Month: June 2012
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BlueSkyBike by Richard Heath
BlueSkyBike is a collaboration between Industrial Design Intern Richard Heath from Auckland, NZ, and BlueSky Design in Sydney, Australia. Their electric folding bike concept is aimed at style conscious urban commuters and is based on Richard’s experience commuting from Sydney’s western suburbs to the city each day via train. Richard explains the concept below: “Practicality,…
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Cervellum Hindsight 35 – first impressions
About a week before I left for China, Evan Solida, the designer and founder of Cerevellum, dropped off one of the first production Hindsight 35 units for me to try out. Some of you may remember the test ride I did with one of his early Gameboy based prototypes back in 2008…and I think you…
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Guilin Bike Stand by David Hu
I am traveling in China this week, and at the moment I’m watching the evening celebrations of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday on Qiandeng Lake from my hotel window in Foshan. I think it is about time to get outside for a closer look, but first it seems fitting to quickly share a design for…
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AeroVelo’s human powered helicopter project
Late last year, I mentioned the University of Toronto Human Powered Vehicle Team’s Vortex HPV, which they raced at the World Human Powered Speed Championships in Battle Mountain, Nevada. This year, the team from Toronto has a more ambitious project- the world’s first successful human powered helicopter. Team member Victor Ragusila explains that they are…
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Are beam frames making a comeback?
My post from last year about pro triathlete TJ Tollakson’s 1996 Zipp bike is still generating a fair bit of traffic here at Bicycle Design, so I assume there must be some renewed interest in beam frames. If the reaction to Graeme Pearson’s Z1-Eleven frame design on the Slowtwitch forum is any indication, there is…
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DIY electronic shifting
If you want Di2 on your bike, but you don’t have an extra few thousand dollars burning a hole in your pocket, Computer Engineer Nabil Tewolde has a perfect solution for you. His DIY electronic shifting system is, for the most part, made from parts found at his local hardware store, electronics shop, and hobby…
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Three bike books from Laurence King Publishing
I was only expecting a copy of The Custom Road Bike, by Guy Andrews, from the folks at Laurence King Publishing, but I received two other books as well. All three are interesting, so I want to quickly share my impressions of each of them. When I first browsed through The Custom Road Bike, it…
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3D printed carbon fiber bike frame by Andrew Leinonen
You may remember Andrew Leinonen’s StayLocked “self-destructing” bike frame from a post last year. His latest project is also pretty interesting- “a custom bicycle frame that uses 3D-printed lug sockets to define the bicycle’s geometry.” The printed ABS lugs are then bonded to steel aluminum frame tubes and reinforced with carbon fiber, using 3D printed…
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Dura-Ace 9000 and SRAM XX1- both go to 11
So I guess I should mention Shimano’s “official” release of the Dura Ace 9000 11-speed groups (electronic and mechanical) , though it seems a bit anticlimactic considering the fact that we have all seen the “unofficially” leaked photos that appeared on the web months ago. As suspected from those early pics, the crankset has a…