- You'll probably have noticed
that when Matt and I were riding
the KLM Challenge out in Taiwan,
we were on some pretty special bikes.
The frames, Factor O2s, are made
just 100 kilometres or so from the finish line.
And so while we were in the neighbourhood,
we were lucky enough to go and meet the brand
and see how the frames are made.
And there is one particularly interesting thing about them,
other than the products of course.
The owner of Factor used to make bikes for other people.
He owned a carbon factory, and now he makes his own bikes.
The Taichung Industrial Estate,
a very important place in the bike industry;
there's literally hundreds of brands
located within just a couple of square kilometres
of this very place.
It's like the engine room of the cycling world.
And Factor, are just there.
(hard techno music)
Let's meet some faces.
Rob Getelis, the owner; Inigo Gisbert, head of design;
and also, a familiar face, David Millar.
David perhaps you'd better explain, to start with,
about what your links to Factor are,
and then also what you're doing in Taiwan.
- Factor came about when I stopped racing;
I was contacted by Baden Cooke who just started
to have this kind of crazy idea
of starting this company with Rob.
And Rob, who I met not long afterwards,
who kind of actually really sold the idea to me
of being involved, and helping them develop bikes.
And it's something that I'd never done before,
because even as a professional cyclist
we don't really have any say whatsoever in bikes.
Which sounds bonkers, but it's true.
And I realised with Rob, who actually owns a factory,
which is where we're at, it opened up the possibilities
of doing something that I'd never been able to do before,
which has been great fun, actually developing bikes.
- Now it's all very well getting
input from professional cyclists,
but somebody has to handle the design.
Over to Inigo.
We've joined Inigo, who is the design director
here at Factor, in the R&D centre
because we're going to a little more insight into just how
the concept of a bike then translates
into the finished article.
So how do you start, I mean, is it a blank sheet of paper?
- Well we have some goals; we discuss
what kind of product we want to do.
And so we have different people,
and we have feedback from the market,
or things we see when we are riding
that we want to do to improve for the next product.
For example this bike here,
this is an evolution of a bike that we already have.
- Yeah, I'm struggling to lift this,
but not because it's a heavy frame,
but because it's been CNC machined out of plastic,
is that right?
- Yes, so this is a sample we make
to confirm that the shape is perfect as we want it.
- And how far down the line do you get
before you actually make the first prototypes out of carbon?
Because presumably that's quite expensive,
if you have to make a mould for a prototype?
- Well when we make parts out of the mould,
out of carbon like these ones here,
we've got to be like 99% sure
that the geometry is what we want,
because then modifying the mould
is very time consuming, and it's pretty expensive.
What we can do after we open the mould,
and we have these, for example,
these handlebars, it's the first carbon sample.
With the final mould we can improve the layup.
So, this is all made in carbon fibre,
but depending how much carbon fibre you use,
and what orientation, and what type of carbon fibre you use,
this product can change a lot:
the way it rides, the stiffness, the weight, the comfort.
We can tweak these with our carbon engineers.
- Yeah, so this is the point then at which you might
take the product and head over to the test lab?
- Yes, this is, exactly.
- It's just a short stroll to get to the test lab.
Owner Rob was happy to take us through some of the tests,
all of which actually give a real insight
into the details of carbon layup and manufacture.
Right then, Robert, I've found some headwear, so I'm happy.
- You look good.
- Thanks, can you just briefly explain
what's going to happen?
- What we found was, in the crashes we would see
some small cracking happening back here
from many bodies falling on our bikes.
We tested many of our competitors' frames;
we found that they had the same problem.
So it wasn't something specific to Factor,
but it was something that we needed to overcome.
So we developed this pendulum test
where we are dropping this weight onto the seat stay,
and the goal is to have no fracture there.
What we found in the original bikes
that we supplied to the team,
with one-time strike it was already cracked.
Now we can go over five times striking with no cracking.
- And so what have you actually done differently to this?
- What we've done is, we didn't really want
to affect the ride characteristics of the bike,
as well as we didn't want to add a lot of weight.
So we changed some of the carbon that we had back here,
which was some very high stiffness material,
to more of a ballistic-type material.
That ballistic-type material has less tensile strength,
so it didn't really affect the ride feeling at all
of the bike, but it definitely absorbs the impact better.
- Right, so I've been told, it needs to go to 90 degrees ...
I almost don't want to do this; this feels so wrong!
Are you ready?
Okay, ready (weight clacks).
(frame strikes echoing)
- This is an ISO impact test, and what's going to happen is
the ISO test is, we have a weight
which drops directly onto the fork.
And you're not allowed to have any fracture,
any cracking, anything.
The standard is 22 1/2 kilos, and 640-millimeter drop.
At Factor we actually increase our drop height,
usually by about 20%, because we don't want
to just be passing, we want to know
that we have a very, very stable, strong product.
- And so this is simulating, like, ramming into a curb.
- This is basically like running into an immovable object,
so whether it be a curb, or a wall,
or a car, something like that.
And the idea here is that the fork needs to be
around three times stronger than the frame.
- Right; good luck buddy.
Impact! (weight smacks fork)
Oh my days!
People often talk about the stiffness of a bike,
being stiffer equals better, and this rig behind us now,
Rob, this actually measures how stiff
the bottom bracket area of the frame is, is that right?
- That's correct.
What we do is put a load that simulates a rider, you know,
pushing down on the cranks, and then we're measuring
the deflection of the bike.
And we're trying to come up with, you know, a goal again.
Before we ever start making a frame,
even making the mould, we've already decided
what that stiffness goal should be.
- Okay so not "stiffer is better," then?
If there's a goal it implies there's a degree of ...
- That's true; there's definitely
a point of diminishing returns.
So a lot of times people will think,
"As stiff as possible is better,"
and we know that that's not the case
because maybe the bike won't track very well descending,
or it will be too uncomfortable to ride,
so we're always looking for sort of this,
a ratio between the head tube stiffness
and the bottom bracket stiffness.
And I can't really discuss what that ratio should be,
because that's sort of an internal secret,
but we're always looking to make sure
that we're staying inside of that ratio.
- Okay, because that gives you the right feel of a bike?
- Exactly; it also enables us to test other people's bikes
and quantify, if somebody says,
"Oh I like this competitor's bike,"
we're able to actually quantify
what it is that their bikes are able to achieve,
and then we can compare to our bikes that we're building.
So what we're doing here is,
Simon's actually has a load cell,
and the crank in his hand, and what that's doing is
it's loading this pulley here,
which is loading this solid crank.
So we're not using, you know,
a Shimano crank or a SRAM crank;
we're using solid steel parts to take away
any of the variables that could go wrong.
The same thing with the chain.
Then what we're doing is we're actually measuring over here
the deflection of the frame.
So as he's putting that 105 kilos into the crank,
we're actually measuring how much is the frame bending.
- How much is it bending, Rob?
- Right now it looks like, about 30 millimetres.
- So Rob, for me one of the most interesting things
is the fact that you used to make bikes for other people,
and now you make bikes for yourself.
So I'm really intrigued, have you changed anything?
I know your factory now is a little bit smaller
than it used to be?
- [Rob] Yeah, it's quite a bit smaller.
We used to have factories of over 1,000 people.
And the Factor facility is only about,
a little less than 100 right now.
- Now we spoke earlier about this, and you sort of said that
it influences the way you're actually able to design bikes,
when you have a highly skilled manufacturing workforce.
- It does, we don't need to engineer
as much safety margin into the frames to take up the slack,
per se, of one of the workers doing something wrong.
Because a lot of times, you always have to be concerned,
you know, is the ply in exactly the right place or not?
We know it's in the right place,
so we don't have to design all of this
additional overlap into the frame
in order to ensure the good quality.
- [Si] Yeah, and you've been in the bike industry
for a long time now ...
- [Rob] Over 20 years.
- Over 20 years, and so, how hands on do you get now?
- Well, I still know how to make a bike.
- As in literally ...
- I can literally go make one,
a lot slower than the normal people,
but I could actually make one.
- That's pretty cool.
- But no, I'm still, myself, I'm still very much intrigued
by the products we make.
And I still am very much interested
in how can we always improve on something.
So I work very closely with our engineering team,
just making sure we're always evolving the product.
- And one of the things that came out
from our conversation with Inigo,
was that one of the first things to do,
well not the first things, but, the important step,
is to finalise the outline of the bike
so you can make a mould, but then once that mould is set,
which is an expensive tool, you can then
actually influence much more about the structure of the bike
from the carbon layup.
- Absolutely; so, I mean, the carbon layup is important
as well as which materials to use
and where to place those materials.
We have a philosophy internally in our company
about, "We put the waste in the garbage can;
"we don't put the waste in the frame."
So a lot of our materials are specially cut
to our frame shapes.
We don't use a lot of square panels kind of thing,
which you would find at most traditional factories.
- [Si] Just to save money I guess?
- To save money and to go faster,
but it's really not an optimised layup.
So we're really looking to optimise
the layups of our frames.
- We've got a slight confession to make.
The carbon factory is a short plane ride away in China.
And so we actually couldn't get to the facility,
unfortunately, due to visa constraints.
Which is frustrating to say the least.
And Factor were super keen that we got to see
what goes on there, as they are really proud of it.
What we can do, though, is go and pick up the frames
fresh out of the manufacturing facility,
because the next step of the journey is the paint shop.
(upbeat techno music)
Ooh, right, here we go, the first glimpse of our frame.
Look at that; so this has come directly
from the composite facility to the paint shop.
Raw carbon is a thing of beauty, isn't it?
And this has already been hand finished actually,
so when it comes out of the mould,
it goes through a sanding process,
so we get that super, super smooth finish
that is so typical, and so amazing, of carbon fibre.
As well as that, also some of the holes
for bottle bosses, and also cable guides,
they've been hand finished as well already,
and the seat climb bolt has also been drilled out.
And one of the striking things about it,
is that there's not a single piece of metal on here.
So the headset bearings will go
straight onto the carbon there.
The bottom bracket bearings get pressed
straight in there was well.
Right, I best stop fondling it,
otherwise I'm going to get it all sweaty
before it gets painted.
We are being let loose inside the paint shop, oh yeah.
So we've got a frame already racked up there.
Now, I'm told many paint shops
will spray frames in larger batches,
so they'll all be racked up, it'd be a much bigger place,
whereas this, you've got individual booths
to do one frame at a time.
Underneath it you can see, there's a load of water;
the idea is that that catches the overspray from the paint,
where it's then filtered and cleaned,
so there's no environmental issue there at all.
Now, to actually paint it, we first need a base coat,
and then we need our colour on top of that.
And if we've got more than one colour,
which we don't have in this instance,
then it will need to be masked off and then go again
before being baked inside an oven
to get that super hard, durable finish.
It makes you think, you know, that
if the UCI get rid of their weight limit,
the Tour de France is going to look pretty boring, because
everyone would go for a matte black raw carbon frame,
because paint does obviously weigh something.
But Matt and I are sacrificing
a little bit of weight for style.
(trippy techno music)
There we go, as if by magic!
A blue 54, and a 56, in Romain Bardet edition white.
There we go, decals applied, obviously,
and then a clearcoat finish over the top.
And the finishing touches, so we've got our cable guides;
we've got our front derailleur mount riveted on.
Bottle cage bolts, look at that.
One thing I have noticed, is Romain Bardet's personal motto,
"Take the risk or lose the chance,"
definitely something to live by.
And certainly during the KLM Challenge,
at which point, "Take the risk, and die on your arse,"
I think is going to be appropriate to me.
So, yes, sorry Romain, not this time.
(trip-hop music)
You might have seen some "Black Inc" branding
on products around the place, and let me explain.
It's the sister brand to Factor,
so like the component manufacturing arm.
Wheels, as you can see here, bars,
stems, seat posts, bottle cages;
it's all made in the same facility as the frames.
We will finish our tour in the packing room,
but unlike this one which is ready to go and be shipped out
mine and Matt's don't need to go in boxes.
They're going to get built up right here,
ready to race a hundred-kilometer hill climb.
At least, the bikes will be ready to race;
I can't exactly say the same for Matt and I.
But you can see how we get on,
if you subscribe to GCN first;
to do that just click on the globe.
But then, that KLM Challenge video,
to get through to that one, click just down there.
And to see a little bit more information
about the bikes that we're racing,
click just down there.