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The modal on their site says it's so they can migrate to a new ERP (enterprise resource planning) system and I am not surprised by the date changes; migrations like that are brutally complex (I've led a few) and I was surprised they originally said they'd do in a month.
From the outside it doesn't speak especially well of whoever is managing the project though, and they have my deepest sympathies, this stuff is freakin' hard (and if they're trying to integrate w/ DT Swiss at the same time, just yikes).
Buuut I think that time is always going to be the limiting factor with SLS as your primary manufacturing process. The frame shown in the video has a print time of 20 hours! Meaning that if they're running at absolute maximum capacity they could put out 365 frames per year (let's ignore weekends, bank holidays and failures for argument's sake). They probably need 20ish frames per year for the race team and development - that's already 6% of their gross income for the year gone.
Then when you factor in all of labour hours - machine set-up, grinding and polishing, gluing, outsourced CNC milling and painting, and assembly - the profit margin on each frame is going to be extremely limited on an already tiny production run. And is all of this going to be able to foot the bill for the growing Atherton family, all of the staff and a world cup race team? Unfortunately I'm sceptical.
And yeah I’m sure they have a bunch of other revenue streams from sponsors, the bike park, red bull etc. But if the bike brand isn’t profitable on its own I’d bet that it won’t stick around very long. I just hope that if they can’t make this process work financially that they don’t marry themselves to it.
https://www.vitalmtb.com/videos/features/Laurie-Greenlands-Santa-Cruz-V…
It's either that or a NFT...
Neko said they copied the pivot and idler mounting directly off a Session, that was brought in from a shop just for that purpose. Seems logical it could be his frame actually.
@baronKanon would you be kind enough to provide a link to the podcast?
plus he's still riding the 10 spd saint drivetrain
best capture i could manage:
Check spider and axle interface for reference
Silca has started small with their Ti parts with tools (chain whip, a really light hammer with a heavy head, cassette tool) and cleats (for Shimano/CrankBros/Time - 'lighter weight and more durable') so it's a bit of a different scale at the moment. They don't seem to have a problem with stock at the moment with all of those being in stock pretty much since launch, but they are very niche products.
The spider looks exactly like the Hope 2/3x direct mount spider too with the bashguard mounted on the outside ring tabs.
plus, i would find it odd that they would give him just the new saint cranks but with the old drivetrain. Greg was running protos of both last season. the profile of these cranks doesn't match what greg had either.
https://wheelbased.com/2021/11/19/pedal-for-a-cycle-by-sram/
https://www.slikgraphics.com/shop/cranks/shimano-saint-m820-custom-cran…
also, Time was acquired by SRAM early '21 - so it checks out. i'd honestly forgotten that myself.
No details other than it's 120mm rear and can be run full 29 or mullet.
It's also called the Darco.