Vallie Components - bicycle part and accessory design

I feel like this post is some kind of development plan meeting. The kind you have in the office world. The sort where you sit down with your manager, and proceed to explain all the things you've done in the past half a year.

After some seriously LENGTHY delays, DMT is back on the case. With his lathe up and running, we were able to turn out a bunch of front and rear shells. The hubs have had the bolt mounting holes, and lightening pockets milled, are currently being drilled for spoke holes on the CNC mill. I'm pretty relieved to see them actually looking like bicycle hubs. Check out the video of the CNC in action:

 

And what they look like with half the spoke holes cut:

Right now we're expecting my 7075 to arrive this week. Then the axles and cones go on the lathe. Dennis also has an absolute PRO CNC tooling trick up his sleeve for the spoke hole chamferring. I can't wait to see how they turn out.

Also, with some help from the key people in my life, I recently did an experiement to determine the failure modes of the stainless bolts I intend to use on the Street Fixed hub. The results were pretty interesting. I've uploaded a PDF to the site if you want to check it out.

Basically to make a long story short, we found that the Stainless torx bolts sourced from Acument in Germany are more than sufficient for Vallie components Street Fixed hubs. Soon I'll do another experiment to determine minimum torque spec for the hub's user guide.

Be sure to check out Project-B's flickr stream for the rest of the experiment (and some rad mountainbiking) photos.

I've also been busy setting up a bike related fabrication shop. My most recent challenge was making a bike rack to mount on a Honda Ruckus scooter. I'm currently making the required jigs to start making porteur style racks for the local cycling community.

Thats about it for now. Sorry I don't have a release date yet for the hubs. Honestly, I know the market is moving in all directions around me, but at this point I'm just glad to see that my design is still a possibility.

Lots to do!

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On Monday I took a quick trip down to the USA to pick up some of the hardware I'll need. The whole importing commercial goods thing was easier than I thought it would be.  I've now got a big box of 6902 bearings from Wheels Manufacturing, and some nice stainless German Torx+ bolts from Acument in stock. The bearings are ultra smooth, and the bolts look super classy.

The stainless M8 and M10 axle hardware is on its way as well, but those bolts are being custom made back East, so there's a few weeks lead time left.

I had ordered the bearings and the Torx bolts so early on because I knew I'd need them for testing. I will be pressing these bearings into some anodized sample pucks to ensure the proper fit. I'll also be doing destructive testing on the bolts to determine the max acceptable torque. Just some of the fun things I get to engineer along the way I suppose =]

In machining news, I dropped in on Dennis recently, and the chips are indeed flying. All of the hub blanks have been end milled so they're square, and now they're ready for the lathe. Here you can see one sitting in a nice 3" round clamp on the mill table:

Spring is here and the chips are flying! I can't wait to have these things rolling this summer!

I was looking into other fixed freestyle hubs lately, and found these. It looks like they've got a similar collar as mine, and take 6902 bearings as well. Now, I'm not going to say I invented the fixed freestyle hub, but I'm pretty sure my prototypes caught enough attention that they might have inspired other people to make similar stuff. I guess the main difference here with mine is the ISO mounted cogs, solid flanges, and that mine are being machined in North America. I'm stoked that All City is putting these out really. The bolts are reminiscent of Odyssey BMX hardwware too.

I'm going to wrap this post up with a really interesting link. Its got nothing to do with hubs, but EVERYTHING to do with what's right about bikes. I don't read Swedish, so you don't have to either.. but have a scroll through this thread. It appears that this fellow is making his own porteur bike FROM SCRATCH. I love his rear end alignment jig, wheel truing stand, and general level of creativity. Truly inspiring!

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Yesterday I was able to pick up my 3" 6061 bar stock from a company out in Coquitlam. I swear, the guy working there was a fork lift SURGEON. Dude pivoted, pirouetted, and quad axled the 12' long package into the back of my creepy white van. It was like he was playing the game operation. Impressed. The stuff is super heavy when its all bundled together.

Anways, when I arrived at DMT we cut the strapping and unloaded the bar stock one at a time into his yard. Then we brought his band saw outside in order to do the rough cutting:

It looks kind of janky with the milk crate in there, but he's got it shimmed to be level on the saw, in order to waste the minimum amount of aluminum. Its a lot easier to lift and work with 6' lengths than double that.

Anyways, I left him to cut up my shell blanks.

Soon I'll be picking up my 7075, which is on its way in from Portland. I've also got bearings and bolts coming up from the USA, but I have to import those myself. Anyone ever filled out a B3-3 form?

 

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The photos are pouring in and right now I feel like the only one who didn't attend NAHBS. Its alright though, I'm still getting things sorted.

This past week I visited Altech Anodizing to check out their shop. Their GM, Ed Bryant showed me around and explained their processes to me. I was pretty stoked to see a company be so up front about how they go about business. They're ISO 9000:2008 certified, and it makes sense. They are running Race Face parts all day long, and if they didn't have strict process control, then they could end up with different looking parts from day to day. They've got it down to a science, and can do pretty much any colour of the visible light spectrum. I'm not going that far though. Just a simple electropolishing, anodizing, then laser etching. Like so:

The laser etching is the only tricky part, as their laser shoots on a single axis.. so complex wraps (as some Raceface cranks have) take multiple setups, and accurate fixtures. We ended up talking about all sorts of different manufacturing issues, and I walked out of there with a good feeling. I'm really looking forward do doing business with them.

Stepping back a few steps, I've been finalizing things with DMT for the machining of my parts. Before I know it, I'll have my creepy white van full of 12' bar stock! At our last meeting I just realized I didn't have any markings on my cogs! That just won't do. So I guess I have a choice of fonts based on what cutter the mill runs. I'll probably go with a very simple Arial type done with a ball cutter. Its not a huge deal either way, but its just funny how I've got all these little choices to deal with.

Anyways, here's the production hub set profile:

 

 

The new rear collars are flared a bit, with wrench flats to ease removal after they've been abused. Since the fronts don't have room for wrench flats, they'll have pin spanner holes, so you can break them free, should they ever become seized to the axle (worst case scenario, you run the hubs through a salty winter and don't forget to clean them until sometime in the summer).  I've changed the collars to 7075 as well, to be a bit harder. The tradeoff is that the bar stock is slightly more expensive, and I'm warned that the anodizing might not be a 'perfect' match.

The flanges are now going to be drilled on an angle optimized for deep section rims. I've taken a good look at quite a few 700cmx trick forks, and I've got the front flanges as far out as possible so that they still fit within the legs. I feel this will give the front wheel a good amount of lateral rigidity for those who choose to land their bikes sideways.  Despite the differences in flange width, the spokes still calculate within 1mm of each other so wheelbuilding should be a snap.

That's about it for the updates. I'm going to go look at a few more NAHBS photos now.

 

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