
Mountain Cog
Hosted by an enthusiast and a mountain bike industry expert featuring laughter and passionate guests.
Mountain Cog
090 – Bet you don’t know about this! (Faction Bike Studio, Adam Robbins)
Who is Faction Bike Studio? You can think of them as the creative minds behind your next bike.
Faction Bike Studio is a cutting-edge industrial design and engineering consulting company based in Quebec, Canada. Essentially, bike brands (small, medium, and the big guys) hire Faction to help them design and engineer their company’s bikes or bike parts. They’ve done 350 projects for over 100 customers since they were established in 2010.
This is the first of 2 podcasts we’ve got planned with Faction Bike Studio. In this episode we chat with Faction Bike Studio’s Product manager Adam Robbins who introduces Faction. In the second episode, we’ll bring on Simon (Faction’s R&D Lead Engineer) to answer detailed questions about how and why bikes are designed the way they are…
We need your help! Please submit any questions you have about how and why bikes are designed the way they are… submit your questions using the “Send Us A Text” link above or via Instagram or Facebook.
Faction Bike Studio links...
Web: https://factionbikestudio.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/factionbikestudio/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/factionbike/
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Adam, you got something to tell us?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, I got a little joke for you. Go for it. I got maybe even a question. I got a little joke for you, um, go for it. I get maybe in the question what's a pirate's favorite letter? You guys think it would be r, but it's actually the c.
Dane (aka The Guru):I love it, I love it. My problem with dad jokes is I always forget them, like I. I have two memorized and that's it, and you've told them three times on this podcast. Yeah, I'll tell them every time.
Josh (aka Magellan):Well, I was at the public pool the other day and I had to pee like so bad, like super bad, yep, and finally I just gave in and I went down to the deep end and I peed.
Dane (aka The Guru):Nice.
Josh (aka Magellan):I felt really guilty about it. Unfortunately, the lifeguard saw me and he blew his whistle Like he blew it super hard.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah.
Josh (aka Magellan):He blew that whistle so loud it like startled me and I almost fell in All right, I like that one.
Dane (aka The Guru):I was on the edge of my seat and I had all kinds of ideas, but yep, you caught me.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, I got you. You actually laughed out loud. You don't do that very often. So that was good so that, well, some of them are just groaners. You know, right, like really bad.
Dane (aka The Guru):You're like oh my god, yeah, so all right.
Josh (aka Magellan):So we've got a like we're really excited about this podcast. Uh, recently it's been people contacting us trying to get on the podcast. Yeah, um, this one we actually reached out to, to, to these guys and we were like, we were like super secret organization super secret. Like who the hell are you Like we're on zoom right now.
Dane (aka The Guru):People can't see this, but there's a like a blacked out His voice has been altered.
Josh (aka Magellan):His voice has been altered.
Dane (aka The Guru):We're changing his name to protect the innocent.
Josh (aka Magellan):Okay, we're not changing his name, so we're with Adam Robbins. Adam is a product manager, is the product manager for Faction Bike Studio. They're based out of Granby, quebec Shout out to the Quebec Nordiques for my NHL friends which is pretty close to Bromont. If you've heard of the Bromont Bike Park and what I mean, adam will tell us a lot more but our understanding of what Faction Bike Studio is. It's a cutting edge industrial design and engineering studio. You can think of it as the creative minds behind your next bike Nice, established in 2010. They've done since then 350 projects, 100 plus customers, 33 engineers. They do about 25 projects a year, adam, how'd I do?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, you nailed it. That's pretty accurate.
Dane (aka The Guru):You guys can use that on your next video.
Josh (aka Magellan):It's almost like I read it from their website.
Adam Robbins:Fantastic, and a nice radio voice as well.
Josh (aka Magellan):That's good stuff, yeah, we uh, we uh pride ourselves on our sound quality here at the mountain cockpot.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, so that's part of it, great care.
Josh (aka Magellan):We'll be doing a lot of work on post-processing for this. Uh, that's true For the zoom audio here, but we'll make it work. So, hey man, how are you doing today?
Adam Robbins:Fantastic. Yeah, thanks, doing well. It's 9 o'clock at night right now, but it's fantastic. It's getting dark, we're in that time of the year, but spirits are high and happy to be chatting with you guys.
Josh (aka Magellan):What time does it get dark?
Adam Robbins:there. Oh, right now we're like mid-November and it's about, I'd say, just after 4 o'clock.
Dane (aka The Guru):Oh my God, Jesus Christ, because they're north yeah.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, so as you go north, you get less sun. You may be interested in the podcast that we publish right before you, which is with Outbound lights. If you're familiar with outbound, uh, we're really stoked on on like their designs and what they're doing and uh, actually I just ordered a couple of their hangover lights from Dane. Did you order them? Did you get them yet?
Dane (aka The Guru):Awesome. I don't know if they're here yet, but Ben controls the inventory.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, so shout out to outbound, especially if you're riding at night. Um, how, how long do you guys ride Like?
Adam Robbins:like, how long do you guys ride? Like like how long into the, into the, into the late fall, early winter, do you guys ride? I guess it depends how eager you are to get out there and riding. I guess for myself and a couple other, I guess, core riders, we'll kind of push it as much as we can the entire year. Uh, actually last winter we were able to get out for at least a weekend during every month of the year, which, for being in Quebec, canada, is a pretty rare, but there's a couple of warm days, so we'll push it. I mean, it's super muddy, the conditions are horrible, but uh, we make the most of it and uh, yeah, we're, we're core riders, we love it and uh, we want to ride as much as we can.
Dane (aka The Guru):I saw you guys do a snow bike or did one at one point. Do you guys do a snow bike or did one at one point? Do you guys do a lot of fat bike, snow biking?
Adam Robbins:yeah, there's definitely a pretty big interest in that. Um, it's kind of an interesting one really. Some people either love fat bikes or they're not into it at all. Um, so it's really hit or miss. Um, a lot of the employees at faction are super into it and others maybe myself including might not be the most, but uh, now they they're cool. They definitely have a purpose and, yeah, they're there. Any bike is cool, but yeah, they got their place.
Dane (aka The Guru):It's crazy we're down in the desert and we actually get little waves of snow bike. You know purchases because they work in sand. And so they change all the dry washes into a trail system. Uh, so you can float on the sand and ride it just like you were in snow.
Josh (aka Magellan):You might need to explain what a wash is to our friend from quebec here oh yeah, you're right, he's actually not from quebec. If I remember correctly, you're from ontario. Ontario, do I have?
Dane (aka The Guru):yeah yeah, washes here in the desert when it rains, it'll channel the water down into the little gullies in between each little foothill or you know whatever, and and it'll basically move the dirt around and create sand and then it'll dry up. So once it's dry, it's just a sand pathway at that at that point, and so you can kind of connect those cause, just like tributaries, you know you can, you can basically ride your bike all over the place and connect all those little things.
Josh (aka Magellan):I mean the bottom line is like our rivers are dry like 340 days a year.
Dane (aka The Guru):And we still call them rivers.
Josh (aka Magellan):We can still call them rivers, and so it's just a sand river with no water in it that we ride in, and they use fat bikes for that.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, it's, it's crazy.
Josh (aka Magellan):I was up in Anchorage, Anchorage, uh, last summer visiting a buddy of mine and we went out to ride. By the way, Anchorage has got like fucking amazing riding you wouldn't think it but it's, it's like really good, yeah, and cause they only had, like I don't know, six weeks or something a year where they can ride but it's light out for 24.
Dane (aka The Guru):So I rode the fat bike, you know, just in like in the summertime, it was awful. Yeah, they're like balloon tires. Yeah, it was bouncing everywhere.
Josh (aka Magellan):I was like what in the hell is going?
Dane (aka The Guru):on here. It's pretty crazy.
Josh (aka Magellan):All right, so let's put in the back burner, like the horrible conditions that you have, because we have an idea for Faction Bike Studio.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yes, cause we have an idea for faction bike studio that we'll bring up later on in the podcast to help you guys fix that problem.
Josh (aka Magellan):That serious problem of your awful weather in the winter. Um, okay, so so, uh, let me tell a little story Like why the hell did we reach out to faction? Go for it. So, um, Dane and I went up to pivot. I work for a major defense company, that defense and Adam, you've heard this story before. But uh, my company has just in my business unit, not company wide, but just in my business, and we have 20,000 engineers. And we went up and we met with pivot and they had a like single digit number of engineers.
Josh (aka Magellan):I think it's fine, yeah, it was a really small number and I had expected to see like an engineering department of like 50.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah.
Josh (aka Magellan):That's probably like way wrong and I and and when they had this single digit number out, it just like shook me. I was like what in the heck? Like, how do you guys, how does the bike industry if this is the size of the engineering department for this amazing company? I think Pivot's an amazing company, puts out amazing products really well yeah, how the hell do you guys do this? Yeah, and and then you start looking at some of the other companies that are out there, like, oh my god, how do you do this?
Josh (aka Magellan):And then we saw a post, or I saw a post from Danger Home about the titanium. We'll talk about this, but the titanium printed um, uh, derailleur, yeah. And he said I worked with Faction Bike Studios. I'm like who the hell's studio? So I got you know, sucked into like the rabbit hole and was like researching this. And I was like oh, there's like this, like secret engineering firm and maybe a few of them that are like helping the bike industry companies like design and factions, one of them. So I I sent him a cold email to say hey, I, you know you've never heard heard of us before, but we're this little podcast in the southwest. We'd love to talk to you guys and bring like what you do to our audience. So I sent him an email and adam wrote me back and he's like hey, yeah, but I need to talk to you first did you sign an nda?
Josh (aka Magellan):I did. I did not sign an nda, okay, but I don't know anything. Yeah, I don't know anything. Okay, all right that I would need to sign an.
Dane (aka The Guru):NDA. I mean is, if you know, do we need to be worried that people are going to show up in like limousine or not limousine?
Josh (aka Magellan):and like helicopters dark black, black suits black. Are the men in black going to show up if we say the wrong thing? He's going to flash a little thing. Had a great conversation with adam super cool dude so at adam, what so?
Dane (aka The Guru):what is? What is the? The plan? Like what?
Josh (aka Magellan):is your. What is faction bikes?
Dane (aka The Guru):yeah, what is the business concept like? What's the idea behind it?
Adam Robbins:yeah, so I guess yeah, I guess he somewhat touched on it in the little intro, but I'll try and give you a bit more detail on it. So, uh, eric oj, he's the founder of faction and, uh, he started off earlier in his career working up at DaVinci, so Cycles DaVinci up in Quebec, and he actually started the R&D department at DaVinci. So that was kind of a really cool job and it was really really big, like that's super cool. But Eric also had this idea that he wanted to support other players in the bike industry so that everyone who can ride a bike has the ability to ride a good bike. That's what he wanted.
Adam Robbins:So at that time he kind of left da vinci and started faction. So I guess just before he left, he started to like drum up some clients and get some people that are interested to kind of grow and expand their like small bike businesses, um. So that kind of developed and then he's like, okay, we're going to start faction. So then faction became its thing and that was 2010. So since then, like you mentioned, we've worked on over 350 projects, um, and we've had over a hundred clients and, yeah, it's ever changing, we only work on bikes. So that's one thing that's really specific to faction as well. Um, there are a couple other competitors that do similar stuff to us, but faction is the only bike specific engineer design firm in the world. Um, so that's one thing that we're proud about and that you know, we want everyone to know about not really everyone, but the right people, so to speak, since we are pretty soon, so that you know.
Dane (aka The Guru):so that gets me to my next question, which is what is the, the client that you guys are looking for? Who, who's most likely to come to a faction and say, hey, we need your help? Like, is it going to be a trek or a specialized, or is it going to be somebody tiny, um, you know, like nico, you know, is it like?
Josh (aka Magellan):let's, let's, let's, let's make a ground rule that we don't mention specific companies.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah.
Josh (aka Magellan):Well. I can say it'd be a big established company or is it going to be a small, small say track? Okay.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, it's not yeah. But I'm just saying it is a track like organization, like big one, you know.
Adam Robbins:Yeah for sure, but no, it can be absolutely anybody. So it could be the big top players, it could be a track, it could be a specialized and it could be like even just the guy that's starting a newer brand and he's interested and he sees potential. We're open to anything. So it's really cool and it doesn't have to be just complete bikes. It can be components, like it could be, like we saw with danger home. It could be a specific derailleur. We're really open to explore and and like kind of just dive in. So anything bikes were there to support any size.
Josh (aka Magellan):Make bikes and all things for bikes.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, you said that exactly yeah. Like I saw the fat bike designs and they had like an integrated like heating system in the bar, like all kinds of stuff, like no shit. Yeah, it's kind of cool, you know, and and that's a big deal.
Josh (aka Magellan):We don kinds of stuff like uh, no shit, yeah it's, it's kind of cool, you know, and and that's a big deal.
Dane (aka The Guru):We don't have to deal with that here, but we need to integrate fat bikes in general integrated cooling system.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, we yeah, internal like uh, ac built into the bike, bicycle air conditioning would be great. So so, like, why the discretion? Why are you guys, why did you establish like to be a behind the scenes company to let I, I think, as you guys say, let your let your clients like shine in the spotlight. Why not, you know, be more out in the open about what you guys do?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, no, that's a good question for sure. It's definitely a question that comes up a lot here at faction Um. A lot of times people are just they're curious and they're like, well, you guys do really cool stuff, so why don't you like tell everyone, but we all, you have to put yourself in the in the shoes of the client. So let's say, we're working for brand X and they're like a medium sized brand and they want to make some really cool bikes, but they want their brand and their name to be like the spotlight and if everyone knows that someone else has made their bikes, it kind of takes the recognition away from that brand to some sort of degree. So we want those brands that it's their brand. They've put in the hard work, they put in the hours and we could help them and do the entire project.
Adam Robbins:But we like to think of ourselves as an extension of their, their team. So we're going to work with their engineers, we're going to work with their designers, their product developers. We're going to support their ideas to make their brand and their products bloom. So that's why we let them take full credit and we're just there to support. We learn from all the different projects that we do and we just take the expertise and the good points. And we can not directly give those secrets to the other brands, but just take the expertise and, like, the good points and we can kind of not directly give those secrets to the other brands, but just take what we learned and add that together. So at the end of the day everyone's getting really good products and everyone's going to have a good time out on the bike.
Dane (aka The Guru):How does that work? So if you guys develop something, is there a patenting process or do you guys get to own that design?
Josh (aka Magellan):Do you own any of the patents, or do the major brands own the patents that you guys work on, so they all still own everything.
Adam Robbins:So we're just considered like the contractor, so we just do the work and then they are left with everything at the end. So we just step in support while they need our support and then at the end they're left with all the work that we supported them with.
Dane (aka The Guru):And you get the knowledge of the process and the efficiencies that you can use going forward from that. So like, yeah, I'm going to ask.
Josh (aka Magellan):I'm going to ask a super detailed question now and I'm going to pull on my experience like with uh, with, you know, intellectual property and ownership. So, like, the way that it works is that whoever actually did the design owns the intellectual property. Okay, unless there's a term and condition in the agreement between two parties that would indicate that another party owns the intellectual property. So is that what you guys do? Is you're in your TNCs, you're like listen, we're going to partner with you guys, you guys are going to pay us, you guys, you guys get, get, get you know, exclusive rights to the intellectual property that we help you design.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, yeah, simply, that's a. That's how it's going to work, so you have to spell all that out.
Josh (aka Magellan):That's in the terms and conditions of the agreement, for sure that makes sense.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, we have a pretty good legal team as well and they they make a nice good size contract there and it's all. It's all in there. So it's quite nicely.
Dane (aka The Guru):So you guys design this business to like to help out companies, for the most part exactly like, uh, you know, I think about some companies. They maybe have their in-house engineering team who is is always there and always being paid for. By the way, you know, costs that that company money, yeah, but maybe doesn't have as many projects to do, and so you guys can kind of fill the gap for companies that don't want that full-time staff and help them get a project out and then they can focus more on getting it manufactured and distributed and sold. So so they can.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, so really any any step of the process. I mean some, some brands. They might not have all the resources to to do a full project from A to Z, so we can come in and just do a portion of it. Let's say they need help to industrialize it, they need help to pick a new factory or they just need to do some FBA testing. We can do any of those and really pinpoint where we need to support. Or we could do an entire project. So it really just depends on the client and what they're looking to get out of it.
Adam Robbins:But that's one thing that we always like to make a point of is that we can we're just an extension of the internal team. So for that project we are a part of their brand and we follow their rules. You know we're, we're a part of them, so that's that's really unique. And it's not like we take the project by ourself and make it unique and make it something that we think is good, like obviously we're going to put our our touch to it, our special touch, but um, it does. It does come from the brand, so that brand is staying true to their values.
Dane (aka The Guru):That is cool and, like you said, there's not a lot of, uh, direct competition. It does just bikes. But is this a common thing in engineering, that you have these engineering firms that that kind of design, for, yeah, they basically go Absolutely it is.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, okay, it is absolutely.
Dane (aka The Guru):So that's really cool. I mean, I mentioned this podcast to one of the main guys at Pivot and I said, hey, have you heard of these guys? And he's like no. I haven't. And then we discussed it and what he you know sussed, you know, is basically this is Suss is like Gen Z for like suspected or something like that. Wait, you should know, you're like a younger guy. My son says that what does?
Josh (aka Magellan):suss mean let's help educate our older listeners here.
Dane (aka The Guru):Suspect. I think it's suspect. Yeah, that's pretty well accurate or sussed it out. When you say I sussed that out, that's pretty well accurate, okay, yeah, or?
Josh (aka Magellan):sussed it out. When you say I sussed that out, that's like 19,. That's like 1810 language right there, yeah, well, that's Sussed it out.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, you sussed it out. What is that short for? I don't even know.
Josh (aka Magellan):I don't know. Yeah, I don't know either.
Dane (aka The Guru):But he suspected. He suspected that it's the in-house engineering.
Josh (aka Magellan):They want to be more efficient, you know and they don't have the infrastructure to do it.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, or or or. Like I, I brought up a. You know we worked with felt for a while and when felt first started bringing out their mountain bikes they had they brought in a mountain engineer. You go see them and you know I was. I was at felt and I was looking at the engineering team and there's one guy that had hairy legs and I'm like that's, that's the mountain bike, sure enough that was him.
Josh (aka Magellan):But, adam, you said, it's not just new companies, it's also like established, like mainstream companies that you guys, maybe they want to spruce up their looks or they need some fresh eyes, or something like that.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, Like there's many different ways that people want to kind of connect with us and work with us. Um, and a lot of people know that we have a lot of expertise. We've been doing this for a while and even touched on the fact that you just mentioned. Like I felt, if the guys only have only like one dude had hair on his legs like with our diverse engineers and designers, like some people are experts for road bikes, are experts in mountain bikes. So when we all collaborate together, like it's really cool because you're pulling aspects from other disciplines and they're and you're merging that and like everything just interconnects and it gives like a really cool result in the end. So you're not just having a mountain biker doing a road frame or even just a mountain biker doing another mountain bike. Yeah, you need these like like creative sessions where like everything's flowing together and you end up with really really unique and cool projects. That's awesome.
Josh (aka Magellan):Adam, as a product engineer and I know you warned us and for our listeners, we're going to do a second episode with faction. We're going to bring in your, your top research and design guy. Is it Simon or Simone? What's the right way to say that?
Adam Robbins:Simone would be French, so that's I guess. But we can go with Simon. He'll go by Simon as well, so it can go either way.
Josh (aka Magellan):Okay, he won't get mad at us, I'm a linguist so I like to use the proper language. If his name is Simone, we should call him Simone. So we'll bring in Simone and we'll get like deep into technology. But like from your perspective you said that faction can come in and help at any part of the from from you know, concept to it's in production. Can you talk us through like what that from your perspective, like what that process is? Just talk through that whole process, like the steps from concept all the way to production.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, for sure I'll keep it somewhat brief, just so we don't sell like all our secrets.
Adam Robbins:We can like. We could take someone's like napkin drawing, um, and be like hey, like faction, can you create this? So we can take that and kind of go through the entire process and it's actually kind of cool. So, even if you go on to like I think right now it's on danger homesomes Instagram with the derailleur so it's a pretty good example that you can kind of get like a visual representation. So it'll kind of start out just as like sketches and drawings. That's where, like the ID team can start and once it does that, they'll start to do some models and like actually make it. So I think for the derailleur, the ID team was really starting to make this with like foam. So they would just Dremel out a whole bunch of pieces of foam and they could make the shapes. Just because it's around the same size, it can be pretty handheld. So that was like step two and then step just to stop your ideas.
Josh (aka Magellan):Industrial design Okay, oh yes, correct, perfect yeah.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, so once you have like it kind of created in like a foam model or it can be any sort of material, but for this case we did it in foam and then the guys also put this into their, their solid works and they can kind of create like a really nice 3D and that works as a computer aided drafting software program Correct.
Josh (aka Magellan):Correct software program correct, correct, like engineers use. So all the products that you have in your house or that you use in your life, or bikes, or whatever you know. We're, we're, we're. We're at some point drafted and put into a computer model, a CAD model in solid works, I think is it's probably the most popular engineering tool.
Dane (aka The Guru):That one in AutoCAD right.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, for sure, autocad Am. Am I showing my age again? It's old. I'm showing my age again.
Dane (aka The Guru):Okay, Keep going man For sure.
Adam Robbins:So yeah, so they'll create the 3D up in there. And then really cool is when we were making the derailleur, we got to work with Trump, so they're a German like printing. They do a lot of of really cool stuff.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, let's make sure for our American listeners.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, that's Trump with an F at the end.
Josh (aka Magellan):Okay, Keep going, yeah, so, yeah that clears things up, but there's.
Adam Robbins:So they agreed to print this in titanium. So that's something that danger home has been really interested in for quite a while. So to be able to print these parts of the derailleur in titanium was really cool and really unique and we wanted to make it as wow as possible so you're getting to the prototyping stage and using the digital printers to do that?
Josh (aka Magellan):yeah, for sure yeah.
Adam Robbins:So that's kind of one way how we can do it. So I guess for our prototype it came out and it was a bit more just plastic 3d printed, and then for the actual production one that danger home has on the bike is when it went to 3d printing, 3d titanium printing. So that's kind of a bit of the process. So it comes from like a concept, an idea, and you get into a bit more of like the prototyping stage and then we can go into the industrialization of it. So a couple different steps and it's somewhat similar for most of the projects, but that one is uh, kind of what is the term?
Josh (aka Magellan):industrialization mean.
Dane (aka The Guru):Oh, thank you, I needed that Industrial engineer. I hear that a lot and I'm not really sure.
Josh (aka Magellan):But that's different than industrial, so maybe you need to define both. What is an industrial engineer?
Dane (aka The Guru):Let's start with that what is an industrial engineer?
Adam Robbins:Like what's industrial engineer? So we have industrial designers and we have our engineers. Okay, so they almost run like they. They do run parallel with each other, but they're still kind of in their own field. Okay. So the engineers will kind of come up with, like, the geometry of the bikes and then the industrial designers will take that geometry and make the shapes of the tubing and, um, like the shapes of the bike. So they collaborate together to come up with the final version of a bike or a component.
Josh (aka Magellan):The way I like to think about it is that the industrial designers or industrial engineers do the form and the engineers do the function.
Dane (aka The Guru):Okay, but what makes it industrial and not just a designer?
Josh (aka Magellan):It's just the term. It's just the term. I don't think. I think you could use the term designer and it would be the same.
Dane (aka The Guru):Like a designer can do a concept, like you said, like a napkin drawing or you know, do the sketching and like make it look all cool. You see that you know in cars and concept cars and stuff like that. And then is the industrial designer? Is he actually or she?
Josh (aka Magellan):he makes it look cool just the engineer makes it work. Okay, yeah, how do you agree, adam?
Adam Robbins:yeah, yeah, that's pretty accurate yeah yeah, and I guess the designer as well. They have a pretty good understanding of the materials that they're working with. So I think that also kind of elevates their game a little bit. So it's not just like they're working with fabrics or something, they're also working with metals and carbons and different materials. That kind of I guess elevates their game. And carbons and different materials that kind of I guess elevates their game Okay.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, like one of the things we talk about a lot in. That's super important for the guys that are focused on the form, like waste, the way something looks to understand, like what the art of the possible is.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah.
Josh (aka Magellan):And we do something we call DFMA design for manufacturing and affordability, or design for manufacturing assembly. So like can it actually be made? Yeah, Like is there manufacturing processes out there that can make?
Dane (aka The Guru):the design that you just drew on this napkin. Yeah, yeah, or is it like impossible? So it's not like an MC Escher drawing you know that isn't.
Josh (aka Magellan):Well yeah, I think, yeah, yeah, for sure, that's my layman's way of wrapping my head around this stuff is is to think like examples of you know, you know something that you can write down and make on paper, but it can't actually physically happen, you know so like you know, we had these concepts and we kind of knew forever and I won't get into too many details about hypersonic weapons, like hypersonics, like you know, beyond supersonic, like beyond Mach four, super fast, and until additive manufacturing came around or digital printing right, which is the same way that Nico made that derailer, nico.
Dane (aka The Guru):Nico.
Josh (aka Magellan):Nico Trump. Trump printed it with help from faction.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah Is a danger home. Yeah, for danger home. What did I say? I said, nico, my bad. Um this is why we have notes.
Josh (aka Magellan):This is why we have notes right now, we couldn't make that hypersonic system work because the manufacturing techniques didn't exist. Yeah, and with digital printing the manufacturing techniques existed and we could make the flow pass that we needed to create a hypersonic weapon.
Dane (aka The Guru):Nice, okay, all right, so you can come up with a concept that the science works, but unless you can actually make it, it doesn't matter.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, so industrial designers or designers or industrial engineers, they make it, it doesn't matter. Yeah, so industrial designers or designers or industrial engineers, they make it look good. What does industrialization mean?
Adam Robbins:okay so that would be taking it from like one singular one and kind of making it like mass-produced, kind of making it go out to the factories and, you know, starting to actually sell this as a product and make it a bit more mainstream and streamline it.
Josh (aka Magellan):So do you guys have relationships? And understanding of the fabricators throughout the world. Bicycle fabricators.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, exactly so we have our engineering team. They make countless trips to Asia, in Asia. But for all of the uh, like the contracts and the clients that we do have, we will make, like very often we'll make trips to Asia to visit the factories, to work closely with them, um to make sure that the processes are working correctly and everything that we're designing is coming out true and accurate, um, so, to kind of hold everything accountable and just make sure that everything's working well. So, over the years, with all these trips, we've gathered a pretty big list of people that make really cool products and, um, it's just a good way to keep everyone in check and, um, when new clients want to have a new factory, um, we can suggest the best fit for them. So it's a, it makes it really cool and makes it really unique.
Dane (aka The Guru):That's has a lot of value to you guys too, right? That just cuts a lot of corners for somebody trying to figure all that stuff out themselves.
Josh (aka Magellan):Oh for sure. Yeah, you can't talk about your clients, but can you talk about the suppliers at all, or are you restricted from talking about that as well?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, somewhat. I mean, I guess a lot of times it'll kind of come back to like the client that we're working with, but yeah, they're spread out kind of everywhere in the world, so it is really cool. Age is definitely still one of the hot spots. That's where a lot of stuff's going on.
Josh (aka Magellan):So two questions like who are your top three favorite factories in the world to make bikes?
Adam Robbins:Oh, I don't know if we can name out our favorites, that's not a bit of a question?
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, because second and third are going to fight.
Adam Robbins:And it really does depend on the product that's being created. So definitely some factories and suppliers and vendors can really be specific and make really good parts in a specific aspect and others are better than others. So it really just depends on what we're trying to create and others are better than others. So it really just depends on what we're trying to create. And then even brands have specific vendors and clients and factories that they like to work with. They have good relationships already so we'll try and work with that to keep that relationship going.
Josh (aka Magellan):Adam, can I ask you a totally unfair question?
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, yeah.
Josh (aka Magellan):One that I can almost guarantee you may have never gotten. But if I urge, my two passions, which is my strategy job in defense and my love of, of all things, mountain bikes. I believe that China is going to invade Taiwan Potentially.
Adam Robbins:I guess we'll wait and see.
Josh (aka Magellan):And take that over. I believe it's a foregone conclusion. It's going to happen. So, based on the amount of the dependence that the bicycle industry has on Taiwan, do you think the bike companies have any contingency plan to deal with that if that actually happens?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, I think so. It's definitely a hot topic and a lot of people are talking about it and, just from what we've been seeing, a lot of people are moving into Vietnam and Cambodia. Okay, right on, seems to be a pretty big shift. So people are definitely prepared about it. And, yeah, people are always looking for good options and not everyone has just one factory, so like one bike and one model, or the same model, could be made at two or three different factories. So brands are quite spread out and they don't put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak.
Josh (aka Magellan):That's good to hear, man. I really thought I was going to stump you with that and you're like no man, everyone's talking about that.
Adam Robbins:You have not come up with a unique question at all. No, it's definitely a good topic for sure, and I was just over in Taiwan for Bike Week.
Josh (aka Magellan):That was pretty recent, and yeah, it's just good to see the.
Adam Robbins:Taipei Bike Show. This was pretty recent and, um, yeah, it's just the taipei bike show. Uh, this one was like tai chung, so tai chung bike week, okay. So it's kind of like the the fall time show, okay, and then they also have taipei cycle show, which is in in the springtime okay nice yeah, right on, all right, so we would like to.
Josh (aka Magellan):Um well so we talked about danger home we talked a little bit before we get to the specific projects. So so we talked about like the whole process.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah.
Josh (aka Magellan):And like you guys say hey, listen, we do engineering support, we do prototype and test and we do finite element analysis. Can you talk us through, like what you guys do in those three buckets?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, for sure. I guess we could start just on like an FEA finite element analysis to start off with. So this one here is actually really unique as well and pretty cool because we've kind of done this publicly with nico mulely from frameworks racing. So that's like a I guess, an easy one to speak about and people can kind of get a bit of a like a live view if you go up on I think it's on nico mulely's youtube channel we've done an episode with him on there and essentially an FEA element analysis. It's just where you can put the frame into a computer program and you can run tests and see what the frame is going to do over a period of time and see where hotspots are, so where it could fatigue, where it could break, and just learn about the frame and where you can make it stronger, stiffer and better.
Josh (aka Magellan):But this is more than just an analysis, right, you guys are actually putting sensors on the frame, taking it out and having it written and then bringing that data back from from, like actual writing. It's not just that's my understanding, right? Not just simulation, and then running all kinds of I'm sure computational fluid analysis, analysis, right, to see what happens. They run through, like when I say computational fluid analysis, like a Monte Carlo simulation where you're running through like thousands and thousands of iterations and based on the data that we've collected in this real test where we've got Nico on the mountain riding down, I can test the different stress points. I could run that through and say, okay, 3% of the time this joint is going to fail.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, yeah. So what is cool about that that you mentioned? It is typically we can just do an FEA. That's just on the computer and it's just in the program, so that's kind of like the simplest, easiest way. But with Nico, that's specifically we've kind of taken it to the next level, because nico and then ace of vermet is also on frameworks. So we brought both of them to bromont, which is 15 minutes away from our office, and we did some real life testing.
Adam Robbins:But what makes it really unique is that these are some of the fastest riders in the world and they're putting some of the harshest forces through bicycles. Like no one's gonna be putting more effort into bikes than some of the top pros. So now that we can record their data and all the forces that they put in to these bikes and we didn't test it on just like a simple track, we tested it in the Bromont world cup track, which was a world cup in 2008 and 2009. So it's a pretty gnarly course with some of the fastest riders on the planet and with all of these forces and numbers we can then update all the standards for our projects at faction. So there's like iso standards, which are basically just four standards that people need to make their bikes like accustomed to so that they can. They're not going to break.
Adam Robbins:But these standards might not necessarily be the highest and, like you or I, could just go ride down the street and if we try some jumps or whatnot, we could potentially try and get them to break. But now that we've tested with nico and asa and we have all of these forces backed up, we can update our standards so we know how much force like the highest, like the most aggressive riders in the world are putting onto these bikes. So all of that data gets backed up into our system. So for all the future projects we work on, we have a really good gold standard that we know is quite accurate and general people who ride bikes even really good athletes and riders pushing their levels, they're probably not going to get to these values. So that's one way that we've kind of taken our FEA analysis and then given real world testing at a really high level to support what we're doing in the computer software.
Dane (aka The Guru):So it's almost like a collaborative uh you know project where you're helping him but he's also giving you more data that you can use in the future on other projects.
Adam Robbins:And that's yeah.
Dane (aka The Guru):And that's just good learning. I mean, that's great learning. But that doesn't always happen. If you're an in-house brand and you don't have that that uh ability to go and touch all these other different brands.
Josh (aka Magellan):So you mentioned ISO and I feel like we should probably double click on that for a minute for our listeners. So like I'm on Wikipedia right now, make sure I don't screw this up.
Dane (aka The Guru):So that's the editing it, the international. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not editing it.
Josh (aka Magellan):Okay, but ISO is an international organization for standardization and effectively.
Dane (aka The Guru):Oh my God, I wish the bike industry would do all of that Like can you guys work on that? So?
Josh (aka Magellan):basically like what. What the ISO standards say is like like these are the basic design parameters that a bicycle should survive, like you know. Okay, it should be able to do this you know like like go over this bump. Go, be able to go this fast, not you know those type of things. And so like and I think what Adam's pointing out is that the ISO standards, like if taken to the extreme, you could still like destroy your frame.
Dane (aka The Guru):So this is why you would see a bike at Walmart that says that's a mountain bike. Clearly looks like a mountain bike.
Josh (aka Magellan):Has to be built to the ISO 9000 or or whatever.
Dane (aka The Guru):But it'll have a sticker that'll say not for off-road use could be. You know they're.
Josh (aka Magellan):They're building it, it's it's mountain bike shaped object, but it's not a real mountain bike, you know and I think what you're saying is that you guys help the clients that you work with, go beyond the iso standards to a level of design that makes the product well below If you consider, like the ISO standards, like the floor of, like the bike should be, or the product should be the survivable. Yeah, you guys go beyond that. Yeah, do I have that?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, yeah, no, you got that right. And like a lot of people too. Well, almost everyone wants to have a strong bike that isn't going to break, but they also want a bike that's going to be light. So by maximizing our test results with Nico and Asa because we know not many people are going to put out more forces than that Um, so taking all of that, we can then kind of take the perfect balance of having a really strong bike but then also maximizing, like the weight, or like keeping the weight as minimal as possible. So we're really having that good balancing act to create a product that's really strong we know that's almost never going to fail and is extremely light. So we're really maximizing both of those categories.
Josh (aka Magellan):If you look at the three categories, right. If you look at strength, weight and price, it feels like the bike industry has just forgotten about price. What do you think about?
Dane (aka The Guru):that. Well, it's pick two right.
Josh (aka Magellan):That's like the old saying Pick strength and weight.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, and we say that in the shop all the time. Do you want it strong, do you want it light or do you want it cheap? Pick two, and you can usually pick two. It's hard to get all three, really hard to get all three, unless you buy Shimano or no.
Josh (aka Magellan):Don't start start. Don't start with me. We have adam. You don't know this. We have an ongoing debate about shimano josh versus shram dane so so josh has an ongoing debate.
Dane (aka The Guru):He keeps trying to push shimano.
Josh (aka Magellan):I love them both you know, because you own a bike shop and you have to love them both.
Dane (aka The Guru):I will tell you that I'm not, like, I'm not a huge lover of trp, but that's really because I haven't used them, or MicroShift, because it's a little lower than my caliber.
Josh (aka Magellan):Let's ask Adam, adam, how many bikes do you have? I know you got a GT Fury. How many bikes you got right now?
Adam Robbins:Right, now I probably have one, two, three, four.
Josh (aka Magellan):I think I got five bikes.
Dane (aka The Guru):Five bikes Are they all mountain bikes or are they a mixture?
Josh (aka Magellan):No, I be a mountain bike. Yeah, they're all mountain bikes or a gravel bike. Okay, on the mountain bikes.
Adam Robbins:So what do you so? What? What component groups do you have on those bikes? So? So I guess I'm a little biased. So I have been an ambassador for gt for quite a long time, okay, so I do have some support from them. Um, so almost all my parts are kind of like ambassador style components like would that be stock, more stock.
Adam Robbins:You know like what comes on the bike or so I, I get frames from gt, so that's like super supportive, and then I get support from gt to get other components, so it's already kind of somewhat pre-selected for me, sure? Um, so I, I guess I I haven't really chosen all of my components, it's more or less just.
Josh (aka Magellan):So what you're saying is you're not going to tell us the answer. No, you can tell us. There's nothing wrong with that.
Dane (aka The Guru):But you're just saying that if there's a little bias that steers you to a certain part, it may not be your personal preference.
Josh (aka Magellan):So what are the components on your bike. Do you have SRAM or Shimano?
Adam Robbins:Yeah.
Josh (aka Magellan):So my bikes, they're all shram, yeah, yeah, it's because yeah, I can tell you're a smart guy, but uh, oh, I was gonna say this is the end of the podcast. It's nice talking to you.
Dane (aka The Guru):I don't talk to you later now, uh, tell me this we just, we just did our episode, we just dropped it on electric in the bike and yeah, do you have any electronic?
Adam Robbins:I do not actually. No, it's all mechanical, no way, yeah, so you're running mountain SRAM and you don't have access yes wow, what level do you have?
Dane (aka The Guru):are you running like a gx?
Adam Robbins:or gx, gx, yeah.
Dane (aka The Guru):I mean, and if I read into what he said, it's kind of like gt, here's a gt. We build them this way. We want people to buy them this way. Please write ride it this way. Is that? Is that fair, you know?
Adam Robbins:to some degree for sure, I think the big thing. So GT has been a supporter, as I mentioned to me for a little while, and um, just where they can support me on getting component, yeah, it turns out that Tram has been able to support on that Um. But I guess I'd have no, like I have no affiliation with components, it's just kind of what's available and accessible to me Um, but I would have no issue to run other other components and other brands Um. I think that's a lot of it really comes down to what people get comfortable and used to Um like.
Adam Robbins:For myself too, I've written tram shifters and brakes for quite a long time, so for me those are comfort points, um, not to say that I could hop on Shimano stuff and feel horrible for a year. I think I would get used to it and I think I could easily adapt Um. So I think a lot of it just comes down to personal preference and from what I've seen just from the work side of things, I don't think there's components out there that I could have a bad time on. I think everyone.
Josh (aka Magellan):I got to tell you this guy, for being a young guy you have got the politics of this whole thing down like really well.
Dane (aka The Guru):I'm super impressed, but he does point on something that we talked about in a podcast, where we talked about it's frustrating, if you have multiple bikes, to mix your groups, because you do have like this kind of get to know your shifter each time, so like I and I deal with that with electronics, so like it blows me away and and we just I just listened to this episode it just dropped today as we're recording this and which would be like six weeks ago for the listeners that are listening yeah, but episode 88, 88, 88, yeah and um the.
Dane (aka The Guru):The big thing that we talked about is how the electronic systems uh shram and shimano chose to have different types of shifter paddles and they didn't stick with, you know, uh. So they didn't make their their access shifters feel just like their uh analog shifters feel just like they're uh analog shifters. And neither did shimano. And it's like, why, why would you do that? It drives me nuts. When I go from one bike to the other, I have to get used to it and sometimes I actually forget which button does what you know.
Josh (aka Magellan):So right on, are we driving you?
Adam Robbins:crazy yet, adam. Yeah, this I'll tell you, we've had the least amount of rabbit holes so far.
Dane (aka The Guru):So, yeah, we've stayed. I'm pretty proud of us because we've got this notes that we're going through, we've got notes that we're working through, all right.
Josh (aka Magellan):So let's talk. So you guys are in the shadows, can't talk about your clients, got it? Not going to try to press you and make guesses, although we have several hypotheses on who you're working with, but we won't do that and in my you know, I was an intelligence agent in my background, so I'm going to figure out who you're working with at some point.
Dane (aka The Guru):We won't talk about that in the podcast.
Josh (aka Magellan):But there are some things that we can talk about because you guys have been public about them, and the first is your relationship with Frameworks and Nico Malali. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about how that came to be and just give us kind of an overview of your relationship with Nico, with Frameworks, and what you guys are doing with him and what you guys are doing with him?
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, for sure, and maybe give us just a little background or we can do it on what Frameworks is who Nico is?
Josh (aka Magellan):just a little bit.
Dane (aka The Guru):We've got listeners all over the world. They may pay attention. I'm not a big racer. I don't watch racing too much.
Josh (aka Magellan):If you're not plugged into the downhill scene, you might not know who Nico is. Yeah, so.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, fair, yeah, so, yeah, fair. But I'll give a little background on to nico. So nico malili, he's an american downhill racer. He's uh been around for quite a long time and he's raced on some of the biggest teams in the world. So he's been on uh trek world racing that was a really big team. He's been on scott factory team and, uh, I think, even the yt mob, so some like really big teams.
Adam Robbins:And a couple years he had the idea to kind of start his own bike brand. So throughout his career he might not have had the opportunities to do all the things he wanted to do with the bikes he was racing. So a lot of this comes down to just engineering departments and brands that don't really want to. You know, just change their bikes all the time because they want to sell them at the end of the day. So Nico wanted to make his own brand where he could do whatever he wanted. So Nico started making his own bikes and having Frank the welder up in Vermont weld them all together. So that's kind of where it all started and Nico has been super open about his entire process. So still racing them at the world cups and racing them at a super high level and, um, yeah, he was super open about the entire thing and, yes, some of the bikes were breaking and he was admitting that.
Adam Robbins:So a couple of years ago at sea otter, uh, my boss, david, was out there and ran into Nico. It was like, hey, nico, like what you're doing, super cool. But uh, if you want some support, we can like work with you and we can kind of figure out why your frames are breaking and optimize this so that you can have a reliable race bike. And it can just kind of like up your knowledge. So Nico agreed and we started to collaborate on some really cool stuff. So that's kind of, I guess, how it started and, uh, now it's evolved quite a bit. Uh, we've supported the team in many cool ways, um, like the FBA stuff that we were mentioning earlier, and one of Nico's really cool ideas is he wanted to ride a lugged, like glued, bonded whatever you want to call it bike.
Adam Robbins:So there's no welds on this thing at all. So we were super eager and kind of happy to help him with this For Faction. We've actually been them with this, uh, for for faction. We've actually been using like this lugged, bonded um version of bikes as a prototyping service for quite a long time now. So we thought, hey, let's do this with Nico, create a really cool downhill bike, and then we can kind of show off our expertise as a prototyping service and Nico can ride the bike that he really wants to use.
Dane (aka The Guru):Wow, that's I mean. So you guys approached him which is crazy, you know and said hey, you could I? You know, if you guys are kind of you're in the background I mean, we've talked about that over and over again Do you guys want to come out from being in the background, or is that where you really are comfortable with you know?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, we definitely want to stay in the background and because we're not really targeting the general public, like like there's just the regular person that would come into the bike shop and want to buy a bike, like like we don't need to sell anything to them. We're trying to sell services to the bike brand. So we're trying to get like product managers, product developers, the engineering teams to recognize our, our services and our expertise so that we can support them on projects that they might not have questions or answers to and we can really kind of support them that way. So we don't really need to be like super out in the public. We just need to have the correct people understand we're available for when they need support. So working with Nico's great because Nico's he's pretty tight with the industry and he knows the right people and if those people can see what we're doing, we're happy to help out everyone that needs the support.
Dane (aka The Guru):Do you think it helps a little to have this, this very you know, open and out front guy who's trying to go through this process of developing a bike to to go help them? Does it help you too, cause I feel like you can be in the shadows all you want, but every once in a while you just need to kind of shine a light on something that you've done, like danger home and this you know is that a is that an on purpose thing, or is it just kind of happy coincidence when it happens?
Adam Robbins:No, it's definitely on purpose. Um, I mean, for the clients that do work with us, it's nice for them to see something else that's not secret and then just have more trust in our services. Um, working with like danger home and Nico, like these are two kind of like popular people and like Nico is very open. So if he's trusting our services, there's no reason that others also can't trust it. And it's not like Nico's just riding them on fluffy greens.
Dane (aka The Guru):He's like they're racing them. Yeah yeah, For the record, there's nothing wrong with fluffy greens?
Josh (aka Magellan):No, just for the record, josh is a very fluffy type person.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, nothing wrong, they're just your own bikes hey, so, um, okay.
Josh (aka Magellan):So so you guys reached out to nico a couple years ago at seattle, you know nico was kind of going through the the trials and tribulations of, you know, of design and and experiencing that you guys had had some of those lessons you've already learned. How is it, like, what's the results of your relationship? Like, how have you guys impacted the designs of his bikes?
Adam Robbins:Uh. So we wanted to keep his designs, kind of like specific to Nico. We didn't want to change his designs because at the end of the day it's his bike. We just wanted to really support him on ideas that he wanted to test. So anything that would come to his mind, we wanted to at least look into it for him and say, hey, yes, this is a great idea, let's test this, or no, we don't think you should go down this route because a it could be unsafe, it's going to cost way too much, and really just kind of be like his engineering sponsor. So any questions that he has, we want to be there to solve those and just kind of come up with answers for him. So the first big kind of thing he wanted to try was the bonded bike.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, and you guys work with Loctite for that right.
Adam Robbins:Correct. Yeah, so I guess over the years, like Simon and our R&D team has come up with a way to like bond these bikes together. So I guess at the beginning we came up with our own in-house formula for what we knew was going to really work to bond these bikes together. And then Loctite just kind of supported us with the details of their product to kind of like make sure that what we're doing is correct.
Josh (aka Magellan):So they were what's Loctite's role in this Like? What do they provide?
Adam Robbins:Basically just a mixture of an adhesive that we use inside the frames. So we just kind of worked with their like chemical engineers just to confirm that everything was was secure. So a lot of it still came down to Simone and what he developed. And then Loctite just kind of said, yeah, like what you're doing should work, Like he kind of gave us the green light with their product. So that's kind of how all that came together um.
Josh (aka Magellan):What are the materials? What are the materials that you're bonding together on nico's bike?
Adam Robbins:so we're just using aluminum. Um, for us, as I mentioned, it's always just been a prototyping service, so we can create one of these bikes, we can bond it and have it ready to ride in 24 hours. Wow, wow.
Josh (aka Magellan):So that's something that doesn't include like. Is that like from?
Dane (aka The Guru):is that just the raw?
Josh (aka Magellan):material too.
Adam Robbins:Yeah, that's just the gluing. So I mean, yeah, you could get so design, throw that up in the CAD like up on the computer software for people, just so that they have an idea. They'll come up with that. And then, once we have that created which we can do pretty quickly depending on how like many hours we want to spend at once on that, but we can do it super quick and then just taking the raw materials, getting them CNC'd and then gluing it together. The longest thing is just for it to cure. So it's a really quick process and you can have a rideable prototype. That's almost exactly the same way as what a production bike would be and the whole thing. You could be looking around two to three weeks.
Josh (aka Magellan):Do you cure at ambient temperature, in a room temperature, or do you cure?
Adam Robbins:like in an oven. Yeah, just room temperature.
Josh (aka Magellan):Oh wow, ambient temperature Interesting. So, as you know, like we were were up, we were up, we we had the pleasure of being up at pivot, like just after bernard kerr's bike failed was it after it was after okay yeah, it was after.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, I went up for a different one before. Yeah, before I got to play with the bikes.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, so and uh and so obviously that created a whole lot of skepticism in the industry about bonded bikes. Like what is your perspective on that? Like what, what have you guys seen?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, funnily enough, like there was actually cause, he was Bernard Kerr was in New Zealand for the I think it was the crank works race, and I actually had that race on live in my kitchen and I was watching and we knew that he was on the bonded bike and you know, like we were also working on a bonded bike with nico and we watched his frame just snap and his face go into the dirt and we honestly, we didn't really like we're like oh shit, that's, that's crappy, but like we weren't necessarily concerned with ours at all. And the reason we weren't concerned is that for the adhesive, we're doing aluminum to aluminum and they were doing aluminum to carbon. So for us to keep two of the same materials together, we were very confident. And once you start to adhere or put two different materials together, it can create some like non-sticking. So that's why we were never really concerned.
Adam Robbins:Um, and it's kind of like even with pivot, I think it was more of a freak thing. Um, I don't think there's any concern with it, I think, as long as the procedure is done correctly.
Adam Robbins:Um, we kind of believe honestly, that the bonding of frames can be stronger than welds even between two different, disparate or different materials yeah, if things are done correctly and the procedures are completely like followed uh, there should be no reason that it uh should fail if anything we think it should, if anyone has a question like.
Josh (aka Magellan):Pink bike put out an episode with chris kakalas and the guys from from uh, you know their design engineers about the process. What happened? It's like a 10 or 11 minute video.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah.
Josh (aka Magellan):Go watch it. They talk all about it, they're confident, bernard's still riding.
Dane (aka The Guru):He's confident.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah.
Dane (aka The Guru):He said straight up that he's like, yeah, I don't have any problems. That was a fluke, you know, and and that's part of the process I kind of feel like he kind of likes the idea that he's almost like a test pilot.
Adam Robbins:Yeah.
Dane (aka The Guru):Like you know somebody who gets to go develop this cutting edge stuff, and so he didn't. He didn't seem to be upset at all, Kind of like about time it happened, you know, like, like almost like I'm expecting it, and it took forever for it to actually happen.
Josh (aka Magellan):All right If we, if we shift to like another thing that you guys have been public about we've talked about relationship with danger, home and the titanium you know printed, uh, derail.
Adam Robbins:You're like how did that come about? How did that one come about?
Josh (aka Magellan):I'm trying to think back a little bit here. Um, yeah, that's a good one. How did that come about, or what can you tell us about the, about your relationship with danger home and how that's going?
Adam Robbins:Yeah, I guess it's. I can't exactly remember how it came about and who contacted who first. But um, like now it's like just a super easy going, fun kind of relationship. Like we'll message him like, hey, what do you got going on? He kind of keeps up to date with what we have going on as well and we just kind of, you know, keep up to date and keep chatting. And, um, he's been on this kick recently where he just really wants titanium printed stuff. So he even came out with a bike very recently with the whole cockpit setup. Um, that's also titanium printed, so that's really cool. Um, and we he wanted to make a derailleur. That was just wow.
Adam Robbins:So this derailleur was never supposed to be light, it was never supposed to be like the most functional, although it turned out to be very functional. But this was never the the purpose. It was just to give our id industrial design team like a big kind of do something crazy, something unique that no one's really done before. Like no weight doesn't matter how much it weighs, just do something crazy and cool. So that kind of gave like this really cool exercise for the ID team at Faction to just create whatever they could think of. And Danger Home was gladly happy to put this up on his new build.
Josh (aka Magellan):So it's super exciting and it's just a good exercise for everyone, and he's just like an eccentric kind of dude that makes one-off products never intended to be like mass produced or available to the to the public, and does like let me see if I can create the lightest mountain bike ever made, or you know just just super cool, like yeah like one-off products.
Dane (aka The Guru):I don't I. I admire the guy. I have like a yearning to be like him you know, and do that stuff, and we've done a lot of custom stuff before but, never, never, to the just eye-popping you know, state that he does it.
Josh (aka Magellan):Ours is more practical, um I don't know, man, when I went to interbike and saw the shop that you're working for at the time take a da2 road group and convert it to work on a mountain bike. That was pretty fucking cool.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, I mean, that was the heydays when we were doing stuff. Now I have to pay the bills. No joke, and that's the hard part so.
Dane (aka The Guru):I don't know who Danger Home is. I enjoy his bikes and the builds and I even had a customer contact me and say hey, can you build me a bike like his? He wanted a certain weight, mountain bike, full suspension. And I build me a bike like his. You know, he wanted a certain weight, mountain bike, full suspension. And I got really close and I told the guy straight up I'm like this is going to be 20 grand minimum, you know. And he's like no problem if you can hit that, that target. And we got super close and like and that is not a an easy thing to do.
Dane (aka The Guru):I had one customer say I've got a thousand dollars on my hardtail I want you to take, you know, I want you to take five pounds off of it or something. And it was already a full xtr like carbon hardtail. And I I told him straight up I go, I can do it if you double your money. So and that's that's the result of this thing. So he does build some stuff. That's crazy. I can't imagine a one-off derailleur, defined, designed by the super secret.
Dane (aka The Guru):You know, design firm yeah and then have it 3d printed like I can't even fathom how much that derailleur actually would cost, you know?
Adam Robbins:yeah, yeah, you wouldn't want to know.
Josh (aka Magellan):No, you would, yeah, I keep, I keep you know. Like in the defense industry, we have like skunk works and cavity works and all these works. I keep wanting to call you guys faction bike works.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yep, yeah, well, hey, maybe they will rks I I saw a little bit of evolution in their logo and it was kind of cool because now the, the b has the f in it and so it's uh but if you, if you watch some of their videos, you'll see a little evolution.
Josh (aka Magellan):So so you guys also did a uh, a test of like different handlebars yes, which? Which you were on, you did you did a very good job in that. Yeah, by the way. Yeah.
Dane (aka The Guru):Thank you Super impressed.
Josh (aka Magellan):Um, like, what did you learn, like through that process? Like like, did that change your bar selection or how you think about handlebars and how they impact the bike? Yeah, yeah it?
Adam Robbins:definitely, it definitely did. Going into the test, I didn't think I was really going to notice anything. To be quite honest, I was like there's no way that I'm going to actually notice the difference between handlebars. I was like suspension, potentially, tire pressure, yeah, probably. But if we keep all of these variables the same and do the same trail back to back to back on the same day, just by swapping handlebars in a blind test, will I actually know? And I was way more surprised than I thought.
Adam Robbins:So Simone was the only one that knew the results of the test. So he did all the testing in our lab over the course of like a couple of weeks and wrote down all of the values that he tested. And we were testing compliance. So compliance is just essentially how like flexi the handlebar would be is to keep it as simple as possible and to test this, all he did was like clamp the handlebar on the exact same angle all the time, so we would keep it the same and he would put the same like pound weight on the end of the handlebar in the same spot and measure the deflection. So this is how we can conduct the results, so we can see which one would essentially be more compliant than others.
Adam Robbins:So myself and then Jeremy Benson from bike rumor were the blind test riders, and so Simon would go through and he would put like an old inner tube over our bars. I saw that and I had no idea what I was riding. Um, so it just completely blind and went up and I mean it's a trail that I've written hundreds of times, so I was very familiar and I knew what my, my previous bar felt like, which was an FSA gradient bar, and we did the test. We did, I think we did. I think it was like fiveSA gradient bar, and we did the test. We did, I think we did. I think it was like five to eight runs, I can't remember exactly, but back to back, and at the end we would write down where we thought, on a scale of one to 10, just to keep it easy, where we thought the bar would sit on the compliance scale.
Josh (aka Magellan):You did five to eight runs per on each bar.
Adam Robbins:No, we did just one.
Adam Robbins:Yeah so yeah, yeah, back-to-back runs on different bars. Everything else was the same and I was extremely surprised with what I felt, cause, like I said, I didn't think I was going to feel anything and a really compliant bar which I think off the top of my head, was a titanium bar from roost it was the most complete bar on the test and like it felt like a noodle in, like the nicest way possible, like it just felt very compliant, it would give me a lot of flex and it almost felt like my ride was in slow motion. If that were to make sense, yeah, so as I would come into a, it would like my hands would lower, it felt like, and then the spring back was extremely slow and it made just everything feel slow motion. And yeah, I don't know if it was my favorite bar. I think it would definitely cater to someone that would enjoy like large jumps and like just a really mellow, flowy ride.
Dane (aka The Guru):How about an old downhiller that hurts all that time? Potentially?
Adam Robbins:It could really work yeah.
Dane (aka The Guru):He's going to have a roost bar next week.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, I'm calling him tomorrow.
Adam Robbins:I definitely think there's like positives to that bar for certain people. And then on the other end I think it was there was a nuke proof aluminum bar and I think that one was the stiffest bar of the test and that one had almost no flex and you felt like you were almost a bit like playing Plinko, so you would kind of just drop in and you would feel like every little deflection, you would feel everything directly to your hands. So I didn't think I was going to feel that. But definitely a handlebar that sits right in the middle of the compliance scale was the most comfortable for myself and this scale is actually still up on bike rumor If you just type in like faction bike studio. I think it's still alive and you can check out the scale and have a look at where all the bars sit. Um, so, in the middle for me was the most comfortable.
Adam Robbins:But honestly, the biggest thing was the rise in the sweep of the handlebar. To me that made the biggest difference because there was a chromag bar that sat in the middle of the scale. But there was a lot of down sweep to this bar and for me it just it didn't feel comfortable and I wouldn't choose to ride it. But then there's a one up bar that was almost the the same compliance rating, had just a bigger upsweep and it felt like the best bar in the test, wow. But so it really just came down to the shape of the bar and what like each each person's personal preference would be, but it was cool to at least be able to change Any compliance ratings.
Josh (aka Magellan):That, like you guys consistently said, no, I'd never go there Like super stiff or super super flexy like anything.
Adam Robbins:So from everything that we tested, the roost titanium was the most compliant and I think it was the nuke proof like an aluminum nuke proof bar that was the stiffest. So that was the range. But the weird thing was is that certain brands that would have different models of bars in different like carbon versus aluminum, or different clamp diameters, they would all test differently. So it seems like certain brands would do more testing with their handlebars and have a consistent feel and compliant rating so you know what you were buying, where others were just all over the place. So it didn't seem like they did as much homework.
Adam Robbins:Um, so it really seems as though every handlebar is different and you really just have to test different bars to have a good like decision on what you want, which is not easy. I get that because it can get expensive and not everyone has the ability to try different bars. But, um, yeah, I think if you, if you're in the middle of the compliance scale and you have like a sweep or a rise that is comforting to you, I think, stick with that, but at the end of the day, I still don't think there's a bad handlebar. I mean, they're all going to allow you to have a good ride.
Dane (aka The Guru):I was surprised that one up. You know, the perception is that one up bar is designed specifically to have more compliance and it wasn't as compliant on their on their test.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, and I was really surprised by that, cause I thought it would be the most flexible you know, um, because the goal is to to be more flexible. I, I really do like um, and I mentioned this to you off the the recording but, uh, the fact that you actually added in the, the comfort of the sweep and the, the rise and the uprise of, uh, the bar that mattered to you, the other tester from bike rumor, was pretty spot on, like I felt, like his, his uh representation of you know, he guessed pretty close to what was as actually true and I don't think you actually guessed as close, but I think I did not. I think it was because you were mixing the feel, you know and that's and that's very consumer like, like.
Dane (aka The Guru):We deal with that with customers all the time.
Josh (aka Magellan):Especially in suspension right.
Dane (aka The Guru):Part of the reason why you don that you want. But will you feel the difference? Or is what you were asking for actually what you need, what you needed, you know, and that's very difficult, and so, unless the people are I told Ronnie, a DVO, this over time, and I may have mentioned this before, but when you're being paid by the company to just do tunes in a race trailer, it doesn't matter how many times you do it, you get paid the same amount but, our business.
Dane (aka The Guru):the customer has to pay every time we retune it, and so I don't want them to be upset, you might kick ass and it still might disappoint them. That's why I tell them I we are. You're not paying us for the result, you're paying us for the work to make it know, and that's it so like. If the result's not what you want, you have to pay us again to change it and that's and that that's hard sell. It's hard sell to people.
Josh (aka Magellan):So adam, how do you guys test in the winter?
Adam Robbins:test in the winter. Um, it's a tough one, um, I mean, we can travel, we can go places, which is always a pretty fun option, um, but honestly, a lot of the stuff is done in-house. At Faction we have two big testing machines. They're all modular, so we can kind of create any test that we need to in-house, and we do a lot of stuff that way. So the only stuff that we would actually test outdoors would be the ride testing, and most of that can kind of be done throughout, like the warmer months, when there's no snow, um, or we, if we need to test, we'll just go on a trip.
Josh (aka Magellan):So so I love removing constraints. Yeah, it's a big part, and so I've got a great idea for you guys. What about like a faction bike studio South based in Tucson Arizona? Which just happens to be where we are. Yeah, yeah, we ride 365 days a year.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yep Sun all the time. I like the sun.
Josh (aka Magellan):Oh yeah we have amazing just riding, just like the desert riding Severe to smooth it's just nuts, you name it. And we have this huge engineering workforce in Tucson, arizona, that you can pull from, because I know you guys are always looking for good engineers. Right, workforce in tucson, arizona that you can pull from, because I know you guys are always looking for good engineers right and there's a lot of.
Adam Robbins:With 20 000 engineers you're almost applying for, I am kind of like trying to be a partner to set up the action bike studio south right, like I might leave my company to do this, so we should talk more about this idea.
Josh (aka Magellan):What do you think?
Adam Robbins:yeah, I like it. I mean I like the sounds of warm weather in the winter, riding all year, probably good trails.
Dane (aka The Guru):Great trails we're building more trails. Yeah, you guys definitely should be snowbirds, because you don't want to leave Canada. It's beautiful up there, you have certain, but coming down here is amazing, and then you can do year-round work.
Josh (aka Magellan):And we're building a new iceplex so you can still play hockey in the desert. What I mean?
Dane (aka The Guru):yeah, that sounds really smart no, it's not from a boy from detroit.
Josh (aka Magellan):We, we grew up like I don't know, maybe 100 miles, less than 100 miles away from each other, or something like that pretty close, pretty close.
Adam Robbins:Just the river getting in the way there and the border, yeah, just the river in the, in the border of the country.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, right on man. Well, hey, adam, really appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for taking some time. What are you most excited about? Last question what are you most excited about for the future of faction bike studios?
Adam Robbins:Oh, I think just the diversity of projects we get to work on, that's like the funnest thing, honestly. Every day I go in we can have new projects and they're all different types of bikes so like, one week it could be a downhill bike, next week it could be a road bike, the next week it could be an e-bike commuter bike. It's always changing. So I learned about all different types of bikes and it's just, it's ever-changing fun work. And then we get to see these bikes out in the public and I mean we're not going to tell people, hey, we made that, but to yourself, when you see someone riding that bike, you just feel great and they're having a good time and you know that you've helped people enjoy their time on two wheels so, or even sometimes three or four wheels some people put any wheels on their bikes but, um, that's, that's really cool and it's a fun thing. That kind of keeps us passionate about it.
Dane (aka The Guru):That's pretty awesome. I think that that level of satisfaction comes from. We talked to trail builders, you know, and they they get the same thing ride that section of trail that they made or worked on or what have you. And they just have that feeling of like ownership and like, hey, I did this and I love it even more because of that, you know. Uh, I talked to Tyler at our fit fit studio. His biggest satisfaction is helping somebody. Getting that phone call that, hey, I have more power now or I'm more comfortable.
Dane (aka The Guru):That pain went away. You know, uh, in the suspension, getting those those phone calls or emails, where man this is, this didn't even feel this good new. You know that's all of that is just the best. You know that's all of that is just the best. You know, getting that satisfaction.
Josh (aka Magellan):That's why we all do it in the bike industry, because usually not for the money well, on behalf of, like all the mountain bikers, all of our listeners and many of them are probably riding on products that you guys helped thank you so much. You know faction bike studios, the creative minds behind your future bike, maybe your current bike. Yeah, yeah, thanks for what you do, man. Yeah, really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you guys we're gonna tell everybody.
Dane (aka The Guru):We're gonna tell everybody the golden age is bike, maybe your current bike.
Josh (aka Magellan):Yeah, yeah, thanks for what you do, man. Yeah, really appreciate it.
Dane (aka The Guru):Yeah, thank you guys, we're gonna tell everybody we're gonna tell everybody the golden age is probably because of you, because everybody's talking about how everything is so good right now. It's all started happening around 2011, 2012 you know, 12 all these bikes started to get better and better, all in the same level level fields.
Josh (aka Magellan):So assuming that, uh, adam dug this and and thought it was worth his time. We're planning to follow up with the second episode with, with simone, yep, uh, and in in that episode we're going to get more into depth on, like, really, really techie bike design questions. Yeah, and we need people's questions, yeah. So if you have questions, if you look in the show notes, you'll see a little link that says send us a text. Click on that link put in the question. We'd love to hear what your questions. If you look in the show notes, you'll see a little link that says send us a text. Click on that link put in the question. We'd love to hear what your questions are. And you know, sometime in the future don't know exactly when yet, but sometime in the future we'll we'll, we'll reengage with the, with the fashion team here, and we can get really down and dirty on questions. And Dane's already Dane's already probably got an hour's worth of questions.
Dane (aka The Guru):Are you ready to go? So, uh, get your questions in. Yeah, poor Simone, we, we're coming, we're coming.
Josh (aka Magellan):We're coming hot and heavy. Adam, thanks so much for your time tonight.
Adam Robbins:Thank you so much man Awesome, Thanks guys.
Dane (aka The Guru):Can you dig it? Can you dig it, can you dig it.