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That seatstays on new Atherton must be flexy as a sheet of steel.
Based on?
Based on shape and orientation. It seems to be pretty thin, at least from those pictures. But maybe it has some 3d printed super clever ribs inside.
Look at the drive side chainstay above the tyre. It's L shaped. It's optimised for production process and stiffness and strength. It's not a tube, but it's not necessarily bad.
It does have bracing ribs inside. Zoom in on the underside of the swingarm- there’s at least 3.
Man they’ve printed the whole rear end?!
Looks machined.
Yes, to me it seems they printed entire side of the swing arm. The chainstay is hollow from its bottom with ribs inside. However, the L shape on seatstays seems to get narrow toward the seat tube and I can't see any L near the rocker.
I bet, entire swingarm is made of 3 parts: 3d printed sides/triangles and one tube permanently connecting them behind BB.
https://p.vitalmtb.com/photos/inline/basic/whatisthisbike2.jpg?VersionId=VCgzzKBYm2MWTpvNiY58yXyB7THTQ.5k
I see a line continuing above the chainstay over the seatstay going towards the rear axle... Kinda thinking it each side might be made from more parts and glued together - would make sense, it could be made in 3 sections, each side of the triangle on its own.
As for printinf, shapes (I beams, L beams, pockets with sharp edges) look very much machined, not printed. 3D printing gives A LOT more flexibility when it comes to reinforcements, shapes, etc., shapes that are expensive to machine. These shapes look easy, quick and cheap to machine...
Also, the L shape of the seatstay continues all the way to the pivot.
It's machined. The whole point of this bike is to reduce production costs.
Bearing in mind we have no official info on this, it's all just assumption and guesswork. All we have is some grapevine info from chats a Dyfi.
Whilst the rear end does look machined it might just be done in the final stage of fabrication (after printing). As they do with their current bikes. People (on this forum) have criticised the man hours in labour it takes to finish their current lugged bikes, but you just have to look at their accounts to see that it's clearly working for them.
We know they have a very impressive 3D printing capability in house so why would they invest in more tooling (and massively expensive) or even outsource it to reduce costs?!
Machining doesn't scale well since you have to add cnc machines to increase capacity. It's not like 3D printed Ti and bonded carbon tubes do either, which is part of why their current bikes are so expensive. It would seem to be an odd choice for reducing costs on a "budget" model.
Machining scales reasonably OK. At least in comparison to carbon and welded aluminum frames with the right design choices, especially compared to 3D printing...
Can't find a picture of a Chinese CNC supplier with like 500 CNC machines in one hall (~20 by 20 CNC machines in a grid pattern), but this is Protolabs:
This looks like Mineral oil, yeah... It has the big bleedport screw.
Pretty sure the Atherton's want to keep as much of their manufacturing in house as possible though.
Any outsourcing and they'd have to give up the "handmade in Wales", which is the first thing you see on their homepage.
Given their supposed accounts (that I do not have a look into) I do not see it impossible for them to buy a CNC machine or two. Or find a machine shop in Wales to keep the 'made in Wales' marketing blurb...
"CNC wales" in Google:
The reality:
machined and glued aluminum is hot right now because the bike factories don’t want to build prototypes any more.
10 years ago you could get a test mule built on the mainland and airfreighted to you in like… 5 days, for about 3x more than what a factory would charge for a production frame from a whole 40’ container load. Starting in about 2017 the factories started scaling back their willingness to build mules, or build anything in less than container quantities…
They can still do their carbon/lugged frames in house and outsource the rest for better returns.
The timing of their post just as we’re all chatting about them
Maven will be mineral oil, 6 pistons and a new pad.....
I can believe that they are mineral oil and use a new pad, but where have you heard that they are 6 piston?
One thing that astounds me with the Atherton frames, from what I've seen they take a lot of manual labour to assemble, linishing of lugs, gluing tubes, monitoring the printing process etc. I'm sure skilled labour in Wales is not cheap too. The frames are quite reasonably priced considering the tech and labour involved. A hydroformed mass produced alloy bike not even have a human touch it in it's production for comparison.
Workers in China, Vietnam, etc who by their gained welding skills stand over those hydroformed tubes and weld them each day for few hundred dollars into bicycle may not be human to you, while guy putting glue in a lug and then tube in that lug may be human to you, But, yes, this weird world has always been like this.
Not quite right
may the 4rth be with you🤝🏼
coming kinda soon! Very cool options down the line
Sorry, didn't mean to take away anyones human-ness, I swear I saw a video a few years back in the Giant factory where robots pick, weld and even box a frame.
OK then. But Giant and Merida are manufacturing like for entire cycling industry using robots because quantities asked from West are so vastly huge that robots may be viable option. But there are small brands like Banshee, or RAW, who get their frames manufactured in small companies.
Really? I'm sure Banshee frames are welded by robots too.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/oYGsDdmppE1AL2KL/
For me there's always a step of manually realigning any welded assembly, not to mention the preparation for painting.
Read the whole caption.
"The next batch of Paradox V3 frames are in production.
This vid shows the robot welder spot welding the frame in the custom jigs to ensure perfect alignment ahead of them being welded in house by our expert welder.
Just one of many stages of production. We make the most of the latest technology and highly skilled craftsmen to deliver you the best quality frames. "