Production Updates

What happens after you place your order?

We’re instantly notified on our mobile devices and basically we go to work straight away first thing. We log your model/size and confirm our tubing/materials stock status. From there you’re put in the queue and materials are set aside for later picking and organizing.

Once you’re next in queue, we set up the a jig for your frame. We install the BB shell and head tube. Next is mitering of the tubes. This is a painstaking process because the tubes are measured with a $150 Japanese laser etched measuring rule and the tubes are also inspected for any quality issues. They are scribed to find center on 0 and 180 degrees with special tube center finders that we custom made ourselves. They’re pretty cool!

Once marked and measured our tube holding blocks are installed on the tubes. These blocks are marked for center and matched up to the lines we scribed on the tubes. This allows us to keep everything in plane so the frame doesn’t get misaligned. Each tube is painstakingly measured, marked, aligned, checked and fixtured with extreme care. This part is crucial and very time consuming in and of itself. The seat tube is milled for the seat clamp notch and internal dropper cable routing. Once the main tubes are notched out, we’re ready to fit them to the jig onto the BB shell, headtube, and themselves. This requires more measuring and fine tuning/adjustment of the jig to ensure all of the tubes hit their marks and land where specified. Sometimes this is smooth but sometimes this can be a time consumer to get everything just right.

Once all the tubes are in place the jig is set. Essentially the front triangle is set but now we loosen the seat tube fixture and remove everything we just set up. Why? We marked where the tubes landed and doubled checked where the purge holes would go. Rather than trust everything would find center per the cad design software we could save a step but sometimes this extra step saves us in the long run. This has saved us many headaches but has cost us some precious time for sure.

At this stage we’re drilling the BB shell and head tube for the shielding gas back purge holes. We drill approximately 7 holes. Plus we drill for the bottle bosses on the downtube and top tube. We then set everything back up and tack all the pieces together. Once tacked well, we remove the front triangle from the jig and set it up in our bike stand with the purge gas fixtures/heat sinks for the welding process to commence. PHEW! That was just the front triangle. The rear? Sit tight, that one is a long one…

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