Is Germany becoming an industry leader?

Questions about bike hire abroad and everything light bike related. No off-topic chat please

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bura
Posts: 842
Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2010 8:07 pm
Location: Civitatis Vaticanae

by bura

I did read through the pages and felt free for my 2cents to the OP question.
I do admit it went slightly off topic. :beerchug:
Kuota Kom Evo
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by Weenie


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Berk
Carbon Cowboy
Posts: 1100
Joined: Sat Sep 04, 2010 7:20 pm
Location: Slovenia

by Berk

nicrump wrote:I do not want to take anything away from Berk either but ask yourself, he has built 4 maybe 5 frames? Berk is definitely a very talented young man. Super thoughtful and I like him a lot. There just simply isn't enough production, testing and data points to validate the work as an end all benchmark.

I just handed carbon crumpton #390(over a 9.5 year period) to my painter the other day. I am 47 years old and still do not know what I do not know. But I know as a single entity, repetition and volume brings experience. I'll get there some day.

stephen@fibre-lyte wrote:
record wrote:The tolerances on some of the modern engines and various other parts (especially drivetrain) are on the aeronautical level.


and being grounded regularly these days apparently :roll:

What makes you think that tolerances used when manufacturing a bike are any different to those when manufacturing parts for a car?

kgt wrote:Berk can design and produce a top frame himself without any serious RD or budget or engineers support team and he's like 18 years old


Not taking anything away from Berk, but are you trying to say that his frame is at the absolute cutting edge and all those known brand manufacturers are wasting their time (and multi million pound budgets) in development? For that matter, what is it about Berks frame that appeals to you? Have you ridden it?

For the record, our special projects engineer built his own time trial frame, fork and wheel set including deep rim front and tri spoke rear, all in carbon, back in the mid nineties, almost twenty years ago. I'm sure that he'd tell you that he could have done a lot more with a multi million pound budget :wink:



Hi! A friend of mine just reminded me on this topic, unfortunately I didn't saw it before, don't have enough time to read more here and missed it. But anyway, here are some of my answers and opinions. Sorry for the long post, I already know it will be long :mrgreen:

Firts of all thanks for all those compliments!! Sorry if it's not interesting, but just want to introduce a bit myself, to give you an idea about my work.
I'm really an mechanical engineer, now 20 years old (this year I'll be 21) and basicly I spend most of my free time in my workshop for qute a few years now. First I came in contact with composites already when I was 13 years old, started to make rockets and I also made my own fuel..then as a very perspective student I had some financial support from our country, I won a price as the best young Slovenian scientist when I made my own rocket body and fuel, and I also earn a bit with good resoults in cycling. Without I couldn't start with any more work because I finance everything by myself from the beginning.
I rode on a quite high level as a cyclist, I was paid for it (till last season I rode in an U23 Continental team). Although I'm very young, I had a lot of very nice experiences in cycling, also raced with all the protour teams, made more than 50 podiums in the past seasons, was all those years a member of our national team etc.,...but anyway decided to rather invest more time for my education and carbon work. Somehow I had that feeling that it's not the best I can make if I would just continue to competing, with all that energy and ideas. So I decided to study and spend more time on my carbon work, but I'm still quite a lot on my bike (well not 25000km per year as before, but half of it)

And here I am, made my first frame when I was 15, then I slowly saved some more money and started with new and new projects (now I'm riding my 5th frame, and made quite a lot of other products, mostly seatpost/saddle combos). Also when I get a salary as a pro cyclist I spend almost everything for my carbon work :mrgreen:. In the past years I get in contact with a lot of great people from carbon industry and I started to design and produce my first prototypes. A lot of work before I made some useful products, but I learned a lot, and I still have to. And I love this work. For example @nicrumpt is an idol for me, and there are some more guys that I really respect because I know how it is, and really appreciate those positive words, so thanks again!

I don't wan't to be a "smartass", but I'm giving my best and I'm really very interested in the carbon work. It's true that I'm the only one who rides my bike, but after each new prototype I try to see what can I improve etc.,..and when I'll be 110% happy I'll maybe try to offer it to the public. And as long as I'm a perfectionist it may take some more time. Anyway, some people do support me and belive in my knowledge, but there are also a lot of sceptics, and I'm not suprised, it's mostly because I'm still quite young (as I said I'm 20 at this moment). But I already had some great experiences, also had 2 my saddle/seatpost combos last year at Eurobike, made some projects for Team SKY (at this moment I also have one their TT bike for a "fine tuning" ;)) etc.,.

Someone mentioned and compared the automotive industry with cycling - I guess it's really hard to compare it, although you can make "big science" only with some small parts, it depends how you're looking on it. If you have some knowledge for composite products, you can make most people who only read a bit about it in magazines etc., feel like they have no idea about it, but that's not my aim. But most carbon industry does it like that ;)..anyway, I don't have to explain why.

Regarding some other comments - well if I would have the chance I would love to work on some more projects, but I'm financially limited, and that's why I can't start with most of the projects that I would like to. I have a lot of nights when I just can't sleep because I'm soo excited, and hopefully some day I'll manage to make at least some of those projects that are at this moment only on paper or in SolidWorks. Most of them are of course for cycling, because I love cycling. But I wouldn't mind if I could get the chance to work also on other projects. I dare to say that I do have the right education and knowledge to work on some composite products, actually education isn't always the best "excuse", at least in my opinion. Experiences are the most important, and I'll learn all my life. So what can I say, I'll keep on working, will give my best in the future and will keep you updated in my topic, that I won't make too much offtopic here. It would be a dream come true to have a company and do this for my living, like for example Crumpton, but we'll see what the future will bring, I'm working on it and will give my best!


Otherwise, regarding the topic name, in my opinion it's not important where it's made. German or Italian or anything does not mean that it's good quality. Let the product speak for itself.
I'm from Slovenia, probably a lot of people don't know where it is, and it's a country next to Italy. We do have some really good companies like Akrapovič, PipiStrel, Elan, etc.,..and the products speak for itself. If I say that it's Slovenian it doesn't mean anything. By the way, for example, Assos is made in Slovenia :mrgreen: and I didn't heard form anyone that Slovenia is an industry leader of cycling clothes etc.,...but they all say it's "Swiss precision" ;)

Sorry fot that long post, cheers to all who read it :beerchug:

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