Vallie Components - bicycle part and accessory design

I'm still blown away. I just want to thank everyone who came by my booth during this past weekend's mini Maker Faire here in Vancouver. It was good to talk with everyone, and it feels amazing to receive so much positive feedback on my products.  That being said, I'm absolutely exhausted. I was trying to talk to my parents about it on the phone recently, and I couldn't even put it into words.

I think some of my favorite things about the event were:

-Paul Fisher's Micro hydro power station in a suitcase

-Grin Technologies electric skateboard, and uni training area

-Metro Diverse Service's Panterragaffe, executing some impressive 3 point turns in all it's shortened strut glory:

-Gerry Martselos' electric converted Nissan 240... 1000 ftlbs of torque!

-Kids mashing on the keyboard of the disaster area truck's pyrotechnic controller.

I wish I could have spent more time checking things out and asking other makers questions.. but I guess thats how these shows go when you're participating.

Over all, this was a really positive experience for me, and I think it it made for a great excuse to have a deadline. So thanks to all who put it on as well. Dallas, Jenny, Emily, Ifny and everyone else. You guys did amazing.  Also, thanks to Velocity USA for the rim hookup. I was pretty happy to hype up your products while building wheels all day.

Here's a quick walk around video of my booth, for those who didnt make it.. Its not super exciting, but since we have the technology..

(edit, it appears we don't have the technology. Youtube Embed html has changed a bit and doesn't seem to be compatible with my blog atm..)

Oh well, here are a few photos of my stuff...

I'll be updating the products portion of my site shortly when I go live with sales. Hang tight until then.

Current rack and custom fab orders have me booked until August. If you would like to be in the queue for racks, please email me.

Once again, thanks everyone=]

Lyle

Wow. I've been super busy. Long hours at the machine shop dialing in on minute operations.

I've basically given myself the goal of having hubs for sale at Maker Faire. This initially didn't seem possible, but I'm intent on making it happen. Tracking every stage of production down to the minute is allowing me to fit time in where I didn't originally think possible.. and manage to get everything lined up. I'm sort of banking on the hubs being done.

Here's a grainy phone shot of what the fronts look like right now:

..and some parts for the rears hot from the lathe:

^Interesting side note, the cutting inserts used on the 4140 axle are called 'Purple Haze', and come in packaging that reminds me of drug paraphernalia. They do produce a beautiful clean blue/purple chip when run at the right speed however.

While I still feel like I'm flailing, I've made a lot of progress in the past month. I've got my prototype stainless universal front rack up and running on a bike, and it holds a tonne of weight. I've also got my hubs at about 90% completion right now. Its crazy.

A couple of rack shots:

^VCR05 (FLITE4) is powdercoated and will be for sale at Maker Faire

^Testing out new mounting systems for the universal mount

Anyways, come check me out at Maker Faire Vancouver on June 25th and 26th. I'll be hanging out and building wheels with my soon to be completed hubs, while quilt making robots shoot fire around me.

Really, I'm not.

I've been avoiding blogging however. I guess I'm nervous to say anything, because so much goes wrong every time I open my mouth. I'll just give a brief update on the state of Vallie Components.

1. Patent - I spent the past month polishing a document to submit to the USPTO. I'm fairly certain I followed all their rules, and my device is novel and patentable. I've cited references, dotted my eyes, crossed my Ts, checked my line thicknesses, PDF versions, etc. I'm sort of playing the waiting game on that.

2. Right after I got that in, everything flooded to the forefront of my brain immediately, and it is forming some kind of bottleneck at the bridge of my nose.  Vancouver is hosting its first 'Maker Faire' soon, and I have signed up. I guess they don't have enough cycling people there, because they've accepted me. Now I just need to figure out what to do for it.  Its exactly 10 weeks away, giving me a possible 300ish hours with my current schedule. I also need to figure out how to make it interactive. This isn't a standard trade show.

3.Racks. I'm working on a batch of 10ish stainless racks.. well, starting to do some calculations for stainless racks. I want to have a universal fork design buttoned down and simulated before I cut any metal. I'm going to do it all in batch operations and try to make these things in under 10 hours per rack.

4. Cargo bike. I've been studying bakfiets geometry between the different types I've been able to reverse engineer. Phil over at Metrofiets was even kind enough to help me out! I basically want to do a one off, using an existing mtb frame I've got. I was inspired by THIS a long time ago. Ideally, this would be a grocery getter for the wife and I to share, so its got to be stable and rideable by anyone. Its an experiment that I want to work WELL.

5. Back on to hubs. I spent a few hours yesterday at DMT, hacking a pneumatic foot switch into Dennis's lathe. Today, I'm spinning rear shells again! It felt pretty good to have them up and running. Quantities are going to be very limited. But I'm measuring EVERY part at EVERY step to ensure that we don't waste another single shell.

6. Cogs. I've got all the cogs done. They actually came back from the Coaters before this whole patent kerfuffle.. but I'm hesitant to sell them, because right now I think I have enough of each size for each hub. What if EVERYONE who buys a hub wants a 15T? exactly. They look nice though.

7.Bikes. I'm not riding enough. Still. always. My commutes are too short to get my cardio on, so I've resorted to going out of my way across the north shore to get into town. I'm sadly not MTBing up there lately. I've got to get back on that... gradually to avoid hurting myself.

Thats about it. I guess I should edit some pictures into this, and add links. Thanks internet. You are being kinder than I expect you to.

Fuck that.

At Vallie Components we're way harder than February.

Between Winter training, Mighty Riders, boring out the new rear shells, rewriting my patent, and just generally hammering (even at night!), I'm not going slow enough to even notice that this month is supposed to be depressing.

Unfortunately, this also means that I haven't been able to finish up the Flite5 Rack. It will come though. I should take a deep breath and hit the TIG torch. I've got a bunch of local interest coming in now, and its amazing. I just need to work on scheduling. Everyone I know is both working and riding pretty hard. Even my racks.

Here's a shot of Morgan's bike at the local liquor store.

He's using Flite2 to do the weekly liquor run for our favorite sustainably run restaurant, Bandidas Taqueria. I believe this week's is 72 Beer. A load deemed 'Not Trailer worthy' thanks to my engineering. SUPER BADASS!

I've been using Flite4 for all sorts of inventory related crap lately too. Oh.. and today for a wet fixed training ride, I strapped my Camelback onto the rack as a makeshift triathlon sippy straw inspired, rando bar bag hydration system. It worked great, and everyone was totally jealous of how hydrated I was. .. or something.

Okay.. back to work!