and forth, I think the UDH Hanger is the best candidate to use for an open source frame. This is the dropout that I came up with:
It has a compound hood radius (38mm for CS, 51mm for SS). This allows the dropout to be more compact.
The way the hood is designed, you can have very large SS offsets to create space for CS mounted brakes:
The dropouts are nice and compact, but they still push the chainstays out an extra 3.5mm. On road and gravel bike this will lead to more heel rub, but for an Open Source design, it is more than enough.
Once the dropouts are tested (in a bike), I will release the CAD to everyone.
Random Thoughts:
Surface Modeling in Fusion360 is finally starting to click in my brain. I used it to model the tapered hood shape of my UDH design:
I found this video very helpful in understanding how and why to use surface modeling:
That video reminded me of the importance of sharing knowledge, so I have been working on some much better bike design and fusion360 tutorials. I have a “chainstay sub-assembly” video recorded and edited, but I know I can do better, so I am re-doing it.
Finally, here is a teaser for a bigger project we are working on at Neuhuas: